On show (again)

Just a quick post to say that Gono will be on display at the opening of Lakeside Hobby at 12197 Freemont Lane in Zimmerman, MN this Saturday Dec 19th.

That's awesome.

A new local Hobby Shop for mid-Minnesota, I mean. I won't have to travel 30-50 miles in one direction to get layout building suppies. This one is so close I could almost fit it into a marathon training run...

The Century is reached

Well, there were times when I didn't think I'd make it. But with the judicious use of posts over the past week I have reached 100 posts on this blog and to celebrate. Here's a collection of recent photographs .

1. The petrol station
2. The bridges over the river
3. The lighthouse
4. An overall view of the layout
5. The "busy" corner with the lighthouse, petrol station and river mouth

Exhibition report update

This post at Talking T gauge is most enlightening.

Apparently this happened to one of my trains yesterday.

A wheel became separated.

I found this tiny magnetic ring on the model and I had no idea what it was at all. I looked closely at the model but couldn't see anything. So I just thought that it was something it had picked up. Apparently not it's a bit more serious than that. Now I have to go through all my train sets and find out which one has lost a wheel.

and the prize for the stupidest T scale question ever goes too...

The man at the Granite City train show who asked.

"Why do they use the letter T for the name?"

"T stands for three. For the three millimeter track gauge. The distance between the rails" I explained.

"But why the letter T?" He persisted. with a totally blank look on his face.

"Er because the word three begins with the letter T?" I tried.

Realisation dawned across his face.

I kid you not, this was a genuine conversation. My wife will back me up on this she was there too.

Exhibition report

Another show in the bag for T scale and it has to be said another success. I always have worries about the stock performing in the public gaze but once again they didn't let me down. I set one train running when the doors opened at 9am and it circulated the track at a nice pleasing speed for over 100 minutes before I thought it was time to clean the track and wheels. The set I replaced it with performed exactly the same. If not better as this was a brand new unit I'd just bought. I talked and talked about T scale all day and still have a sore throat the day after. I was even interviewed on a local radio station about the layout. I only had one real problem and that was at times I was having to pick pieces of ground foam scenic cover out from the gears of the driving bogie. Just the tiniest little bit of foam in there can play havoc with the running qualities.

Everyone was very interested and I hope some folks walked away thinking about a T scale model railroad for their very own Below is a picture of the layout at the show and some more pictures can be seen here at a friends flickr site

The Granite City train show is always great fun and a huge thanks to Ed Olson and crew for putting it on. I hope to be back there again in the not too distant future.

Touch wood...

Everything works OK.

I'm ready for the show tomorrow

Bite them fingernails...

It's extremely disconcerting when you've only got one train that works reliably...