This is the view of about half of the exhibition from the Scott stall.
Jonathan agreed to exhibit some of his layouts at the 2009 Hamilton exhibition. This came about partly because two people commented at the Cambridge exhibition that they knew Jonathan by reputation through his layouts page, and one asked when they would get to see some of them. It was also partly a method to buy some "street cred" with the model railway fraternity, because of a project at UoW that was going to need volunteer DCC users for focus groups as part of some formative product design work with Refael. (Yes, the Scott family is already a member of a train club, but the model rail community is not to be confused with the model engineering community, the latter being responsible for the ride-on trains, the former for traditional "toy"-size train layouts... the "other" camp.)
This is the view of about half of the exhibition from the Scott stall.
With Edwin's help Jonathan manned the display of 5 layouts for 7 hours a day
for 3 days.
It was like working on the display at a trade show.
This kind of situation tests a layout.
The Sea Quarry operated nearly flawlessly.
The Playmobil/LGB train ran absolutely flawlessly for all three days.
The Zoo Table proved pretty reliable, though the locos had a tendency to
jam every half hour when left at a constant slow speed using the
negative-resistance speed controller prototype. This could be cured by
a punishing exposure to a PWM controller, though ones without feedback
did a lousy job of keeping the speed constant!
Squiffy-Waterton had lots of small bugs, a number of which we ironed out during the show.
This is not so surprising, as it is a new layout we only just finished
in time for the show.
SprocketBahn was unreliable, failing to complete every second run... it has gone back to the workshop
for more adjustment. DCC in N-scale is not at all immune to intermittent connection,
a fact that Refael and I will take on board.
Across from our stall was a magnificent layout called Herefield, made by Roy. It is a
minutely detailed study of Hereford in 1936.
Keith Rimmer also displayed a "microlayout", Six-Mile Bush. He gave us the
idea of having a "Where's Wally List" for a layout.
(Keith was one of the people who recognised me at the Cambridge exhibition.)
Here is the list for Squiffy-Waterton:
