Monday, October 29, 2012

RailEx - Day 2

 RailEx, I'm back at RailEx. Back in the horticultural hall where 19 years before Darryl and I built our first NZ120 layout together, the night before the show.

Since I don't do religion, getting out of bed on Sunday any time before 10 is a struggle. 7:30 was a bit of a stretch. Especially when you get to the hall and get asked  'what took you so long?' and 'why do you live in a hick town?'.

Arriving at the hall, I was type cast as a forward thinking adhesive user by soldering iron wielding Luddites and so held up the front end of the demo tables with Michael. My detailed explanation of why one uses adhesives and that heat will not melt 2 pieces of wood together were completely lost on Mish, but she did bring lunch for all, so it sort of balances out. Sitting down,  I followed the instructions I had been left, which was reach into the bag and start whatever came out.

'A lightbulb moment, Just as well I wasn't bending over...'
Fortunately the options were UGA or J.
Anyway off I dived and grabbed a couple of UGA laser cuttings (as I wanted a couple more for the layout). These merrily went together with pauses only to play 'hunt the piece I want' in the bag of bit. Oh and interacting with the public....
This seemed to go well. I didn't scare any small children that I could tell.

I knocked together 2 Uga's and then cast round for something else to do. A J seemed out of the question (I only had an hour left) so I went for the only think left. An enquiry received the reply 'You mad rash fool!' which is technically not a 'No', so I assembled a G scale Uga as well. If there is another one cut, I think I could do it blindfolded.


Also on the table was a 5" radius cirle of track where the Cb and rail truck put in a good day in their first real test run. I started off with running them singularly, but since I had the DCC box I discovered I could run both of them at the same time without too many collisions. The railtruck ran a bit hot, but the Cb was fine after running in circles all afternoon.

All in all not a bad show, I had a quick wander round the layouts but nothing overly grabbed me again. had an interesting chat with a fellow RMweb member about operating show layouts. He had not brought his British OO layout as operating it for 2 days was quite exhausting. A roundy roundy was far easier to deal with. Maybe my grand plan to run Paekakariki is a layout too far after all?




4 comments:

beaka said...

I actually found it alot of fun operating the Taumaranui???? layout (S scale)last year at railex whenever i could get the throttle off a certain person from the cabbage patch gang.this is a roundy-roundy layout on a large scale. I think it was very popular with the public because it was familiar and NZ themed. I think your layout would be just as popular due to its local content even though it is a different operating concept.
The trackgang crew found the after show hospitality more entertaining than the actual show.still peeved that i missed it!

Anonymous said...

"Maybe my grand plan to run Paekakariki is a layout too far after all?" No No No No No!! Show it to the world as a another grand example of what can be accomplished in '120!

Admittedly it might need a bit of organisation in running and making it interesting to punters who wanna see action, but you could include a simple roundy roundy part by hooking the main line north behind the scenes back to the south via a staging yard? Or others' modules?

beaka said...

have been thinking of Darryl with hurricane Sandy bearing down on the area.hope he comes out reasonably unscathed!

Anonymous said...

It was just the two NZ120 "layouts" at RailEx this year owing to the reduction in space with only 2.5 weeks to go. Jasmine's module (non-operating) seen in the foreground of the "lightbulb moment" photo plus the Druff's unscenicked "2 vehicles chasing each other" loop layout next to it.