Visitors to this site

Thank you for bothing to let me know that you visited BLiP and Patricia. I note your baseline Patricia and one of my continuing hobbies is Model Engineering which started here in Otago with OO trains. Built an 8x4ft layout for my son and my wife said it had to be capable of being operated by him and his best freind. So I was dumped in from the start with double pole switches to assign sections to a pair of controllers and then reverse loops. But because my lawyer invited me up to his home to see his layout I got a thing about being as close to scale as possible and I found that the Darjelling Railway, 2ft gauge, has a 50ft radius curve, which is quite possible when working in OO9. So I am I guess a 'narrow gauge nut' from the '70's:-)

Otago Model Engineering of which I have been a member for thirty years plus now has three basic groups and to break the 'monotony' of one discipline members do other things so I have a workshop and owned for awhile a 5" gauge electric loco ... carefully modelled on a shunter from the East African Railways ... so far away no rivet counter could see what I had done wrong.

At the same time I am also 'into boats' with various successful and not so succesful radio controlled craft. Awhile back the Boat Group made a 'run' of 22 quarter-scale jet boats. Each participating member had a job to do 22 times. Not being very skilled I spoke up quickly and got the job of making the motor mountings, first making jigs to ensure each of the 8x22 bits were standard. Others has much more difficult jobs such as converting the air cooled weed-eater 30cc petrol motors from air to water cooled. Another job was casting in aluminium the actual jet drives. Subsequently some have added a working reversing shell like the prototypes have to reverse the boat. This drops down and sends the thrust of water forwards under the boat. The completed boat has driver and co-driver modelled and dressed appropriately

Currently I seem to be back into OO9 and N gauge. The advantage of being in a club with numerous layouts is that one doesn't have to find room to have one at home. There is a fixed OO/HO/S scale layout, The latest N layout which fits a 6x4ft trailer with it's storage frame to hold the three sections. We are having a 'Little Train Show' next weekend 29-30 August and other layouts have been modified from our OO and N portable layouts. We also have a drive yourself for the children of any age.

That N layout used to be a 26 module to international standards and toured around the country ... originally parts seen in Auckland but other times normally in Invercargil and Christchurch. Supposedly NZR in 1/120 scale [ NZ120 ] inspired by the late John Rappard but with his passing it is just an N layout.