Onward!  I was going to write this up last night, but we were suddenly invited out for a curry by some old friends.  You can guess my priority here….

Some fine O gauge modelling on Staindrop, picturing the ex-NER in south-west Durham around 1928.  I liked the scenic work, bridges and station, sometime difficult to convince in the larger areas of O gauge.  The nicely varnished facia to the baseboards also impressed!  It’s those small details that really set of a railway.

Also in O, the tiny St Kew Highway, exhibited on the Gauge O Guild stand, shows what can be done in the senior scale on a micro layout.

Kinmundy (EM) represents an ex-Great North of Scotland Railway branch in BR days.  This line is notable for the frosty scenery.  A simple dusting of white paint over the scenery, and some added sparkle give a most realistic scene.  However, the initial spray over the already modelled scenery must have taken some courage!

A side room had a display of the late Iain Rice’s layouts.  This seems quite the thing at the moment, but is very welcome.  Iain was a master modeller (and writer – try some of his layout design books), but was also, I think, a master bodger!  His articles always convinced me that I could make something like this.  All in P4, and minimum space layouts, we have the clay dries of  Tetrice (with a fiddle yard suspended by a chain off the main layout!!), Hepton Wharf, a tiny pioneer of the cameo layout, and Longwood Edge, an experiment to see whether the integrated cameo format – boards and backscene forming a box structure – would work on a larger layout.

And now for something completely different!  Sandy Shores Light Railway (OO9) is a flight of fancy set on the sand dunes of the South coast.  A fascinating little line with a convoluted track plan – and some very well done coastal scenery.  The operator told me that it’s rather interesting operating it!

Danbee (O), a GWR branch line.

And to finish today, the miniscule Kleinstadt (Z).