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Wongaburra is an exhibition layout built to showcase what could be done in Australian outline N scale. It is the product of a group of individual Brisbane modellers who met through the fact that Rob Carpenter, the man behind Aust-N-Rail, was for a couple of years posted to the sub-tropical delights of this northern metropolis. The merry band of northern modellers at various stages has included Peter Boorman, Rob Carpenter, Rob Rae, Malcolm Jenkins, Bill Hurdle, Dave Childs, Andrew Crooke and Alan Shaw. The idea for the layout was hatched over numerous cups of coffee at Rob's place one sunny September afternoon in 1997 when he raised the idea of an exhibition layout built to Aus-Track modular standards. Meeting no resistance to the idea, numerous doodles soon evolved into a workable generic southern Australian trackplan providing an overall length of the station modules of ten feet, plus an additional four foot scenic module at the front, which when combined with the four foot length of the corner modules provided an overall length of 22 feet. The back part was made of storage sidings. Then the decision had to be faced: would we aim for the next Brisbane exhibition or not. Optimists that we were, the answer of course was yes! So, with the exhibition less than eight months away, work began. Numerous working bees got the module baseboards knocked up, and then they were allocated out to different members of the group to lay the track and do the scenery. Needless to say, the Brisbane exhibition came around frighteningly fast, and in fact the first time all the modules were assembled together was on the evening of the Friday before the exhibition, with the doors due to open not much more than 12 hours later. Talk about blind faith! But it all worked out, with trains running around the circuit by the time the patrons were flocking in through the doors. Some may have been bemused by the sight and smells of soldering irons still hard at work on that first Saturday, and of tracklaying going on in the storage area, but by and large we had succeeded, and enjoyed a very successful show. Since then, Wongaburra has been exhibited a number of time in Queensland and NSW and has drawn deservedly high praise. Needless to say, it is undergoing a process of continuous improvements. Most of the modules have found a permanent home at Pete's place, who has since built two reversing modules for either end of the station modules allowing continuous running without the need for the space hungry corner modules. However, this does of course mean that what was intended to be run as a double track main line is in reality a single track set-up. Pete has since constructed an additional module that will represent the border loop and has plans well in hand to add a further station scene based on the northern NSW town of Kyogle. Oh, and in case you were wondering. Wongaburra was the name suggested by Malcolm noting that at the time Rob was living in Wongaburra Street! Here then are some photos of Wongaburra, taken in mid 2001.