On Sunday, 29th November, we went to have a look at the New Forest Model Railway Society Open Day at Brockenhurst Village Hall, an exhibition we'd missed last year.
A few years ago, when I was still living in Spain and I'd decided to let go of all my OO guage rolling stock and buildings, I had donated them to the New Forest Model Railway Society, simply because I'd gone to their exhibitions and open days with my dad, goodness knows how many years ago (more than I want to count anyway) and it was my way of giving back.
Having done so, sadly, doesn't get me free entry today (joke), but I was glad to see that some of those buildings were being put to good use. They could, of course, have acquired the very same kits from elsewhere, but I had most of those low relief kits pictured above (excluding the station) and those were amongst the ones I had donated, so I assume that the ones you're seeing are the very ones my dad built when I was still a kid. They could be 50 years old.
There was not much N Gauge at this open day.
One thing we really want to avoid is trying to squeeze every feature - no matter how cute - into the Porthkeres layout. Even if we are going to model a fictional location, it must try to be a believable one. The other thing we were reminded in relation to this, is the importance of a varied topography. Not only does it add interest to a layout, we don't typically have totally flat landscapes in real life. We'll try to make our fictional Cornish landscape as bumpy and abrupt as the real one.
