The End of the Beginning.......

Just a quick update on what's happening with my layout.

For those who came in late you should know that my Vietnam Railways layout in N Scale "Ga Hong Ha" recently suffered the indignity of being moved from the garage to another room. This means that currently it is still in pieces.

It looks like I will have to rebuild the centre section to fit into the smaller space. This changes the layout into 3 sections, the 2 ends and a new modified centre section. The layout then becomes a 'dogbone' style layout.

At the moment I'm designing the new centre section, as well as seeing how much I can salvage from the old sections. When there is something to see I'll post some pikkies. It now seems that there is a lot more work to the move to another room than I had originally planned but the rain outside is keeping me indoors so I have some motivation to 'get cracking'.

In the meantime here are a couple more photos from the Vietnamese modeller who I have featured before (I still don't know his name). 

I'm jealous! These are nicely built models. They appear to be in N Scale so that's two of us modelling in N. Not sure whether the models are 1:160 or 1:150 but very nice anyway.

This sort of modelling encourages us all to 'have a go' I think.

Until next time.....

The Beginning of the End......?

These are the last photos of Ga Hong Ha in it's present form. In the next couple of days it will be taken apart and moved to it's new home (just up the hall and around the corner). How long it will be before it's in its new format is any ones guess, but it is a hobby, so the rebuild has to fit in with all the other tasks I have to perform, like work etc...

Above: Probably the most complete part of the layout. Still not totally happy with the colour of the river.

 Above: Looking down on the river area from a great height.

Above: Part of the cityscape, including the scratchbuilt level crossing gates.

Above: Another part of the layout starting to look almost 'finished' (if a layout ever is finished!) That's my scratchbuilt XT brakevan in the background and my pretend G covered van on the adjacent track.

Above: This is the other end with an attempt at rice paddies.

Above: This is the three track 'fiddle yard' at the back. Unfortunately the new version probably won't have enough space for an equivalent.

Above: The new station building in place with my card D19E hiding behind some container wagons.

Above: A long shot of most of the layout. What a messy garage!

Above: The bridge and the pagoda behind up on the hill. The bridge courtesy of Mr. Kato.

Above: Another view of the 'city' with two foreign locomotives 'on shed'. 

Above: The engine shed. If you look very carefully you will see the start of a military monument in the background.

That's all I've got for this time, but one more photo. It's the card station I downloaded. Not finished but looks good already I think.

Hopefully I'll have some photos of the move in progress next time.