Garden Whistle Mar 2012 - Sandman.org.nz

The Garden Whistle - March 2012pared styrene or strip wood, Peter created manyof his buildings from what ever he had on handor from salvaged material. While one needs tobe careful comparing skills to such a guru asPeter Jones, Brian certainly is in the sameschool of modelling in not being afraid to justget on and make it from whatever materials willdo the job. And doing it with an artistic eye.For example, how many of us would take onmaking a winery, yet alone all done with nonmodellingmaterial? The vats are stainless steelflues with silver painted plywood caps, pipingfrom galvanised nails and medical airline tubing,and the winery building from pine mouldings.There is an accompanying vineyard ofcourse. Perhaps the first corkage will be at nextyears visit.Other new features this year include a quarrycrushing plant and in the back corner in front ofa new stone retaining wall is Mystique station.On top of the retaining wall, for his next build,Brian will be placing a French inspired château,perfect foil to the winery and vineyard no doubt.As described last time, “the track layout is asort of pear shaped main loop with a branchlinedown into the main station and back out again”.There has been some fine-tuning of the areaaround the vineyard as plans continue for expansionof the railway in the not to distant future.Brian has been using Aristocraft Revolution receiversin his track power locos for some timenow and the system continues to show it’s reliabilityand flexibility. Throughout the runningday we ran numerous trains, either two of Brian’sat a time or a mix of Brian’s and guesttrains. I think most of the guest trains wherebattery powered so the need for the availablesystem of Train Engineer conventional trackpower didn’t arise. Live steam was run late inthe day dispelling the myth that track power andlive steam don’t mix.My closing line from the last visit is again fitting:- “All up it was a pretty usual sort ofWRGR running day, much better being therethan reading about it or looking at the pictures.However there are some more pictures to lookon the web at” http://www.gscalecentral.co.uk/f/tm.aspx?m=196307&high=Filling the wagons on the wine train.More details; the goods shed with men unloading wagons.Brian scratch built this Mid West Quarry building.And he also built the new “Mystique” stationPage 13