Toy Fair and Mini Trains

You monarchless countries may not be aware that this weekend, we all got a day off. The Queen of England doesn’t really have much to do with us, all the way over here with our sheep and hobbits. Most of the time, we forget she exists. But on Queen’s Birthday weekend most New Zealanders celebrate the old girl’s eleventy-fifth birthday by escaping the city, barbequing on the beach, despite the horrific weather, skiing, or getting pissed and watching the league.

CDH and I, are not most NZers, so we went to a toy fair.

It was actually a rather impressive toy / model fair – an events centre filled with triumphs of engineering like this:

WW II Dioramas

And this:

Amazing bonsai from the Auckland Chinese Bonsai Society

And this:

Mechano dragon. And it totally moved!

As well as some awesome personalities, like this man.

A delightful mechano modeller

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good photo of the amazing dollhouses. But one women had made a Halloween dollhouse with a skeleton and spider sharing a bath. Another had created a steampunk clockmaker’s workshop, not altogether dissimiliar to my “Clockmaker’s Wife” painting. CDH’s favorite was a dollhouse bakery, complete with cabinets of exquisitely sculpted donuts and mince pies.

After the fair we went to visit a train-friend of CDH’s, who told us he’d be running “mini-trains” on his property over the weekend. We weren’t sure what to expect, but it sure wasn’t this!

Mini steam trains!

Old train geeks helping each other out

These remarkable engines are scratch-built by their owners, and take some 1200 hours to complete. James’ train-friend had been working on one for 13 years, and reckoned it would take him another 13 to finish. Some we distal engines, powered by little two-stroke motors. But the stars were the steam engines: miniature replicas of their full-scale buddies, and able to pull three carriages of people around the garden trail.

around the corner ...

... wave to the people

At $2 a ride, I couldn’t just watch. So on we hopped, around the garden, waving at all the passing trains!

Little train!

We had to duck to fit through the tunnel.

Tunnel!

This clever fellow scratch-built this working tracktion engine, which he drove through the crowds trying to direct people towards the sausage sizzle (not that we need much direction when sausages are involved).

Traction Engine

so cute!

And, lastly, to make this post slightly relate to the topic of my blog, here’s what I wore:

• While lace blouse, Shanton
• Red Lolita dress, Gallery Serpentine
• Blue slip, Farmers
• Military-style jacket, Tripp NYC
• Spider thigh-high socks
• Jeffrey Campbell wedge boots
• Celtic cross necklace, a shop in my hometown (Waipukarau represent!) called Street Scene.

This gorgeous Lolita dress is made from a very soft velvet. Velvet can be difficult to wear as it can look a bit try-hard witchy-poo, especially if it’s crushed. And velvet behaves in strange ways. I have a black velvet 3/4 sleeve top with scraggly sleeves that literally rolls up as I wear it.

But this super-soft dress behaves exactly the way you ask it. When I brought it I didn’t realize quite how short it actually was, so I tend to only wear it over a slip, or as a pinafore over pants.

Apologies for another “here is what I did this weekend” post. I’ll be getting back to the real, meaty content next week.

Death, Lust and Puddling Crust.