Pure gold

 A chance discovery this week. While on the hunt for a bit more info on Uc tank wagons, I stumbled on a description of building a model of Woburn station. Not that interesting you would think, but there were a couple of very hi-res aerial photos and a website Retrolens. You pick a location of interest and it pulls up all the aerial pictures of it with dates (starting in the early 1940's). There's 2 options (medium resolution and hi resolution) with hi-res in some cases really being something else. Heres a medium res picture of Paekakariki from 26th October 1963.

But as they say, you ain't seen nothing yet. Heres the hi-res version.

Looking at this I got a bit misty eyed, as it has answered so many of my questions. The Tilley Rd houses, the homes behind the single mens compound, the oil tanks arrangment, the plan view of the pub...

So, plenty to be getting on with, but I now finally have a solid over view of all the bits and can start fitting the details in.

Resurrecting the dead

Yesterday afternoon with the help of Mr Hamblyn I extracted paekakarki from its resting place of 10 years. Setup only took about 15 minutes (some spent looking for tools).

Astonishingly the track seems to have survived its sourjourn with only 1 obvious repair needed (though nothing has been run yet) plus what feels like (running fingers along the track) a slight board missalignment on one edge. This afternoons job will be to measure up the area for the railway housing so that I can build a scale model of it to see what will fit.

My imediate impression is that there is more than enough space for a decent collection of houses. Down the other end at Beach rd there's not that much space (far less than I remembered) which does that the bonus that I don't have to build quite so many shops.