The First of Many More

So yesterday and today were probably the first of many modelling days in the shed when I am not working from home or from work over the next short period.  Both my kids are now home, Uni is online and school will also be after the school holidays.  I still have to work, and we have arranged for our team to have someone at work via a roster each day over the next short period of time, unless we get told to work from home permanently.

On Saturday I was inspired after reading the latest AMRM and decided to start writing an article for the magazine.  I have a few in various stages of completion which I should move forward.  I just started another one.  I then went down to the shed and decided to upgrade some of my control panels.  I upgraded the Rocla Sleeper Siding Panel and the Rappville Loop Panel.  I used electrical tape colour coded for the Main line, Loop Line and Sidings.  I then added other detail, by annotating the tracks and also added the point motor DCC accessory address to the panel, in case someone needs to manually actuate the point.  So this can be done, by just entering the Accessory Address via the DCC Procab throttles.  So two new updated control panels are now live on the layout.  I have plans to gradually make my way around the shed and update a few more panels, replacing lines drawn on with pencil with lines of electrical tape representing the various tracks in the interlocking.

The Rocla Sleeper Siding Panel.  Mainline in on the outer curve and the siding is in the inner curve.  No expense was spared in creating my panels.  All the panels are attached to the baseboard with a hinge so I can easily lift them up and see what is happening with any wires underneath.

The Rappville Crossing Loop control panel.  This location also has a small disabled wagon siding which has a couple of 4 wheel wagons occupying it.

After I was happy with the first two panels, I decided to continue work on the steel loads I have been making.  I painted up another 60 or so pieces of dunnage for my loads and I think I will be way short of what I need.  Maybe I need another packet of styrene.  The bad news is that my closest hobby shop has advised its intention to shut up in the coming months.  That is such a sad outcome.  I understand that he has a bit of a sale on now.  So today I went down there for a visit and to stimulate the economy.  The sign outside says 40% off.  It also says 4 customers in the shop at any time.  I got down there and decided to pick up some styrene and spray cans of paint.  They had run out of 0.040” x 0.040” styrene strip.  So I got some 0.043” x 0.043” (4” x 4”) strip instead.  I also picked up a few more packets of strip to make my upcoming gantry crane project for the breakdown sidings at Cassino.  I also picked up some styrene siding sheet, but again some of the other ones that I really need to stock up on, were not in supply.  When there I was abused by two reprobates standing outside the shop.  On second look, it was Ken – a fantastic plastics modeller who we see most Friday Modelling nights that we attend at Simon’s shop and Geoff.  They were both calling out to hurry up and get out so they could come in.  You know what, I just slowed down a bit when I heard that.  I also told them to not lean on the nice white car outside the shop and to keep 1.5 metres from that.  That might have also created a bit more banter back and forth.

Yesterday I assembled two more loads of steel, and test fitted about 8 others into my narrowest wagon.  A few were just 1mm too wide,  The issue was that dunnage was not in the same plane.  So I cut the outliers a bit shorter, and gave them a bit of a paint touch up.  So progress is being made.  The loads do look pretty good if I do say so myself.  Today I glued up the last three loads.  This time I gave them a bit of a photo.  So these will eventually be for sale whenever I can next appear at a model railway exhibition or a buy and sell event.

The larger (in length) loads.

The slightly smaller loads in length.

These are the two special loads that I made for my mates Darren and Geoff.

The other thing that occurred during the week was that my stimulus package from Auscision Models turned up.  It only took a week after it was stationary in NSW for 5 days.  I initially thought that the package might have developed Coronavirus and had to be quarantined for 14 days as the days stationary started to mount up.  Yes it runs well, and sounds pretty good as well.  My only gripe is that the volume is too loud.  When I get 5 minutes I will google the volume CVs of the decoder and look at turning down the master volume CV.  I do not run JMRI at home for Decoder Pro.  I’m just as happy to manually update any CVs required that need changes on my NCE system using Program on the Main. 

I think this post is my 650^th post on the Blog.  Who knows I might even get to 700 by the end of the year.

Stay out of harms way with all these fruitloops out in the world ignoring Government directions on distancing and isolating.