Saturday Ramble

Probably two of the best shows of the year have been squeezed in in the last fortnight. ExpoEM was a treat with probably only one layout that I thought was below standard. Rye Town is always worth a look and scratches the Light Railway worm that wriggles in my head. Mr Lamacraft's Hemyock is just perfect and shows that you can't cram a GWR terminus into 6'... you have to do it justice; and so he has. Everything ran, everything looked logical and no silly freelancing to make it more operable. The highlight was Leighton  Buzzard. I'd missed this up until now, but isn't it lovely? The fact that everything is hand-made gives it instant charm. It is in the purest sense a model railway, not a model of a railway. I'm occasionally accused of being a bit of a Luddite and a dinosaur in being a little down on some of the commercial operations, but this is why. If we could all just stop pissing and moaning on forums and worrying about finicky detail and just build things from near enough the raw, no matter what the quality, the world would be a better place.
Railex was just as good. An early start to make sure we could sit in Morrisons for breakfast and stand in a queue. Maybe not quite the wow-factor of ExpoEM, but again setting a target to aim for in terms of sheer modelling quality and far too many things to spend money on for upcoming projects.
The resolution for the rest of the year is to spend more time just making things.