Toy trains among birds

Last weekend was the Dutch scale zero gathering in Zutphen. Normally, I would have visited it, but this year it happened to be a 2-rail only gathering. The coarse scale tin-plate show was located a village further in Almen in the middle of a bird show. Here Blik & Speelgoed had laid quiet a substantial L-shaped layout with some interesting toy trains, well on 3-rails obviously.

This colourful layout had modern Merkur trains, Lehnhardt trams and some pre-war Spanish toy trains partially constructed from wood and metal named Manamo (see the picture above, in front of the Darstead engine shed). I had never saw those before and it was nice to touch and feel these rare toy trains for once.

 The silver Merkur Mikado was present as well.

Above you can see two engine sheds. To the left the Darstead engine shed and to the right the Merkur engine shed. The Darstead one is thinner, lighter and lithographed on both sides of the tin-plate. The Merkur one is substantially heavier, with nuts and bolts and much more affordable. So all the prejudices were confirmed again.

Here a really nice green Merkur tank engine and a few goods wagons. The birds were luckily in cages on the other side of the room, so I just focused on the more important and more pleasant aspects of life.