Not the post I started drafting.

Once again I've found myself with a long time between posts. In fact, I started this post 4 weeks ago and I was going to write all about operations. I even had comments on the last one, which I don't normally get. I might need to start checking more often.

If I thought that first seven weeks had been a bit hectic with Covid and unrelated colds and rearranging the house for the final part of some renovations, the next five were worse - my parents decided to sell their house of 56 years and downsize into a two bedroom retirement place.

There was a lot of stuff to do and pack up.

There are a lot of sad moments in packing up a house. A lot of memories in all of the rooms, a lot of rediscovered treasures from an age gone by, some from people who are no longer with us.

Perhaps, not the saddest moment but sad none the less was watching Dad packing up his trains and taking the layout apart.

It was one of CJ Freezer's plans from "Book of Model Railway Track Plans", called Trent. It went up pretty quickly but like most layouts, it never got finished. It reached its purpose though. It provided Dad with a lot of fun (and sometimes trouble) and gave us something to talk about. He enjoyed running a Garratt with ore wagons around it. Can we ask a layout to do anymore than that?

He also has a smaller, more portable layout designed by Paul Lunn. It's about 900x1200mm and has two docksides linked by a hidden reversing siding. He saw it in a Railway Modeller but it's also in the Peco Setrack OO/HO Plan Book. He loved the idea and built it, along with the Metcalfe buildings the article suggested.

While the layout may not run again in its proper form, the buildings have been passed on to me for my layout. I can't use them all but there is a section yet to be filled in that perhaps, I could put some track to utilise the Metcalfe brewery. It does need some attention with windows which have fallen out.

As for layout for Dad, I'm not sure how much room he'll have, but we're thinking of some ideas.

In the meantime, we went to Asquith station to watch 3801 return to Sydney from Newcastle on Saturday. I headed to Mt Colah this morning to see it again. I'll leave you with the clip.

Until next time.