A trip out to Aberdeen Model Railway Club Exhibition 2014 and a few purchases...

I went along to the Aberdeen Model Railway Club exhibition yesterday afternoon. I didn't expect to buy anything, although there are usually a couple of good tool companies there that are always worth a look. Also due to a mix up, I had forgotten to put the memory card back in my camera, so no photos... To see some photos of the exhibition, check out my gaming pal Jeff's blog.

However, while wandering around, I found a couple of traders who had some interesting second-hand bargain items. Nothing amazing, but thing that just happened to fit in with plans I have brewing at the moment.

Firstly, I have been slowly putting together some winter terrain boards. I have the basic boards together, but haven't made any scenery to go on them yet. Top of my want list was a selection of trees. I had planned on looking around over the festive season to see if I could pick up some cheap snow covered trees (I probably will still see if I can get some bargains), however I managed to get these three bags of trees for £9.

All the trees have a decidedly coniferous look about them, the large bag on the left has around 10 to 15 trees in it (plus, at least one hedge) the two smaller bags on the right have 4 trees in each. I will need to add my own snow to most of them, but this is a great start...

Now moving on, the main project on my plans at the moment is to build up some scenery for some post apocalyptic games. I have a few ruins that will be suitable, but I want to get some vehicles and I would like to put together some industrial looking pieces as well.

These two bags will be perfect for adding some interest to the table.The bag on the left contains 3 OO scale pylons. Whoever had put them together had used a rubber solution glue, so basically they have just pulled apart. There is some slight damage, but I reckon I can get two whole pylons and one damaged one out of the set... Now obviously they are not full size for a 28mm game (they'll stand around 21cm high once fully assembled), but who really wants a metre high pylon dominating their gaming table... These will make great smaller local pylons, possibly connected to a local relay station...

The bag on the right contains all the telegraph poles (and the railway water column) as seen in the photo below. Once again they are 00 scale, but they will look fine on my gaming table. There is plenty of variety here, meaning I will be able to add odd ones to specific terrain pieces and also make up random strings of poles to go across the table. Even the water column will be of use in one of the planned industrial pieces...

All in all I got a real bargain, and in fact, the pylons were free as I managed to haggle down the price of three of the bags.