Toowoomba 2010

This will be the last post about T'ba till around June next year, promise!

Daz and I arrived at the shed at around 1pm on Friday, and there were already quite a few others already set up. Firstly we ate the burgers bought just down the road, and set to work. The layout has had a few outings with just the two of us to setup and quite honestly it probably works out better that way. In what seemed no time the layout was up and we had some locos circulating. This year is the layouts tenth year and will be its last at T'ba.

The shed this year was certainly a lot fuller than last year with tighter isles and tighter spots for us to work ourselves into. I do enjoy the positive feeling you get at the start of a show, and I do think that others there were feeling much the same. When the dinner was out of the way we spent a while looking about and then got set up at the modelling bench. We planned to do a bit of modelling in the evenings on the Friday and Saturaday. Last year and many other times we'd been at the dinner put on by the DDMRC and the dinner and quiz afterwards is certainly good value, just not our thing.

I had a bit of staining of timber loads to complete, and had brought along a couple of other things to have a go at. The timber work took longer than I thought, or was it the T'ba coffee? Not sure really, but Friday evening was a good start for the weekend.

Saturday morning after the cooked breakfast, showers, etc it was time to get the locos running, and they did that reliably all weekend. The morning didn't seem to get busy till about 11am, and I thought at the time that the new layout seemed to spread out the general public better than other years. There were qite a few modellers out that day and I did have many a chat with quite a few different people, always for me the best part! Lunchtime snuck up on us in no time, in fact Saturday went by in a flash.

I did make a couple of purchases from AR as after setting up on Friday I'd spied a couple of kits that haven't been in production for a while. Al had HCX,HG,CHG wagons, the HG and CHG guards vans in whitemetal. I purchased a HG, HCX, and also a W/M parachute water tank kit (very nice) and a KKG also. I grabbed some of Al's lining kits for the 32 I have in the cupboard.

The rest of the passenger kits are due to be re released in the near future too, so good news there.

I purchased a very nice Data Sheet of a timber water tank stand. I had been looking for this one for a while. It will be used for the yard on SSC. Modratec was there and a couple of bits were purchased there also.

This year there were many people selling second hand gear and I did come across a few book bargains. I managed to find, 'remember when' the first one, byways of steam number 1, and 'away with steam' all of these for ten or twenty dollars each, bewdy!

I only had time for a couple of photos this year, but certainly the variety of layouts had all of us entertained for the weekend.

Saturday evening had us venture back to the BBQ for another culinary delight that truly was made for 'Master Chef'. Let's just say it was a fine combination of braised steak and vegetables, toast, and sausages, no more be said, just amazing... Then it was back to the modelling bench, and a bit of a chat ensued whilst some modelling occurred also. We did get off to bed about 1130 as the temps fell rather quickly that night, down to about 3 we heard the next morning.

Sunday was similar to Sat as far as the layout was concerned, it ran really well. The public became all about kids , with families everywhere. Darren and I had a good chat with Bill from DDMRC and he is an avid NSW modeller also. Bill brought along photos of his layout 'Tenterfield'. The bare bones are there and it's obvious Bill has thought long over just how the layout should be set out, can't wait to see how it progresses along, good stuff! Bill is a great bloke I feel like I've known him for years, he's that sort of guy.

I do enjoy catching up with the people involved with the T'ba club, they are enthusiastic, and positive. They make you feel most welcome, and nothing is too much trouble. They provide all the basic requirements for a fun weekend, along with a big dose of enthusiasm. A big thankyou to all that are involved in putting their show together must be put out there. If there were any problems over the weekend it wasn't evident to those who displayed, from our point of view all went well, a sign of their professional manner. I hope it was a successful weekend, it certainly seemed to be, well except for the two blokes just over from us, they spent most of the weekend fighting, bickering, and generally just unhappy, maybe that's how they like it. It kept us amused that's for sure!

Darren, thanks for a hoot of a weekend again mate, till next year! Johnno, and Tess, I had a ball Saturday night, sometimes we need nights like that to let us know we're alive, and it's all worth it.

So see you at the next T'ba show, SSC's very first outing!

Geoff.