Local train swap meeting

Last weekend, the local train swap meeting was held in Zutphen. They even advertised for it in my street... as if I wouldn't know it yet. Anyway, there was some toddler musical of a fat red cat in the neighbouring theater so we had to walk 10 minutes to park the car. And even in the hall it was crowded.

There were several different children activities, loads of traders and a dozen or so layouts. Sufficient for me, for sure.

Besides Blik en Speelgoed which had sufficient goodies for me, there were only a few traders that offered scale zero. One bloke had a box full of old train cars and commanded ridiculous prices of 150 Euro for each car. I reckon that's why it is still the same box as last year. But for half zero and scale N there were plenty of deals to be made.

The guy of 'patience used to be dead normal' was pleasingly narrative in explaining how he used every day objects to scratch build trains with. He uses drinking straws as chimneys and cheap women's jewelry as front lights.

Anyway after we did our shopping, ate our fries and chatted with several new on-line model train stuff dealers that desperately tried to get acquainted, we thought that it was about time to visit the local operators open day. In their cactus oasis we looked at cheerful LGB trains puffing away through the barren landscape.

It was pleasant for us and particularly good for the cacti that it rained outside and that we were save and dry in a glass house with plenty of trains.

Linden

Last Friday, we were in the southern town of Heerlen and we had a spare hour. I knew there was a model train shop, so I searched the web and found it: Linden Modelspoorcentrum in the Jongmansweg. In this part of the country you can still see where the old mine pits were; as they usually are the large patches of rough land and scrubs between the old streets with cramped houses. The street is single lane now and runs up one of the many hills here. In the middle of the street between the residential houses is the model train shop.

We walked to the door and had to wait for the furry dog to move a bit so we could enter. The owner welcomed us and turned on the light. He had quiet a lot of Märklin, Fleischmann, Roco, Kibri and Pola. He explained that he is 73 of age and has in 2017 a continuous clearance sale with multiple objects for 50%, 30% and 30%. His goal is to sell the lot in the coming months and doing so will be able to say farewell to his working life as a model train shopkeeper. We collected multiple objects; replacement knives, hand planer, trees and lots of small model train objects. For my own layout, I bought a Beli modern double street light. The only scale 0 object that I spotted. Now I only have to find a nice place for it between the tracks. Well lets hope this gentleman will have a smooth clearance sale and a pleasant retirement.