On Tuesday night we made the trek down to Johnno Love’s place and got to check out his layouts. Yes two. One was a British outline, and the other was QR 12mm. The QR layout was not finished, but most of the track is down. One new crossing loop needs to be spliced in and a couple of extra staging tracks may be added at a later date. OMG! The weathering on some of his locos and wagons is mind blowing. Some of the work is beyond description. Just brilliant. I wanted to take a couple of the 1720 locos home. But I resisted. At least PK and I learned who won the competition for most 1720’s. It was neither of us but Johnno. He has at least 8 that I counted.
On Thursday morning I started down the path of making up some level crossing detector kits again. I purchased some jumper plugs from jaycar, both male to male and male to female. I also ordered some more Arduinos Unos as my stock is getting down to almost zero. They will rock up in a few days. On Thursday evening I also started cutting up some styrene to build some more HO clotheslines. I continued that task on Friday until I ran out of 0.030" styrene rod. So I ventured over to Hobbyone and picked up one packet of styrene I was after. However, they were out of the 0.030" styrene rod that I wanted. So I put a call out to Raymond the Magnificent, who only lives in the next suburb, and to my dismay, he didn’t have that size styrene either. I reviewed my previous emails to Raymond, and back in April, I borrowed that same size styrene off him as well. That review also showed I picked up a replacement packet for him 2 days later, but it did not state that I actually delivered it to him. So no one on the southside has that size styrene. I emailed PK on the northside of Brisbane and he had a single packet in his possession, and he will pick up 2 more packets for me on the north side on Wednesday this week. So I will send one packet Raymond’s way in case I did not return one to him from April. On Friday afternoon I had to change tack from clotheslines and started making some more pallets. I then painted the 20 clothesline posts that I had completed and about 10 clothes lines tops that I made before I ran out of styrene.
On Saturday morning I visited the local hobby shops. At Aurora Trains I picked up a set of level crossing flashers. I then went to Modeller’s Warehouse and dropped off some clotheslines. I also picked up some more trees for my layout. Upon returning home I made a string of 27 pallets from my available styrene. Today I cut those pallets up and painted those along with some others I already had awaiting painting. These were painted a natural wood colour. I also dull coated about another 10 red coloured pallets to make them look like standard red ‘Luscom’ pallets. I have now all but completed another string of 27 pallets, but I ran out of 0.010” x 0.040” styrene to put all the strips on the top of the pallets, so I did not put any on.
Tomorrow I will head over to the local hobby shop and pick up another packet of styrene that I need to complete these pallets, and while there I will also pick up another three packets that will also give me enough styrene to make another 50 pallets should the need arise in the future.
So on Monday I plan to investigate the programming of a special level crossing sequence into one of my Arduino controlled level crossing units for a new level crossing to be 'modernised with flashing lights' in Old Cassino on the layout. This level crossing is at the West Street intersection. I think as well as the standard track activated detectors, I think I will also include some manual activation and cancelation buttons so that the shunters working in Old Cassino Yard and the Oil Siding can travel across the roadway in safety.
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