Thursday 6 May 2010

New Zealand Model Railway Convention - addendum

I want to finish off my description of the New Zealand Model Railway Convention by thanking the organisers of the event and the individuals who gave presentations and clinics. I also want to thank the people who displayed their layouts in the hall at the Convention and the people who displayed their home layouts on the layout tours. Finally, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the conversations and hospitality of all the people I met and chatted to at the Convention.

The Convention was a great success, but there was more. Whilst there were no official layout tours on Monday 5th April, since the Convention was over, some local modellers gave times for an open house during the day.

I was exceedingly lucky to get to the home of Peter Ross, with barely a minute to spare, on my way home late in the afternoon from a day trip to Akaroa. Peter's layout, Amberley, is an S scale (1:64) work-in-progress based on the line between Amberley and Waipara, not too far north of Christchurch, and set in the 1950s. Peter was kind enough to invite me in and spend time talking with me about the layout well past the open house closing time.  Thank you Peter - and what a superb layout!










Until next time....

4 comments:

  1. Brad

    Thank you for a well written and detailed report on the convention, I enjoyed it, much appreciated.

    Ray P

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  2. Hi Brad,
    I'm jealous, I've read some things about Peters layout and methods and would love to spend some time there. The photos really show the quality of the man's work, thanks for sharing.
    Andrew

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  3. Brad, Thanks for a great NZ Convention report. I last saw Peters layout in his old house about eight years ago and even though I have known Peter for about 30 years, I was blown away with his layout, as was visiting Canadian modeller and author Patrick Lawson.

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  4. Brad, thanks for your very kind comments. I'm glad you came to my layout, even if it is in its early days. I really enjoyed your visit and our chat.
    Thanks, too for your convention report, you have a formidable recall of everything you saw and did at the convention and a very real talent for writing about it.
    If you really are an armchair modeller I can think of few better ways to be a real part of the hobby next to actually being a modeller.
    You're welcome back over hear any time.

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