Exhibition #7 Redlands 2018

The recent Redlands Model Railway Show was somewhat of a homecoming event for Denise and I to draw the curtains on a busy model train show season in south east Queensland. The 4th and final exhibition for Philden of 2018, saw us once more head south down the Bruce Highway with our country playlist blaring with everything from Morgan Evans to Kenny Chesney in the car. This time we continued south over the Gateway Bridge to an area that was once so familiar to us. The Redlands.

The calm before the crowds stormed in on Saturday morning.

Held in the Smith Street Hall in the bayside suburb of Cleveland, 2018 marked the 7th anniversary for the Redlands Model Railway Show. There was no model train show in the Redlands back when Denise and I were living in the nearby suburb of Capalaba a decade ago, so to be included in this year's show was special, in that it gave me the chance to bring my layout down to the shire I once called home. We also have family still living in Redlands, so the weekend also became a chance to catch up with Denise's brother and his family, and dine out on the Saturday night at an Indian restaurant at nearby Wellington Point.

The Lindfield station indicator board sign was a new addition for the Redlands Show to complete the presentation.

For once I was able to turn up early for the opening day, cashed-up and with a shopping list of what I wanted to buy. Normally the timing of exhibiting my layout at a model train show doesn't coincide with me necessarily being able to afford to buy anything whilst there, and the expense of taking my layout to a show, (especially if a couple of nights accommodation is required), only further eats away at what I can justify as 'hobby money'. Instead, I only added another pair of 20' foot side door containers to my roster from Don at Railco before the doors opened to the public.

From the opening 15 minutes on the Saturday morning, there was a constant stream of paying public marching through the door on account of it being a rainy weekend in Brisbane. So before it got too hectic, I walked the floor to take these few photos of some of the layouts on display over the weekend.

I was set up beside Clive Collin's Snap Shot layout. Each square was a different scene from around the world.

Turnpike Land, featuring London's underground, is still a crowd favourite on the south east Queensland circuit.

The Urangan Pier at Hervey Bay was across from my layout with its cool blue water...

...while Philden stood opposite with its scorching hot outback sunset lighting effects.

The view looking across the hall inside the Redlands Model Train Show as the doors opened on Saturday morning.

Inside the hall became quite crowded during the peak Saturday morning and afternoon periods, and Sunday turned out to be busier still, as the wet weather gave the locals something to do on a rainy day. There were still paying customers arriving at 2.30 pm on the Sunday afternoon. The organisers surely must have been very happy with the numbers over the two days.

Being positioned up on the stage gave me the best view of the venue, and a chance to watch what was going on down on the floor below. While it is inevitable that some of the 'old timers' will always succumb to some shut-eye at some point in the afternoon, a visit to the bathroom on the Saturday made me laugh when I recognised the sound of snoring coming from one of the cubicles. Some-one had fallen asleep on the toot-er!

The new extension once more doubled as hidden staging for the weekend, and while the layout and trains performed faultlessly, the inevitable finally caught up with me when I had two wagons take a dive off the layout onto the timber floor. The first occurred when I hurriedly steadied the layout after a young child tried avoiding being caught by her parents by running beneath the white safety chain to hide behind the curtains of my layout. With one hand on the layout and the other quickly cutting the power to the train that was running at the time, my own knee caught on the wiring that ran from my LED lighting, which in turn whip-lashed the cement hoppers that you can see in the photo above. While the NPRY bounced on its side with out damaging any of the walkways or ladders, I later stepped on a piece of the under frame detail that obviously came loose. The second was just one of those accidents when my wife had her jacket sleeve catch on the steel train as she reached in to throw a toggle switch. Turns out those NCNX wagons don't bounce so well as you can see in the photo below. I've already rebuilt this model once after it arrived in the post in worse condition, so I can easily rebuild it again. I'm just fortunate I found all the pieces.

Some minor post-show repairs waiting for me to see to.

Two exhibitor plaques in the space of two weeks! Now for a well-earned rest.

Philden safe back home once more after two model train shows in just two weeks!

So having just spent two full weekends only two weeks apart, running trains up and down my 9' foot long bookshelf layout, Sunday pack-up couldn't come quick enough. Despite it only taking just over half an hour to pack-up, load-up and be driving out of the car park, its the long drive back to the Sunshine Coast and the trek up and down the stairs from our beach-side apartment that is the most exhausting part of taking Philden on the road. Sure it's a great feeling of accomplishment when its all over, but after such a busy 2018, I've promised Denise that we will only take Philden to one exhibition next year. That now looks like being the Brisbane Model Train Show in May, which gives me 8 months to enjoy having my layout stay still long enough to complete it like I'd first envisioned.

Redlands marked the 7th exhibition that I have taken my layout to, and as you can see in the photos above, the exhibitor plaques have nicely accumulated along the front timber fascia of the layout. There's only room for 3 more plaques to be mounted on the front side, that only doing one show per year will take me through to 2021. By my own reasoning, that might just about do it for this layout.

What's wrong with this picture?

Another funny thing to occur from the Redlands Show, was that somewhere over the course of the weekend I screwed up my shopping list, and threw it in the bin. With my paid-for 442 class loco waiting only on word of its arrival, I took another look at what I had written down on my list, and decided that the pair of 20' foot side door containers I'd bought before the doors opened on Saturday was enough. As far as adding anything new to run on Philden goes.... I'm done. It's time to start planning a new layout.

As for what? Look closely in the picture above and you can probably work out what doesn't belong. And for that I can blame the Redlands Model Railway Show. It will go down as the place where I screwed up one shopping list, and ultimately replaced it with a bigger one! But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

See also; Exhibition #6 Stafford 2018