Meetings and Running Day

This week I did not motivation to do any modelling.  Tuesday Night was at Glen’s place.  He had a couple of nice trains circulating around his layout while we viewed his layout.  Glen had a couple of locos that short out the layout when they run over some points.  This usually occurs when the tread of the wheel travels over the ‘V’ of a Peco insulated point and spans both metal rails at the same time where they meet the ‘V’.  This can be solved by putting some clear nail polish over this part of the ‘V’ to insulate the wheel from those two pieces of metal.  Over time this nail polish will wear off and will need to be replaced.  So that is easily fixed.

Saturday was our NMRA meeting and it was held down at the Logan Clubrooms.  They had their layout running and the projector set up with the chairs down the old open area, which was enclosed many years ago.  I gave a presentation on my two Grain wagons which were presented at the 2023 Australian Convention.  One of them got a merit award, but I have no idea which one.  Anyway it didn’t matter.  My presentation discussed what was done to the wagon and how to do the various enhancements to a kit to see if you can get to the merit level.  After that presentation, we had the AR region AGM, and that was over quite quickly.  Then we had Paul and Bob talk about part 2 of their recent OS trip.  This part dealt with the European segment.  That was followed by a fantastic BBQ lunch provided by the Logan guys and then Scott from Bowen, whom is building an O scale layout in a huge shed showed us some updates.  Scott has been having an article published on his progress in the AMRM bi-monthly magazine for the last about 18 months or so.  We also had a bit of presentation from Arthur for the various AP awards in our division.  The president and the Secretary both received their Official AP award.

For something completely different, today a stack of us ventured to the Border District for a running session.  There were 4 crew, a hostler, the station master, Train Control and an official photographer.  Anthony’s layout is going to be the topic for a presentation at this year’s Modelling the Railways of SA Convention.  The layout is looking a million dollars following the work done on it over the previous couple of weekends.

With ANZAC day this week, I’ve taken the opportunity to get a long weekend.  I hope to complete a few jobs, like building some clotheslines, work on a Powerpoint for May meeting and do some more scenery work on the area near my Rocla Siding.  I will also circle back build a door for my Kyogle Signal box.  Then I can work on the various internal items for the signal box, and install some lights there and in the station building.  I can then fit then into the layout. 

The week after is the Brisbane and Sydney Model Railway Exhibitions.  I'm heading to Sydney for the first time.

Signal Box Progress and Ops Session

This week started with some correspondence about my signal box from an old modelling mate.  He sent me various photos of his model.  Phil Flynn had built the model from Hawksmoor models and provided me with various measurements from his kit.  I think I have done a reasonable effort given how close my guestimates were compared to Phil’s model.  I continued working on my Kyogle Signal box.  Later in the week, I realised that I needed to build the concrete block base for the fibro signal box to sit on.  I was hoping I did not need to do that.  But again I had plenty of styrene to use to build my model.  It did come up quite good.  I have so far painted the roof of the signal box Silver to represent the galvanised iron.  I have not yet painted the guttering the maroon colour that I need to paint the model in to fit into the era I am modelling. 

On Friday I launched into my plastering task.  I left this to last.  I did most of it on Friday, but I had a bit left to do, which I completed this afternoon.  This afternoon I also gave all the stark white plaster a raw umber colour.  After this I usually work in small sections and apply various dirts, sands and dusts to the baseboard covered with a watered down white glue mixture.  After a few coats of this, I then go back to add various green and brown grasses to bring the baseboard up to a full covering and make it complete.  The next step will be possibly some fencing and a few trees for the trains to run through.  I will leave this task until my next lot of long Service Leave in early May after I attend the Rosehill Model Railway Exhibition in Sydney.

On Saturday I went to Darren’s place along with Brendan and met up with some of mountain men from Toowoomba.  This was Bill, Smithy and Steve.  Smithy kept saying something like  ‘I’m a mountain man and I like mountain (sic) wom….’.  Anyway, we had a great afternoon.  Thanks Darren.  We had a coffee, and late morning tea.  Then lunch was served, and then the brain had a workout running two train runs on Darren’s layout.  Darren has two man crews and I was teamed up with Steve, an ex-Driver.  The first train was an empty wheatie.  We started at the terminus station - Wattle Flat – after which the layout was named and swapped over three empty wheat wagons at the silo for 3 full ones.  So the full ones were put on the front of the train.  We made our way past the first crossing loop and passed Brendan coming the other way, a few toots on the train horn and then we made it to the next crossing station.  But if you are not taking the branch here, it is a bit of a pain to actually cross someone.  Here we had to again swap three more empties for three fulls in the grain siding.  This location has a facing siding for the grain silo, so we ran around the three empties using the load dock and did the same for the fulls we pulled out of the silo siding, before adding these onto the waiting train on the mainline.  We were soon underway and made our way to the mainline station.  A crew was busy shunting the yard here when we made the yard limits.  We were able to take the main line and again swap three empties for three full grain wagons in the grain siding.  That left us with a train of 9 full wheat wagons destined for export via the port.  We then had to do a swap in the yard.  This entailed leaving our fulls where the next empty grain train was already sitting in the yard, put our guards van onto the rear of the waiting empty train, and take those empties out along the branch back to Wattle Flat for tomorrow’s pickup train.  However, before we left we had to do a loco swap from a 44 class to a 45 class loco.  I might have grabbed a cold drink as I ran passenger with Driver Steve back to Wattle Flat.  On the outbound trip we again passed Brendan at the crossing loop on the branch.  Brendan’s mate was someone new to me – called Mr Nobody.  This time, Brendan was bringing in his pickup freight from the branch.  He had already set up the points for us to perform the cross when we got there.  When we got to the terminus, we had to set a few handbrakes and move the guard’s van onto the rear of the train and send the loco to the loco for servicing and go to barracks.  First thing tomorrow another crew will swap out the first three empty wagons for three now full grain wagons at the silo and the whole process starts again.

This morning I went to a Buy and Sell that I saw advertised at Birkdale.  I had planned on being there at 9:00am, but the son had a call up for an early shift for his checkout chick job, so the wife wanted to make sure he left before we did.  She also wanted to go to some markets at Thornlands, so about 20 minutes out of my way and I got to the Buy and Sell late.  It was pretty well attended.  There were lots of people that I knew there selling stuff.  There was some interesting stuff.  Someone was selling 41 packets of evergreen styrene.  Well I bought that for a good price.  I missed seeing PK at the Buy and Sell, but had a few good chats with those in attendance.

Unfortunately I am back at work tomorrow, but I only have 2 and a half weeks of work, before my next 4 week stink of long service comes around.  This time, as I said earlier in this blog, I’m off to Sydney for the Rosehill Exhibition and then I’m back into the shed and doing scenery and more work on the Kyogle station precinct.  I think I can get used to this permanent holiday stuff.

Kyogle Station Building Progress

Well what has happened this week?  I painted my Kyogle Station building and it does look fairly reasonable.  Next I decided to repair my Kyogle platform, which has been sitting in position at Kyogle on the layout for quite a few years but the under platform structure has broken in about 6 pieces.  So I had to try and repair it.  I cut out a strip of styrene to be used as a sub-structure and bit by bit I glued the under-platform structure to the sub-structure.  As I went along, I straightened the posts, and fixed any broken framing bits.  Eventually everything was reassembled and again it looked fairly reasonable.  The next task was to paint it.  I used a grey and then weathered it with browns and reds to look a bit like rust.

The next phase was to create a platform top.  This was concrete and is a rather dark colour as well.  So I cut a piece of 2mm styrene to an approximate size and gave it a spray paint with some grey paint as well.  This was fitted to the platform base and the next step was to try and add some legs to my station building so it ended up at the correct height for the platform.  I used some 2mm square (0.080” x 0.080”) styrene and cut a number of these to length and then glued them to the base of the station building.  There were a few that dried to a shonky angle, so I removed them and re-glued them with some better support structure.    

I have also cleaned up under the Old Cassino baseboard for the installation of my railway Digests in storage boxes.  This involved cutting up some old baseboards from Cassino Mk 1 from inside the house.  Some old pine framing was unscrewed and added to my spare pile and some old foam and plaster was just thrown in the bin.  The old 3 ply baseboards were kept. 

Yesterday I went to The Border District for a working session.  I was working with Jeff and we were ballasting Nankiva.  We had a ball.  I used my ballasting method, with is filling up an old honey bottle with ballast and then adjusting the screw top to regulate the flow of ballast out onto the track.  We then go back and use a soft brush to spread out the poured ballast.  This method works pretty well.  I even had Jeff and our host Anthony using the method by the end of the day.  Anthony was working in a different area.

Today I have been having a bit of a tidy up inside the office and going through some old magazines and books looking for plans for a NSW signal box.  In my case the one from Kyogle.  That is my next building project.  I understand that Hawksmoor Models produced a kit that was very similar if not the exact copy of the Kyogle Signal box.  I was wondering if I could get a NSWGR plan for the signal box from somewhere as I want to find out the actual dimensions of this standard NSW building.  Being a big boy and on holidays, there is nothing better than to scratch build my own model if no kits are available.  I have a few photos, but it is a bit of a long trip to travel to Kyogle to measure up the signal box.  But you never know!

Wifi in the Shed

It has finally happened.  After being on the receiving end of years of berating from my mates, and after a wet week of showers, and the ground being softened, on Friday I dug a trench about 30cm deep from the house to the shed.  I laid some conduit in the ground and threaded some Cat 5 cable through it.  I was thinking that my apprentice was going to help me but he slept in.  I then added some conduit to the house to snake the cable along the side, under the sliding door to the old train room in the house and then round the wall and up to where the router in the family room is positioned on the other side of the wall.  I waited for my apprentice to reappear to assist with back filling of the trench but that never occurred either.   Saturday I waiting until around lunch time and then I drilled through the brick wall and installed a fascia panel inside the house with a RJ45 socket on it. I then plugged a patch lead from that socket to the router.  Half way there!  I then had to drill a hole into the shed wall through the wall and feed the other end of the Cat-5 cable through the shed wall and into a second fascia panel with an RJ45 socket in it.  Another patch lead from the socket to my Wifi extender which I positioned up high inside the shed.  I then had to run a power cable to my Wifi extender and turn it on.  Previously my Wifi did not really reach very well out to my faraday cage shed.  I then brought my mobile phone down to the shed and closed the shed up, and fired the phone Wifi up to see if I had better service than before.  A full 5 bars was achieved inside the shed.  Success!

So earlier this week I purchased another 7 plastic tubs.  The plan is to initially load one up with all my Australian Railway History magazines.  The rest will hold my AMRMs.  I did have a bit of a clean out inside the shed, so I can locate my plastic tubs down there.

Earlier this morning, I started painting my Kyogle Station building.  The plan is to spend some time this coming week, completing this building and the station platform, which has been in a semi-built state for more than 10 years.

Lots of Presentations

So it appears I’m now locked in to do 3 presentations at the upcoming Div 1 clinic weekend in May.  The first presentation is pretty easy as it is basically a re-hash of another clinic that PK and myself did at the NMRA Convention in October last year in Sydney on Weathering.  However the other two presentations are quite new.  The second presentation is a flow on from the one we did in Sydney, and it should not take that long to put together.  The last clinic is about Modelling Tarpaulins.  I basically wrote that on Friday afternoon and yesterday.  I have three more slides to update, a few photos to take and include in the presentation, and I really need some proper drawings of some sketches I put together – to improve the professionalism of the presentation.  I might have to call on a mate to assist with that task – Hi Glen!  When you did dob me in.

I also have had a bit of an email chat with Warren from Gwydir Valley Models about his convention in Armidale in November this year.  This convention is not to be missed.  Most in our modelling group have all had our accommodation booked for the last couple of weeks.  So basically this presentation has also been started and is the least complete of all of them.  I had promised Warren that it would be complete in about 3 months.  I have some Long Service Leave at the moment so I will spend quite some time completing my various Powerpoint presentations.  While on the topic of presentations, this morning at 9:00am I gave another presentation which I also gave in Sydney last October at the NMRA Australasian Convention, but this time it was on NMRA-X to a potential worldwide audience.  I think today’s presentation went over reasonably well.

On Friday evening I also caught up with Darren and Geoff, over at Brendan’s place for a great dinner prepared by Brendan and his better half, before we sat down for a modelling night.  I let time get away from me on Friday and I was not looking at the watch and ended up getting there slightly late.  I think Brendan had an ulterior motive with our attendance. He requested assistance in installing his adhesive backed professionally printed backboards and boy to they look smicko!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It took us some time to plan the installations but we did it.  People will go off when they see these when this layout finally gets shown at a Model Railway Exhibition in the future.  The track work is very nice.  The background sounds are unbelievable.  This will be a hit when it debuts.

During the week we also had our Tuesday Nighter’s meeting down at Geoff’s place.  We had a good turn up of about 9 people.  We had lots of very good discussions.  I have also been spending time with planning a potential ‘what if’ exhibition layout for the future.  I have started to do scale baseboards on paper with the various track layout plans copied to the paper plans.  At its true scale (as best as we can estimate from various documents and plans that we have available), the layout will be probably over 6m long and may work out too big.  But once we have it fully planned out, we can then see where we can employ modeller’s license to shorten some of the sidings and loops, to see what we can realistically fit in and operate.  I think this process will take quite a few more weeks to plan.

On Friday Morning I picked up some plastic storage boxes from Big-W and I have now moved all my Railway Digests (they go back to 1974) into these plastic storage boxes.  I think I will purchase another 7 of these plastic storage boxes, and also move all my AMRMs to the same type of boxes.  These will all end up in the layout shed under the baseboards.

Today I have been continuing on with my modelling efforts the same as Friday evening at Brendan’s place.  A bit more work was done on the Kyogle Station building.  The plan this coming week is to fit the roof frame and then the actual roof.  Then will the effort to build a model underframe to sit on the layout.  Next task after that is to fit the various downpipes, water pipes, electrical conduits and other associated details on the model.  Further updates next week.

Planning and Preparation

Well I’ve been on holidays since Friday and I have already forgotten what day of the week it is.  I had a Doctor’s appointment last Friday, Dermatologist appointment tomorrow, and Dentist appointment later this week.  These events have started to keep me aware of what happens when and what day it is.  I was online last night with the British NMRA Crew for their Brew and Natter get together.  About 4 Aussies turned up.  Sometimes we get more attending.  There was an Aussie theme to that meeting, with some of the British guys talking about Australian Postcards and then the topic turned to some articles by Arthur Hayes in the current AMRM issue.  However before that meeting, well a couple of hours before I was talking to Brad and Speed.  I was talked into doing an NMRA X presentation next weekend.  This will occur while most of the Queensland group will be attending the Bundaberg Model Train Show.  So I might have to tune up my presentation this week before next weekend.  I spent some time today doing just that.  But I think there is more to do.

Today I started putting pen to paper detailing some facts about a potential location that could be built into the basis for an exhibition layout in the future.  I then remembered that there were two articles about this location a couple of years before covid.  So I will re-read these articles over the next week.  I will also discuss the pros and cons with the Tuesday Nighters this week.  I also have some track diagrams that I have found and I think there would be some interest in progressing this theme.  Maybe we won’t talk about too much detail in case we do progress it, that way when it debuts in a couple of years, it might knock some people’s socks off.  I think there could be some interest from within the Tuesday Nighters community in progressing such a project.  I will put together a summary document so we can discuss this topic.

I did not get to do any actual modelling this week.  That is next week’s job, in between other jobs I need to do at home, although I think it will be wet most of next week.

Quiet Week

This week we visited a new Tuesday Nighter member’s place.  We parked in a park and ride and walked about 80m to his place as the parking was quite scarce outside his place as the streets were very narrow and one side of the roads had yellow markings on them, to prohibit parking.  We had a very nice get together watching his US prototype trains run smoothly on the layout.  Afterwards we sat down and had a few cakes and tea and coffee and solved all the world's problems as we usually do.

Saturday I went to the Club for our monthly meeting.  I also got to see a very nice tri-bo 12mm QR electric running around the layout.  Although the centre bogie does not have wheels fitted.  You would not know this fact unless you got up close.  I do not know if fitting a centre bogie is a  future enhancement or the model is designed to only have a fake bogie there.  The motor for the bogies fits inside the bogies themselves and it is very small.  It was pulling a very suitable load around the Club layout. 

While I have my Kyogle station building sitting on the kitchen table, I have not looked at it all week.  Maybe the week after next when I am on holidays.  Although while I have some plans for my holidays – like pulling out all the plants and weeds down one side of the house, and potentially digging a hole in the back yard for some conduit, I know the boss also has some jobs teed up for me as well.