Wednesday, 28 March 2012

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






No comments:

Post a Comment