Midlands Garden Railway Show Visit

A couple of weeks ago I got to go to the 2012 Midlands Garden Railway Show.  It was a bit like being in the sweetshop as I saw lots of things in the flesh (well metal and plastic) that I had only seen on the internet or in magazines before.   As a first time I found it well worth the admission price: a return next year is going to be very dependent upon exhibitors I suspect.

Lots of Live steam which was of marginal interest to me, but a large layout from the East Midlands Area Group of G Scale Society.  I took a short video of this to provide me with inspiration.

There were lots of other layouts but I only shot videos of a couple - a live steam one, and a tinplate group.

Other layouts either proved too difficult to get a decent video of, or weren't of much interest to me.   There was a nice bit of inspiration on the G Scale Society stand. 

It may not appear much to you but a coaling station is something that ultimately I need to incorporate on the layout and this was an idea that I could potentially build myself.  

As always I came back with some purchases, although I was quite restrained and bought nothing big:

~Some resin barrels form Andel models

~Some magnetic couplings from Timpdon

~Some (unpainted) Newspaper stacks, milk churns and pick axe from Perfect World Scenics aka Trenarrren Models Trenarren Models

~Some Bachmann Maintenance depot workers (code 22-169)

~Finally an Ezee Range Visitors Wagon kit from I P Engineering with some seagull castings LGB metal coupling loops.  The Visitors wagon was touted as one of the simpler kits to build for the first timer and I was after something to go with my quarry or lumber wagon train to ferry workers.   I described my modelling level as "LGB with a spray can" to some amusement, given all the engineering masterpieces that were on display elsewhere.   

http://www.ipengineering.co.uk/page93.html

I think there might have been a bit of a show special saving a bit of money and I'm interested to see how I get on with this kit as the modelling is one aspect that I enjoy.  Getting the couplings working with LGB ones I'm suspecting to be amongst the hard jobs.   

And last but not least, some G scale corrugated Aluminium from back2bay6 for a particular project. 

Martins Models offered advice on track laying.      

Chris

First steps into DCC

Last week I bought four second hand motors and a Decoder box which I collected on Friday and played around with today (Sunday).  Bought some dual core speaker wire from Maplins and I'd got a power pick up from the analogue train set I bought.  Doing this today I'm really glad that I bought a wire stripper some time ago (rather than having to rely upon craft knives).

Very simple to wire up and it worked first time...  it may not be the most exciting video to watch (and i turned the loco sound off) but it's evidence of another small step for Chris.  It's not had its day as a video star yet, but combine digital remote control points with the digital remote uncoupler/coupler shunter, and the shunting yard become much more fun.  

Here's a close up of the 'magic' box, wiring etc..  The wire is far too long but it's so I can play around with it.  The power for this is drawn from the track: there is not a seperate wiring circuit.  

Results were so successful and so easy that I've just asked for the rest of the stuff that the guy had on sale.