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Tuesday this week we visited my mate Dave’s place for our fortnightly get together. He had an
issue on his layout, where the throttles on his NCE Power-Pro system were not firing up.
I knew what that was. He had to take his command station apart and try
reseating his mother board. The first time, I felt the top board sink into the bottom board, but it
still did not solve the issue. So I did it again, I slightly lifted the top board and then pushed it home again and this time the
system came good after the next power on. Later we heard that Dave’s command station might have
had a fall from a 12-18 inch high shelf onto the baseboard below. I should publish my consultancy rates:-
- Me fixing your problem
$20
- Me fixing your problem
with you watching $50
- Me fixing your problem
with you helping $100
This weekend, I have spent most of the time sitting in front
of the TV watching the cricket. This afternoon I did that at a family get together in front of someone else's TV and having a few ales at a family get together. So not much was accomplished train wise this weekend, except that
I painted up about 8 teabag tarpaulins yesterday. These just need to be cut
up and rolled up into individual tarps. I also got around to a task that
has taken well over 10 years to do. I mounted some picture frames on one
of the A-frames in the shed ceiling. These included some nice A4 water colours of
NSW railways, and the first two of my NMRA achievement certificates. So
these were mounted yesterday. On Tuesday night, Arthur, our NMRA
Achievement Program representative for Div 1., handed out my first two awards at
our Tuesday Nighters meeting, as I did not get to the NMRA meeting the previous weekend as I had some family activities to attend to. Normally there are quite a few NMRA members
at our regular Tuesday night get together, but there were not many there on this Tuesday.
So this was a bit of a thrill. That just reminds me
I need to pull my finger out and complete the paperwork for the next three of
the awards that I wish to apply for over the Christmas period.
Early in the week, I think it was Monday afternoon, I went
down to the shed and completed the install of the small baseboard extension I was making to
the Clapham Yard baseboard to allow a small siding to be added. This
baseboard extension was screwed onto the existing baseboard, and allowed me to
install the new set of points towards the end of Siding 7 in Clapham Yard,
followed by the laying of the now two tracks at the end of Track 7. Each
of these two sidings is now capable of holding two narrow gauge wagons. I
bent up a paper clip into an omega loop and connected the set of points to an
old DPDT switch. I drilled a whole through the switch actuator itself,
and threaded the paper clip though the hole and through the hole in the point
throw bar. It works like a charm. I am thinking that I will not
power the trackage after the points. This will make shunting these
sidings after the points all that more interesting for an operator, as the loco
will not be able to drive through them. The operator will have to keep a
match wagon or two available to reach a wagon beyond the points. I may
not tell the operators of this requirement either. Hehehehe!
On Wednesday I went to Aurora Trains to pick up a can of some
spray paint. I also picked up 4 cans of cheap paint from supercheap as
they had their 4 cans for $10 special running. I was wanting to pick up
some Silver paint and also picked up three other coloured cans. Upon
returning home, I found out that I already had a can of silver, what I actually
needed was a can of Grey Primer. You guessed it, that colour was not one
of the three other cans I picked up. I had been delaying painting some 3D
printed water tanks for a couple of weeks, because I thought I did not have any
silver paint available, when I had it all along. What a dork!
On Thursday, I got around to doing the painting. I painted 6
water tanks that Greg had 3D printed for me a few weeks back. These tanks in various sizes look damn good. I then turned my attention to 42 x 44 gallon drums. I
painted 18 drums silver, 18 drums red and the last 6 drums which I did not fit lids to were
also painted silver.
I eventually started work on assembling some scratch built
QR FJS wagons. I had previously cut out the sides for 7 wagons. But
upon further investigation, I had made them all too high. Well it was
only in one direction that they were oversize I suppose. So I finally gained some
enthusiasm and went to the shed and fixed up the height
issue on all the sides for all 7 wagons. I made up the initial 7 boxes for the open wagon shapes and also made
the bases for all of them before I called it quits.
Later on in the afternoon, I rounded up three sets of 12mm
bogies and made some bolsters for all 7 wagons and glued them on the
wagons. I drilled holes for the bogie screws and added bogies to three
wagons. I might have to go looking for some cheap 12mm bogies. I
used rubber bands to temporarily attach KD coupler boxes and took them down to
the shed and tested the first wagon against my height gauge. All perfect.
Next task was to attach some KDs. I chose to use the KD #5 inside a box and added them to the wagons. On first look, they looked
awful. The KD boxes stand out like a set of protrusions on a dog. I now
went back to the that web thingy and checked out what MMR Arthur Hayes blog said and studied
how he adds KD to his QR wagons. Hmmm. Arthur uses scale couplers
and not no. 5’s. He also sort of attaches the couplers directly to the
wagon. So I took the KD boxes off the three wagons that I added KD boxes to
and then set about directly attaching the KDs via a screw and 3mm piece of tube
and a piece of styrene to keep the coupler from jumping off over the
screw. I must say that they look 10 times better. They are also coupled closer together. So you can teach an old dog new tricks! I attached bogies
to two more wagons and now I have 5 wagons ready to be detailed with frame
webbing from small pieces of styrene and then painted. I might get around
to adding this detail later this week. I must ask Arthur where he gets his 12mm
bogies from, as I will need a few to finish off the last couple of FJS wagons,
let along all the other scratch built ones I will do, following the plans that
Arthur gave me of the various variations to some standard QR open wagons. I
just need to remember where I put those wagon plans for safe keeping. Hopefully they will turn up.
Today I could not get motivated to add any of the
wagon detail. I did go to the shed and started drawing up a near enough
scale plan of the top deck, from Rocklea Siding, Clapham Yard, Loco Pilly and
Fisherman Islands. I have yet to draw in the Dutton Park set of points,
and any of the track further north towards Park Road Siding and South Brisbane Interstate
Yard. I did have a bit of a clean up in the shed today and threw out a
lot of paper. I did find the track plan that I did do for Clapham Yard,
Loco Pilly and around to Fisherman Islands and South Brisbane Interstate, but
there has been much rebuilding of the tracks in all of these locations, over the various amendments that I did, so I just
started again with a new plan. I will find some time to study the original plan to see
how much the final layout varied from the initial plans.
Unfortunately I’m back at work on Monday, but my
daughter is now home for about 3 months as she finished school on Friday. Her next task is to attend University next year. I had last week off work so I could attend all the scheduled activities,
breakfasts, suppers, other handover events at her school.
On Tuesday night we visited Arthur's place. He always has new
scratch built wagons to show off. It almost makes me depressed, when I
can’t get the motivation to re-cut up some styrene that was cut too large so I
can then put my own versions of some 12mm scratch built wagons together. he is a human production line when it comes to modelling. It was a great night, catching up with everyone and finding out what everyone is up to. We had Geoff showing off a static grass applicator that he picked up the weekend before. He was ecstatic about it. So I
might have to find a way of getting one myself. I did see in some local
catalogues that Office Works had 6 x 10L containers for $20. I could not
complain about that price. So on Sunday I went to my local office works
and picked up 2 lots of the 6 containers. The only issue was that the
second bundle was lacking lids. That did not matter.
This afternoon, I put a whole lot of scenicing material into a series of these new containers. So I have now thrown out some old stuff and have now got about 6 of my storage wooden trays back to put useful items in. I also started to install the new 12mm siding in Clapham Yard and have just added a small addition to the baseboard. I might complete that tomorrow as I'm on holidays this week.
Yesterday I was over at the Club and had to help a mate try
and get one of his locomotives running. People spend lots of time trying to use
JMRI – Decoder Pro, but if they don’t know how to use it, it is waste of
time. If you don’t know what to look for, you are wasting your
time. Technology won’t solve issues, if you can’t or don't know how to use it. This also
harks back to my mantra, you can not manage what you can not measure. So I
just took his loco to the NCE test track at the Club. I checked the loco number that he told me it was supposed to be. I made sure it was set up for the long address. I then checked CV19 to see if the loco was
in a consist. Well it was! That will stop it from running on any
system that the consist was not made on. I removed the loco from the consist, by writing 0 to CV19 and guess what – It ran. Don’t over complicate things.
There a few simple steps to check over a loco when it will not run.
I came home from work on the Friday afternoon, and I knew I
had some things I needed to complete. Do you think I could remember what
they were? Eventually I worked out I needed to paint up about 18 pallets
in a red colour for a mate ready for a Buy and Sell at the Club on Sunday. So that was a pretty quick task to
accomplish. A quick spray on one side, followed about 30 minutes later by a
quick spray on the other side. While I was in the spray painting mood, I decided
to take out the old Frosted Glass spray can, and I gave a few cattle wagons a spray
along the bottom the wagon. This was followed by a few more wagons as
well. A couple of QR Louvre wagons were similarly treated and a couple of open wagons as well.
On Saturday morning, there was the grand opening of Ground
Up Scenery over at Underwood. This business has acquired the stock of
Dave McPhee’s Modeller’s Warehouse. Anyway I ventured over there
yesterday morning and ran into Darren and his boss, and found out that Geoff
and his daughter had already visited, purchased and left, and that Barnacle Bob had also been there earlier than me, and had already left. Well I did spend much more than I had
intended, but there were some reasonable bargains.
When I got home, I decided to spray up another 7
tea bags in various colours so I can make another 14 tarpaulins. I then
broke out the Frosted Glass spray can again, and hit the 3 cattle wagons with a
second coat, and the hit another 3 cattle wagons, 3 sheep wagons and a few
louvre vans, with various coats out of the spray can. I also packed up
everything required for Sunday’s Buy and Sell at the Club. On Saturday
afternoon and evening, I went back to working on scratchbuilding 10 QR open
wagons. I didn't get far. I assembled an FJS kit and then when I was about to commence my production line to scratch build a pool of 12mm open wagons, I cut one piece of styrene and then packed it in.
Today I hit the road over to the Club. I got a good spot at the Buy and Sell and sold an absolute motza. I don't think I had sole this much ever. I moved some wagons, a signal and then lots of my scratch built items, namely - Stop signs, Give Way signs, tarpaulins, pallets, insinorators, drums, reo-sheets, industrial bins, a generator set, dunnies, clothes lines and bee hives. They don't call these events Buy and Sell, so I also needed to support some of the other sellers in their attempt at getting some funds back. I picked up a VR VLCX wagon and a 12mm left hand point.
When I finally got home, I packed everything away and paid off my debts from the previous day's Mastercard bill, and put even more money back (about a month's budget) into the rather negative Modelling Budget's balance. I have even banked next weeks modelling budget straight into the Modelling Budget's balance, but never fear I'm still truckloads from getting positive. The plan is that by the time mid February comes around, the balance might be back to zero. But of course that assumes that I do not buy anything that has not already been budgeted for.
I have one more week, before I'm on holidays and I have lots of tasks planned. This includes, finally getting time to work on the 12mm Timetable, build some 12mm open wagons, and do some work on detailing the area around Baker's Farm, build an overhead travelling crane and then maybe add a new 12mm siding with my new 12mm point I just purchased.
