My first in like 10 years, between covid, dysphoria and poor timing, so it's probably been too long overdue, but I had a good time. Ten years break means a lot of layouts that are new to me to see, so I had an absolute ball seeing a bunch of interesting stuff.
I took a lot of photos and some videos, and if you'd like to just check them ALL out, you can find an album here.
Highlights for me personally -
The AMRA S Scale modeller's layout - East Guildford.
With me, they're playing to their target audience, TBH, but you are always 100% guaranteed one of the Sn3.5 layouts to be at the expo, and East Guildford is a really good one. Makes a change from the more outer rural settings they have displayed in past (Parkerville, Swan View, Greenmount, Bridgetown), for something a bit more built up. Scratch-built scenery, mostly scratch-built rolling stock - As always impressive achievements in authenticity.
Franklin
Honestly, I kind of respect a lot of these, US- based club layouts and their operational ethos. I don't think it's for me, but like... It's always cool to see it work in real time. I also like the really dense detail level on display here, and both ends of the scenic section have clever non-bridge, non-cutting, non-tunnel scenic breaks - smart.
Flanders Field
A field of modelling that seems to have really taken off since the centenary of the start of the conflict, is depicting the trench railways of WW1, and this one really hones in the bleakness of that world. Artillery craters everywhere, trenches with men popping their heads over, forests decapitated by sheer volume of explosive rain, it's just extremely well done.
Marklin Model Railway Group's autonomous layout in a square meter
Theres not much on the outside that suggest anything of interest with this, until you realise that the whole thing is slowly turning, and no-one's running it. One of the people operating it actually explained in pretty deep, but comprehendible detail, how this thing all came together. Starting with how it uses a motor from a BBQ Chicken rotisserie and a Lazy Susan as the base for the layout, how it has radial blocks and block detection. It's an impressive technical puzzle box that they've managed to look as easy as a Sunday lunch.