Sunday, October 25, 2020

Life Long Friends

I think that many of the people in this hobby of ours are the most friendly people you will ever meet.  This week we had a real get together of the Tuesday Nighters.  Twelve (12) of us turned up at Arthur’s and saw firsthand the latest modelling projects he has been working on.  Just brilliant.  We also had a couple of wives there having their very own meeting upstairs.  I wish I could spend as much time as Arthur does on creating new pieces of rollingstock.  We had a great time talking to everyone ‘in person’ instead of online for a change.

PK picked up a packet of styrene for me on Wednesday and dropped it into me on Thursday at work.    On Friday after work this week, I went over to Aurora Trains.  While there I saw Anatol and Paul from the NMRA.  The reason for the visit to George’s shop was to purchased two packets of SDS 25’ refrigerated containers and some corrugated card.  Lucky I went there when I did, as Peter and his lovely wife from our Tuesday Nighter’s group came about 30 minutes after me and purchased the last two packets of the same containers.  We should stop talking about things at Tuesday Nighter’s as I’m sure it inspires those attending our get-togethers and drives the local hobby shop economy.  I was also planning on going to the Modeller’s Warehouse scenery shop on Friday afternoon, but when I got there he had already shut up and gone home early.  I can’t really blame him, as that is what I do every Friday myself.  There is always next week.  One of my future plans is to scratch build maybe 4 QR container wagons in 12mm in the coming months for these SDS containers to sit on.

So when I got my styrene from PK, that night I finished off the last 26 styrene pallet build.  I needed to add just a couple lengths of 0.030” x 0.040” before I added the outer pieces of styrene 0.010” x 0.060” and then all the other pieces of 0.010” x 0.040”.   On Friday afternoon, I cut off 10 pallets from this string of 26 and I painted up 20 in Chep blue, 12 in light brown, 12 in mid brown and 12 in mission brown.  Later that night I cut up some corrugated card to be used as the walls and roof of three pine block 10’ x 10’ fettler sheds.  I painted the corrugated card this afternoon and while watching the Bronco’s women win the NRLW, I was adding the corrugated card to the blocks to complete the sheds.

Yesterday, I went with about 35 other guys to Darren’s place.  We were attending the monthly NMRA Div 1 meeting.  At the meeting, we had a car load of people attend from the Club in Warwick which included the proprietor of AR Kits, and two guys from Lismore, in the neighbouring NMRA Division.  One was my mate Brad from the NMRA-X meetings and he is always online talking to us during our Tuesday Nighter’s online meetings and QR Wednesdays with the Wuiskes meetings.  Darren had Geoff, Brendan and myself there to help run his layout while the NMRA members were looking over the layout.  That allowed Darren to talk to all his guests.  Because our little modelling group had run Darren’s layout so many times and know how it works and what everything was and how the items have been built we could answer any questions that members needed to ask.  I understand that Brad live-streamed a few minutes out to the Internet of the layout tour.  We are currently limited to 40 in attendances at the moment in Queensland, so we were just under that limit.  We had a couple of great presentations by Brad and Duncan on Static grass and hot wire cutting for polystyrene.  We also had some good show and tells.  I must admit I was blown away by one member’s process of making his own corrugated iron.  I must try it some time.  Then the rain came bucketing down.  I also sold a few items from my detail collection, including some clotheslines, pallets, tarps, reo-sheets and an incinerator that works from track power.  It seems that I have been confirmed by Brad for one of the presenters for the next NMRA-X presentations on the 21/22 of November.

Today I had (Chris) a brother of one of the Tuesday Nighter’s (David) come over with his son (Adam) and grandson.  I normally catch up with these guys at the Brisbane AMRA Exhibition each year.  They lived near me (about 1/2 mile down the road) where we all grew up, and their father (Vince) and their neighbour (Kevin) all had layouts.  I played cricket with Chris and David for 10 years after I finished school.  I was in the same grade as their sister.  Another of their brothers (Denis) was my best man – he also played cricket with us as well.  We had a great time back then, almost 30 years ago.  The young 3½ year old was the most polite and best behaved young child I have ever had in my shed.  He is a credit to his parents.  So while we were in the shed, I gave them a tour of the layout and pointed out some of its interesting features.  I ran a couple of sound equipped steam locos (a Garratt and a 35 class) from Grafton to Rappville, as well as the Brisbane XPT and sound equipped Jumbo on a Brisbane Limited set.  I also ran a very small QR Coal train on the 12mm.

Another thing that I will do later tonight when the NRL football grand final is on, is to attempt to put together two of my workmate Greg’s 3D printed staff machines.  He dropped off two of these at work on Wednesday morning, when he was walking from the train past my building to his current building.  He used to work in my building on a different floor, which made it easy to catch up.

Next week on Sunday, RMCQ will be having its Buy and Sell at the Club in Brendale, the first for the year, as the previous was cancelled.  The sellers are distributed around the Club lease under various gazebos, so we can separate the people in a social distancing way.  We just hope the weather is fine.  It will be good to catch up with people in the hobby that we have not seen for quite some time.

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