i went to blairs mums at 9.30 saturday morning to help him pack up the sodor layout. it comes apart in 3 sections. he didnt have the right drill bit to remove the screws, so had to do it by hand. we finally got it loaded right before the rain and went down to sanson to collect his christmas thomas layout, which folds open and closed. it was raining enough to be annoying by the time we got there, so we had to wrap the layout in a tarpaulin to try and keep it dry.
blair had booked a cabin for us to stay in, so we stopped there first to unload our bedding and less essentials. we didnt get to silver stream til about 5 or 6pm. they had already started pulling locos and wagons out, so blair was able to unload the trailer and truck and we were able to get both layouts put together and ready for display, which saved us heaps of time the next day. we finally dropped into our beds at 11, after stopping at mcdonalds for tea.
blairs alarm went at 7 the next morning, and we were onsite by 8, putting the engines and scenery on, as well as hooking up the power and making adjustments. silver stream opened at 10, and we had a steady stream of visitors of all ages from then until we were packing up at 4. there were no major issues, which is good.
we finished packing up and loading by 6, and i walked in the door by 10pm, uploading photos to email to blair before finally crawling into bed.
i went back to his mums today to help him unload and get the sodor layout set up again. that took another 4 hours or so.
it was good to be back down there again. been a long time. photos of the day are here