Murray River Bridge and the Epping Rosehill Gardens exhibition 2018 post script.

I was impressed with the organization skills and overall presentation of the enlarged Epping Rosehill Gardens exhibition, Glen has been to this exhibition a number of times however this was my first time to any other exhibition in NSW apart from Liverpool.

Its nice to have carpet and airconditioning, outstanding to say the least.

Going to exhibitions as far as I am concerned is to inspire, then entertain.

Murray river Bridge managed to get consistent good feedback.  A lot the attendees liked the size of the bridge and it was a big statement.  Admittedly this layout is for exhibition only, so as long as it has a clear statement then its done its job.

Inspiration.

On Saturday there was one very young lad that would not leave the layout, his father had to retrieve him a number of times, he was definitely inspired, so by day one we had done our job!

As it turned out, he was quite a knowledgeable, and we discussed consists of the ultra modern era.  Even though an exhibition can get hectic, I took the time to listen as he listed out his locomotives and rolling stock, what he does, whats his passion etc, for him it was clearly also a father son bonding experience, there is no doubt in my mind he left the exhibition inspired.

Blog followers:

Its great to get good feedback from followers, clearly seeing MRB in the 2 dimensions on the blog and on youtube is fine but in the third dimension it has a lot of impact.

So you don’t get the full impact of the size of the bridge until you see it in person.

Concept:

A lot of attendees commented that they liked the no station concept, and I agree with them, it frees you to accomplish bigger scenes.  In fact this is the main reason MRB was invited.

Using an actual location is great because everyone recognizes it, and MRB is a really great location as very little has changed, between 1990 and now even the tracks under the bridge are still there, but covered by asphalt.

So as far as I am concerned, MRB is a success.

What worked what needs more work.

The lighting made a huge difference to the appearance, and I got a steady stream of question from attendees where did I get them and how I constructed them.

I noticed when we first set them up in the train room, they pump out a lot of light and its very even, however I still need something right at the front to direct light to the side of the bridge.  I did experiment with a couple of fixes but they either proved too expensive, time consuming, or just looked silly.

Thus with the exhibition day becoming closer, I decided to give myself more “think” time to solve this issue.

Rolling stock transit boxes

They were perfect, some advantages were:

Nice and big therefore easier to transport.

Un packing and loading was a lot quicker.

Each shelf could be moved around and stacked anywhere without the fear of damage.

The shelves were light enough to be unloaded - loaded on the fiddle yard, therefore no stooping down etc all on the one level.

Each compartment is designed to fit a particular wagon type, it’s a bit of a puzzle at first but again overall time from start to finish was dramatically reduced.

John and Katie were given the task and they did a great job, Helen even took the opportunity to use it for transporting the removable bridge sections.

Where is it?

I took a different tact at this exhibition and I made sure the exhibition program stated where MRB was, unfortunately we still got questions about where exactly Murray River Bridge, D’oh!  Obviously I need to do better.

However when questioned the crew could rattle it off the location no worries.

I had hoped to complete a presentation (time got the better of me) and thus enable the attendees to thumb through it.  UK exhibitions use this to great effect, as some exhibitors model some extremely obscure locations, and it really helps to have a back story.

So for the next exhibition I will have a display of where it is and some historical shots etc to give the layout the proper back story.

Consisting:

I spent most of the Saturday morning consisting the locomotives for each train, not the end of the world, but I think for future exhibitions I will pre consist the locomotives and set them up in the boxes so its clear which locos go together and facing which direction, simply a time saving exercise.

I did a re consist of a train for Glen on Monday only to realize that I had used the same consist number as the GWA grain train, it took me awhile to re consist everything so again a lesson was to not stuff with consists just make a new one an swap out all the locos.

Wireless NCE.

John really saved my bacon, he built a daisy chain for the NCE controllers just incase there was another layout with the wireless system.

He was right on that count, Arakoola was having big issues, I tested it on Friday and realized there was another system in the hall and shut our system down.

We were able to continue operating using the daisy chain.  However I reckon John is right we need something set up for future exhibitions.  A more permanent solution is required.

Point control.

The finger control that currently works in the fiddle yard, its fine, but it is labour intensive.

I have purchased some cobolt surface mount motors, what I need to figure out is if I need a control panel.  I don’t like them, however it’s a group.

One detractor;

I guess its one of those things where no mater what, someone as to complain about something, they liked the concept and they liked what was done, however they had an issue with the side lighting, I explained to them my plan but it is what it is right now, however they kept going on about it, seemed quite animated for some reason.

I just put it down to a lack of appreciation of what had been accomplished.

The layout they were looking at is ten months old, its been built by one person, it is the size of most club layouts,  Its already been modified and includes three extra boards. All the locos and rollingstock has been modified and weathered.  Oh, and its been transported 800 odd Kilometres for you to see it!

With thanks:

John and Katie, Peter, Ally and Austin for being there when we needed it, thanks a lot.

Glen, glad you could be there, (it was the first time he has seen the layout in 3D), we managed to find is jaw on the floor somewhere, when he saw it.

Finally Helen, a true believer in the boxcar hobos J we rock!