Swap meet in Aalten

The toy trains swap meeting in Aalten has always been a relatively small gathering. A few years ago they moved from "de Pol" to "'t Noorden". The latter being a party center complete with garden railway for children. So the move makes sense to me. Although in my perspective a name like "the East" would qualify better. Nevertheless, they have excellent hamburgers, pancakes, serve cold beers and also host a biannual toy train swap meeting.

Train nuts party center in the North of Aalten.

This year there were only three stands with toy trains, which is an all time low, but nevertheless, there were still plenty of toy trains and toy train artifacts. In fact more than that I was planning to purchase anyway.

One could argue that there was a little bit too much of Fleischmann and Roco and no zero. But I wasn't looking for zero scale stuff anyway, and needed a few switches,

During my slow search and salvage trip through the aisles, I found two objects of local toy train folk art that will blend in perfectly with my layout. Somebodies attempt to solder Andreas crossing signs and somebodies statement in wood crafting, that resulted in a nicely build wooden tower. This tower could one day be used as advertisement tower, I just would have to make the poster "Lionel trains if you got the brains". Although this might need some more consideration.

Here is today's loot displayed; a few switches, crossing signs, circuit for flashing lights, a relay and wooden tower with no current use yet but with potential for the near future.