Out Shopping

This week my son received his first desk on which to do his homework. It is certainly better than doing it lying on the floor as he has done in previous years. He put it together with a little help from Dad. Not bad for $19.00.   He also received a small stool to go with the desk. I tried the stool out and liked it so much I went and purchased three for the shed. I just wanted something to put under the layout and when someone needed to sit down and do some shunting at a location, they would bring it out from under the layout and sit on it. Mind you, it is not made for behemoths. But it looks like it will easily support my weight. As long as it is treated with kindness it should last for many a year. Not all my running crew weigh as much as I do. The seats cost $5.99 at Crazy Clarks.

 

One of the stools located next to Grafton yard.

I also popped into another Crazy Clarks store and found that they had a carton full of the one-step step ladders that I wanted a couple of weeks ago, but none of the shops that I visited had one. So I purchased 3 of them. I brought them home and set them up in the shed. They are about 3 inches higher than my home made steps, and the area on the top step is quite small. They are also slightly flexing when you stand on the top step. But I think they will work to allow the crew to get access to the top deck at South Brisbane Interstate and Park Road Sidings.

One of the new step ladders.

 

Last night I saw an update from Auscision Models about their 73 class Locos. So it is likely that my two will be in my hot little hands by the end of February. They do look very nice. I was concerned by what was not there in their updated description on the 73 Class page. There was no mention of DCC Ready, or DCC plug type. Someone must have been thinking the same as me and I see on their Facebook page, that someone asked the question if they were DCC Ready and Auscision replied that they have removed the DCC Plug from the model. They did WHAT! How do you remove a DCC Plug.  So these excellent looking locos are for the toy train types running DC, not the modellers running DCC.  To me that is absolute stupidity. If you couldn’t fit it in, remove the detail from the cab. Remove the working toilet or what ever else that is beyond reasonableness has been added to these in the first place. To me this is almost a Breach of Contract. Who sells locos in this day and age without a plug in it? I was thinking about cancelling my order and contemplating ripping them a new one if they decided to impose their standard fee for changing the order. Given that they have potentially made this loco useless now. The first thing I will do when I get mine, it pull it part, gut it, by most likely removing the whole main circuit board and see if there is room for a hard wired decoder.

Speaking of decoders, I spent some time today installing a decoder into a Bachmann Diesel for a fellow club member.  I then turned me attention to two of his steam locos.  Did I ever mention on this blog that I hate Pommy steam locos?  Again these two steam locos were Bachmann.  My God, when will this company learn to not electrically connect the drive wheels direct to the motor .  There is absolutely no space in either loco to install a decoder, without potentially gutting some of the weight, or the cab itself.

Today I took the time to add a few power jumpers to the track around where I installed the points last week.  I'm still one set of points short for getting everything working.  I think I might shout myself a run on the layout next Saturday to celebrate Australia Day.

A view of Acacia Ridge Yard.  The first track is narrow gauge, and the next one is track one in the yard.  You can see the crossover from track 1 to track 2.  Then you can see the cross over from track 3 to track 2 is only half in.  On the far outside of the narrow gauge track (centre right) is my KD height test track and the KD magnetic coupler test track in the middle foreground.

 

On the deck below we can see the Rocla Sleeper Train in that siding with my scratch built WSC wagons on the right, followed by the new Southern Rail model's NDHFs and one of my scratch built versions with their spoil bins.