A Week of Leisure

I was on holidays this week and did spend quite a lot of time pottering around doing modelling activities.  Early in the week, I was scratch building some Fast Track transition tracks that allow the standard gauge and narrow gauge tracks to diverge in separate directions.  As the week progressed, as I built more of these items, they got better. 

On Wednesday I went over to Peter’s place and along with Arthur did some very basic scenery work on the Giligulgul layout.  I was weathering a few sleepers on a new module.  So that was a new trick that I learnt.  I just need to add some Isocol alcohol to the boss’s shopping list and I will be doing the same thing to my layout.  It was fun, it will take some time on my layout to cover all the visible track, but I think I will get stuck in doing this very soon.  While at Peter's I also got the task of building a fence for this new layout module.  So that afternoon when I came home, I built the required posts for the fence.  The fence will be a standard one using my 0.060” Styrene ‘I’ beam method.  Each posts has five holes drilled in it to take five strands of wire.

This shot shows two of the dual gauge transition tracks made from PK's borrowed Fast Track jig.  The top item also has a scratch built transition track on the left that takes the third rail from on the right hand side to the left hand side.

The various fence post elements ready for painting.  These are roughly spread out at the correct spacing we will be using on the layout when installed.

On Thursday and Friday most of the time on those days was taken up doing some gardening work under supervision of the boss.  With that work out of the way I could spray paint the fence that I had built and then that left yesterday free for an Operating Session on Anthony’s Border District layout.  Well we had the largest crew that Anthony has ever hosted with 7 visiting operators showing up.  It was a great day.  Everything ran well, except for one wagon on a train I was operating that just derailed when going through Nankiva crossing loop.  We backed the train up and ran it through again and it derailed again and again.  Every time it went through it derailed.  But by end for ending the wagon it ran through without problems.  It is great to see I am not the only person to have these sorts of issues.  The room was not too crowded, even with 8 people in the two aisles.  Rarely did we get more than 6 in any one aisle.  There is a bit of a write up over on Anthony's blog.  https://borderdistrict.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/august-2016-operating-session/

This afternoon I spent some time in the shed and boy doesn’t time fly when you are having fun.  At one stage I looked at the clock it was just before 4:00pm, and next time, it was nearly 6:00pm.  So I needed to come up for dinner.  I will also post another blog tomorrow with some photos of what other things I have been up to in the Shed.