Waihao Forks....Reborn!

Am_Fet blows the dust off his quill pen and writes:

Many of you will remember that ages ago (possibly in a previous geological epoch), I contracted the Civil Engineering arm of Dandruff Labs to build me a layout.  After much sweating and burnt fingers (who would be mad enough to try this Code 40 rubbish?), a layout was produced that looked a lot like this:

And then.....apathy set in.  And life.  And lots of other excuses to tedious to detail here.

Fast Forward to earlier this year.  11 years of working at KiwiRail had evolved into a full blown mid life crisis, complete with unemployment and wondering where life had gone.  0-4-4-0T of this parish, under the tutelage of Lord Druff, was making a damn good fist of laying his own track for his Conns Creek layout (which has featured here previously) and enjoying the process.  Somehow (and I've still got to get this right in my mind) he made me an offer I couldn't refuse.....to work in partnership to get the ailing Waihao Forks layout back under way.

SO.....here we are.  Work has been started and an exciting concrete plan has been formulated to create a "Roundy Roundy" layout for display.  Over the next few posts I'll bring everyone up to date with whats been going on and where we are aiming to get to in the near future.

As a teaser, here is an excellent photo gleaned from the Interweb (courtesy of the Waimo Hysterical Society) showing things sometime during the 30's.  Admittedly we will be setting the layout in the 50's (just before closure), but looking at photos like this it seems not a lot changed over the decades.

Next up....plans and philosophies.