I don't want to type pages of text here, but 2 months back my significant other approached me with a proposition :
Why don't we move to a bigger house?
I did the maths, found it came up as relatively expensive. So I made a condition: That I get an exclusive train room.
This weekend, I thought that I had better take photos to document how it's coming along.
I'm jealous! Just waiting until we can move to a bigger and more permanent place, hopefully in the next 5 years, and then I'll have my N-gauge railway room! In the mean time all I can do is gradually collect bits and pieces which will eventually feature on the layout.
John, this was a pleasant surprise to me.
I thought I would have to wait another 5 years to have enough to buy a larger place, but my girlfriend has an import business, and rented warehousing. She figured to rent a large place with a big double garage cuts out the travelling for her, with convenience of getting to her stock any time, and it made sense to rent a place for now. When I agreed to this, she found an ideal place within 3 days.
The downside is that I know I will one day have to move the layout, so I'm making rail joins at the board joins, as well as planning on all wiring going into junctions underneath at the same board joins. Hopefully not before 5 years is up.
I've been doing the same, in terms of collecting and keeping, for about 2 years now. Anything I see that has a South African looking flavour to it, I grab. I have a really well-made farm windmill with a corrugated dam next to it ( with rust ). I met the guy who handmakes these at the Toy Collector's fair ( he is Model Scenic Products ), and I was blown away by how real his SAR semaphore signals were, but in HO only. When I see him again, I'm going to try and commission N Scale semaphores from him. It looks like Adrian Hill may be marketing his stuff.
Anyway, John, I hope that you will soon be in a position to do your carpentery and start pencilling rail placement in......
If you manage to commission any N-gauge signals, let me know - I'd be interested in getting some! I want to build a layout with a pan-African ambience to it, a mixture of South African, Kenyan and Sudanese, so I'm just keeping a look out for anything that has that "feel", even though of course none of it is actually authentically African. I just received a few Land Rovers which I ordered from www.ehattons.com - you can't have an African railway without some Land Rovers!
Absolutely true, Steve. Nobody would dream of using a Land Rover in South Sudan these days (except perhaps the British Ambassador, who has no choice). They're not tough enough for extended use in extreme conditions. Everybody uses the Toyota Land Cruiser. My own car in Nairobi is also a Land Cruiser. But my railway will be set two or three decades ago when Landies still ruled the roost, and the model ones I have just bought are Series I or II, not the rubbishy new Defenders, Discoveries, Freelanders and whatever other Chelsea Tractors they are now producing.
