Things that go bump in the night!

Ok, so the TraiNgang is approaching the third and final weekend of the Baillie House train show - our first show of 2010.

This is a great show for us, not because it brings with it crowds of visitors, but because the visitors who do come are very special. For those of you not familiar with the area, Baillie House is a hospice, and there is nothing quite like having a row of wheel chair bound spectators lined up alongside the layout watching the trains run, or perhaps inching slowly around layout assisted by family or one of the many willing volunteers there.

Of all the annual shows we do, this is the most gratifying, and an opportunity to share our hobby and the entertainment it gives us with a part of our community which would otherwise never see it - and indeed it brings back many pleasant memories for our guests - of train journeys once made, of working on the railway, and sometimes even of the model trains they once had as children.

Still, this is a modular layout with a lot of joints in the track, and such, and there exists a certain potential for mishaps.

And indeed, mishaps we have seen aplenty so far! We're not talking about minor things like an old beater car becoming discombobulated along the way (how did that get off the rip track anyway?) like this...

...or the odd car pitched off a bridge into the creek,...

...but really serious stuff - like our resident Santa Fe fan running diesels sideways through the yard, and spreading freight cars left and right along the right o' way like so much confetti...

Spectacular stuff, but the pièce de résistance must surely go to our passenger train king who somehow succeeded in overturning a high speed passenger train leaving a couple of the cars balancing precariously upside down on the very edge of the gorge. Beat that - without using hands!

For more exciting images of this show, be sure to checkout our gallery page for the 2010 Baillie House show here!