DB is barely holding the fort while Dandruff-San visits the far east.
The Christchurch Big Train Show was last weekend. There were plenty of layouts, stalls and chat to be had, so myself and a fellow modeller from Oamaru ended up staying four hours and we both had our wallets lightened by the cunning salespeople and their shiny trinklets.
And wow! There was some unexpected (unexpected by me!) NZ120 presence there, with Ian Perry, who lives near Kaikoura, showing his model of scenes that are, unsurprisingly, from near Kaikoura.
Rolling stock was from Trackgang, and all airbrushed - some of the most 'professional' looking finishes I've seen in NZ120. This all ran perfectly (even with multiple tracks across angled module joins) and looked great, with the scenes and bridges being great representations of either actual scenes, or of the general feel of the place.
Ian and his wife spent a lot of time traveling around NZ in their caravan, and most of this was built during their journeys!
'Kaikoura' looked great, ran flawlessly, and was the well-deserved winner of 'layout of the show'. The recabbed DGs didn't hurt either, although there was a TMS red DF there as well...
Regular S scale attendee 'One Track Minds' were there with some lovely models, although some of my favourite modules from last year were not in the layout this time. This simple one below has nice undulation and shows that a module doesn't need to be in any way complex to be very effective.
Many of the locos on this layout had some superb sounds. The sounds for the DGs were recorded by Peter Ross when the DTG's DG 772 was undergoing load bank testing. A video may appear below if Blogger will publish it: