Last weekend I visited two model railway exhibitions in Victoria. The first was the Ballarat Model Railway Exhibition which I attended last Saturday and is the focus of this blog post. I also lucked in when I went into central Ballarat for lunch and caught a Steamrail tour arriving at the historic Ballarat railway station. On the following day I visited the Waverley Model Railway Club's exhibition at Brandon Park Community Centre in Melbourne which I will cover in the next blog post.
The Ballarat Model Railway Exhibition featured about a dozen layouts in a sports hall in a school in East Ballarat. There were three layouts that I particularly liked, and we'll start with those ones first. As always, click on the photo to enlarge.
Black Stump (On30) was a terrific layout (and related to another On30 layout featured at the Waverley Exhibition). Black Stump is based on Victorian narrow gauge situated in the Otway Ranges. The station was renamed Black Stump after a recent fire. The scenery on this layout was very nicely done.
Northminster (OO scale) was another nicely scenicked layout showing plenty of fine modelling. Northminster is a terminus station on a fictitious LMS branch line that also incorporates a heritage railway. The layout is operated by digital command control (DCC).
Harpindone (OO scale) was an English-themed layout that saw plenty of train action. There were two station scenes and detailed building scenes at each end of the layout. If I am not mistaken, Metcalfe card kits were well used throughout this layout to great effect.
John Hunter and Laurie Green showcased some wonderful dioramas and offered very useful tips on diorama and layout building construction.
N scale was represented by the US-themed Northwest Passage layout. This layout is based on the north-west United States and showcases long trains, both passenger and freight.
Another N scale layout was Black Border Crossing, a layout based on a northeastern US town with plenty of interchange action.
The City Tram (HO scale) was a nice little layout featuring trams. The layout also had a couple of Magnuson buildings which were pretty good since those kits were produced over a decade ago.
Other layouts included the following: Kookaburra Park (HO), Geordi's Layout (N scale), Somewhere (HO), and Three Doors USA (N scale).
And, as I said, I was lucky enough to fluke being down at Ballarat railway station at lunchtime whereupon Steamrail's R761 was just arriving on a rail tour. The loco was uncoupled at the station and ran around its train for the later return journey. Now that was a lovely surprise!
Summing up my first visit to this exhibition (and Ballarat itself), it was a great day, albeit overcast, drizzly and freezing cold. That's Ballarat in winter I was told!
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