In November Navigation Road appeared at the South Hants MRC exhibition in Portsmouth. This is always an extremely good show and this year’s did not disappoint. In the main hall, each of the layouts was finescale, superbly presented, and worked well. But the real joy was watching the faces of the many young children who were there with big grins and obvious enjoyment as they ‘watched the trains go by’. This is an exhibition that always excels in both entertaining and educating the youngsters whom we hope will carry our hobby forward in the years ahead.
During the Autumn we have had two workshops run by members. Chris H led a ‘hands on DAS’ evening which was very interesting – particularly to those of us who have had a block of DAS in store for years and never actually used it. The features that can be relatively quickly created were both interesting and impressive.
Richard showed us how he is making trees for his loft layout by using some products from his garden, in conjunction with commercially available scatter and other materials. For your scribe the ‘star’ was the use of dried flower heads of purple smoke bush (cotinus coggyria) as the ‘armature’ of a small tree. In summer I love watching the setting sun shine through my smoke bush, never having thought of using parts of it for modelling.
The test track has seen much use with a considerable variety of motive power. The oldest was an early 1950s Hornby Dublo Duchess of Atholl which had been converted to 2-rail running many years ago. There was also a K’s 28XX complete with XO4 motor and Romford gears, while the most recent was a Dapol bubble car. Needless to say there was a considerable difference in performance – and noise!. New member Rob showed his credentials by running a class 33 which he had converted to P4.
As we prepare for the Christmas break, we wish fellow modellers a Happy New Year.
This report – written by Joe Newman – appears in Issue 223 of the EM Gauge Society newsletter.