I MIght Have Finally Fixed My XPT

On Monday this week after getting home from work early I painted 40 pallets a Chep blue colour.  On Tuesday before the guys came over, I painted another 20 pallets Chep blue and then painted 20 pallets a wood brown colour.

Later in the week, my painting activities resumed.  I painted another 40 pallets various shades of wood brown, and 20 pallets Luscom red.  On Friday I assembled 15 HO scale clothes lines.   After they were dry I painted the posts and the clothesline tops a galvanised silver colour.

On Saturday I visited a hobby shop and delivered some pallets, clotheslines and some tarpaulins.  Next stop was the Hobby Shop at Brendale.  I picked up another selection of styrene so I can assemble another approximately 80 pallets at the upcoming Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds in about 4 weeks - on the first weekend in May. 

I took some models over to the Clubrooms to show to Laurie and get some constructive criticism.  However, he was not there.  But I was able to talk to PK, Greg, and Darryl and Chris and have a few laughs with some other members.

So when I got home from the Club I decided to get online and send an email off.  I got onto Laurie and we met up later that night on the NMRA Australasian Discord Channel.  I was able to show off the models to Laurie, and I was able to get some really good feedback.  Sometimes you cannot see the forest for the trees.  Some really obvious things need to be done to some of the models.  I painted some wheel sets Grimy Black instead of their new brass colour.  Some of the brass wire that I added for brake pipes and handrails was also a very prominent brass colour.  So these were also painted Grimy Black.  Copious amounts of notes were also made following all the discussions about all the types of wagons that were presented and discussed last night.  I have some tasks for the next few weeks.  Laurie has also sent me down a rabbit hole for one of the wagon kits I had built.  There is lots of works to do on this wagon, after he planted two seeds.

On Tuesday evening the Tuesday Nighters crew came over.  I found a couple of items that needed to be fixed on the layout.  So today I fixed a switch on the Acacia Ridge to Glenapp Staff section at the Acacia Ridge end.  I also found a nail head that was sticking up slightly too far following some track changes at Acacia Ridge.  It was giving one of my XPT carriages an issue.  So that was fixed.  I also replaced one KD on one of the XPT coaches.  This one kept losing the KD spring and allowing any slight bump in the train from the power cars to uncouple.  I also had a rather large discrepancy in KD heights on two XPT coaches.  So that was eventually remedied.  The XPT then ran another successful trip from Grafton Yard to Cassino and return.  Who knows, tomorrow it might even go to Acacia Ridge Yard, or even to Murwillumbah.

I went down to Jaycar today to pick up some items for my project for Barnacle Bob.  I will continue to test this tomorrow.