Hello everyone. Gee wiz, it's been 11 years since the last comment was made about this amazing layout, but let me tell you it's still alive and just as good as the day it was built.
As the builder has mentioned in the thread above, it was sent to Dubai and finally found its way with the original owner to Cairns Australia. The owner then returned to the UK but decided to leave the layout with his daughter with the thought of eventually finding it a new home. His daughter and son-in-law tried to donate it to a few railway clubs down south with no luck because the cost of transportation would have been horrendous. It stayed in storage in its original shipping crate for several years until it was donated to the Cairns Model Railway Club in 2019. During that time, rodents and cockroaches went crazy. Several Metcalfe buildings were destroyed but the remainder of the layout survived. (A word of warning: Cockroaches and Silverfish Love Mr Metcalfe!)
Today, November 15th 2020 was a very special occasion. The CMRC had worked on the layout for a year during the Pandemic and attempted to restore it to its former glory. At today's meeting, we invited the original owner's daughter and son-in-law to view our effort thus far and present them with a Certificate of Appreciation. we were also able to talk face-to-face with the previous owner in the UK via What'sApp and also show him what we had done. It was 1.30am UK time, but he was stoked!
I'll publish a series of "Before and After" photos over the next few days, but here's a photo of the middle section where we replaced the original Platt Brothers factory with our version of the Hartford Mill which was demolished earlier this year.
thats a fantastic looking layout, spent many happy hours in old mills, how long did it take to make all those terraced houses, scalescenes by any chance???
