Wednesday 17 April 2013

13th Australian N Scale Convention

Well, the 2013 Convention has been and gone, and I totally enjoyed every moment of it.  We had around 170 delegates and partners, including six from the USA.

We had clinics - here's Jim Younkins from the USA presenting an entertaining clinic on how he designed and built his home layout:





















We had layout tours, including the GC&SF. Here are some of the visitors outside my train room:





















(That shed in the distance is the garden shed. My train room is hidden by the bushes on the left.)

For me, one of the big surprises from this convention was the discovery that there are two extremely good N scale layouts modelling Victorian locations, within minutes of my place.  I am really looking forward to visiting these layouts so I can see them up close.  Darren and Chris do excellent work.

Darren Lagerwey watches the action on Darren French's "Cann River" layout:





















Chris Pearce's "Wallan":






















The guest speaker at the convention dinner was Craig Martyn from BLMA Models:





















A special treat for our crew was that our friend and mentor Rod Warren won the 2013 Dane Parker Award.  Here he is being presented with the trophy by Roger Vistarini:





















Congratulations Rod!

All of the above photos were taken by Debra Vistarini (but I have cropped several of them).  There are more photos from Debra on the convention site here.

Now that the convention is out of the way I have no more excuses for not getting on with the modelling.

Thanks for reading.
Ron