Repositioning Wagons and Fixing a Few Small Issues

This week started with us gathering at Arthur’s place on Tuesday Night, for our first get together for the year.  It was a somewhat special night.  The following Thursday was Lefty’s 70^th Birthday and the Sunday (today) was Arthur’s 70^th Birthday.  How special was that?!  We even had a cake and sang Happy Birthday.  Happy birthday to our two septuagenarians.

On Saturday after lunch I went to the shed and started to re-run the timetable I ran with Darren and Shelton two weeks before.  Just as I was about to run the third train of the day, I realised that the train was in the wrong order.  So I had to go back to the timetable card at the end of the previous session and add some words to re-marshall the train so it is ready to leave in the following session.  Another update to the timetable cards was for the Southbound Steel train.  I have now identified this train as overlength heading south and I will also do so heading north.  It only occurs every second session, as there are different wagons added/removed and these put one of the south/northbound pairs over length for four of the loops.  These are Kyogle, The Risk and Border Loop as well as Fairy Hill Loop.  It still fits in all the other crossing loops by just an inch or two.  I think this will add to the operational mayhem that occurs on the layout at the event I call an Operations Session.  But at least the driver of the train will know he might have issues at those crossing loops.  That just means that he has to run by on those loops while the other trains stay in the other track.  Border Loop crossing Loop is an interesting one.  It had two run-offs at each end on the Loop and a train can run into one of these run-offs and set back into the other, thus allowing for an over length train to be put away.

I did have fun doing the various shunts yesterday and today.  Of the 16 movements, I ran 13 on Saturday before I pulled up stumps and took my daughter for a driving lesson.  The last few positioning moves were finished this morning before lunch.  After lunch I then started back over positioning the four trains in their timetable position as at about 2:30pm on the fast clock so it can be resumed at an as yet unknown date in the future.  This positioning meant that I have just one train on the layout in transit and quite a few left to complete the Operations Session.

I did read somewhere on Facebook, that someone had received their NSWGR Pay-Bus from Auscision Models.  Mine has not yet turned up, so I will be hanging out for this over the next week or two.

I was planning an Operations Session next weekend, but my daughter now has something on Saturday, I have the traditional Old Boys vs 1st XI at my son's school that I go an watch on the Sunday and I thought I might just vegetate on the Monday.  But who knows?  If I had 6 to 8 willing participants I might be persuaded into holding an Operations Session on the Monday.

Just to amuse PK, following his comment last week, I was doing some work on the layout on Friday Afternoon, and yes, I gave myself another boot from the track while I laying my sweaty arm across the layout.  I guess some never learn.

While doing the various train movements yesterday and today, I was also loading and unloading my steel trains.  Previously I made some tools to speed up the process.

This is the unloading tool I made from 0.100" styrene square strip.  This fits through the two layers of Auscision wire coils and allows them to be lifted off 4 coils at a time.

The loaded Steel Train is inside the steel siding at Rocklea Sidings.  Various sidings and wagons are visible.  The next track to the Steel siding, is a narrow gauge track for new wagon delivery.  Next is are two standard gauge track, the first is the new wagon track, it has a Sleeper wagon built by Comeng and two new coal wagons.  Next is the unloading track for the limestone wagons, but also has two open wagons in for repair at the end.  Next are two narrow gauge tracks, with a couple of WHO wagons, one with wire and the other with two cars for delivery.

This is how the Coil Steel Wire unloading tool is used.  It just slides into 2 slots and through the two levels of wire coils in those slots.  My version of the unloading tool does two slots at once.

Here we are unloading 8 coils (2 slots) at a time.  Five unloading movements is all it takes to unload the wires coils.

The 8 coils are then lifted off the wagons as it is unloaded.  These are normally then stored in my Steel train load container.

As I was running everything at the same time, I then moved those coils straight to the empty wire coil wagon in Grafton Yard and the coils were re-loaded into that wagon, 8 at a time.  Magic!

The steel train is then unloaded, and eventually goes back to Acacia Ridge Yard, to be added to the empty steel train in track 2 at Acacia Ridge Yard, heading "UP to Sydney", which happens to be down from the top level to the bottom level on my layout.

This photo shows the work I did a few weeks back in Cassino Yard.  Here the Disabled Wagons Siding has a few Trailer Rail wagons (scratch built) sitting in the siding.  I just remembered that I accidentally glued the point for the two sidings shut.  I will work on that next weekend.