A Side Trip to Sydney

Well this week started off real early with a 3:30am rise in order to get to Roma Street Station for an XPT ride to Sydney.  We went to have a week in Sydney and visit the son whom now lives down there, and to spend our Anniversary date down there.   The XPT was very slow out of Brisbane to Yeerongpilly.  I could have almost walked there faster.  I think the reason was that QR had stopped trains running from Salisbury to Moorooka on the Down line, due to a new bridge being constructed at Moorooka over Stable Swamp Creek.  So QR suburban traffic was running on the dual gauge and we were trying to run in the opposite direction at the same time, so we had to wait for the line to clear.  At about half-way down to Sydney, the train manager approached us and the people on the other side of the aisle and asked if we wanted to move to a sleeper compartment for the rest of the trip.  We said yes, as we could spread out more.

Looking out one side of our compartment.

Looking out the other side

We did not cross any other traffic until about 1:45pm when we passed a northbound steel train near Wauchope.  The next cross was a northbound XPT in a loop at about 1:54pm.

The northbound Casino XPT

At Taree I checked out the new staging area for the new intercity trains.

We were mostly less than 20 minutes late all the way south until we got to Newcastle.  We had whittled the deficit down to about 6 minutes late at Newcastle, where we had to sit behind an interurban down to Sydney and again from Hornsby to Strathfield.  We ended up only about 20 minutes late into Sydney.  As we walked along the platform to collect our luggage, our son met us on the platform.

We’ve had a great time in Sydney.  Lunch with the son in Sydney on Tuesday, and Wednesday over to Manly and Watson’s Bay.  Thursday I trained it out to Blacktown and spent about an hour and a half talking to Maria at MRRC.  I then caught a Blue Mountains service back to Parramatta to visit Bergs Hobbies.  I then caught the train to Liverpool and again spent about an hour and a half talking to Joe at Casula Hobbies.  The modelling items I wanted to pick up in Sydney were obtained and I got a few other items.

The diagram showing trains near Parramatta station

Thursday was a trip to the Blue Mountains.  While waiting for our train to depart Sydney Central, I heard an announcement on the platform that there was a change of platform for our train.  What?  We were already on it.  So we left the train and proceeded to platform 6.  There was no train announcements, just a platform announcement.  So again we left about 12 minutes late and got to our destination about 7 minutes down.  We checked out the tourist walk to the 3 sisters, and plenty of shops at Katoomba.  We then caught a 4 car train to Elura and checked out the shops and caught the next 10 car train back to Sydney.

Saturday started early as I watched the Socceroos on TV, it would have been too cold to walk to Tumberlong Park where lots of people assembled for the broadcast.  We then went to the Glebe markets and later in the day we went to The Rocks Markets to check out the local merchants.  I was able to attend most of the NMRA Div 1 Meeting virtually in the morning/afternoon and also the British Region Brew and Natter in the evening.  We were lucky enough to see a cruise ship leave the Internation Cruise Ship Terminal in Circular Quay just after 4:00pm.  There was a bit of a network shutdown in Sydney on Saturday so we couldn’t catch a train from Circular Quay or a Metro from Martin Place to Central so we had to catch a bus back home.

The moorings being released

The ship disappearing behind the Opera House

A quiet day today at the local shopping centre having a look around before we prepare to come home tomorrow morning.  A very nice week.

XPT Fun and the Layout Model is Shown Off

Late on Monday I went to the shed and ran my XPT from Grafton to Fairy Hill and return.  Then I ran it to Kyogle and return just for kicks.  I think I noticed an issue inside my helix.  So I investigated.  A section of track had lifted, so I glued it back down on Tuesday morning and put a weight on it as the glue dried.  The next time I powered the layout on, I forgot that I had a weight on the track.  I got a short – Doh!  I realised so I then removed the weight and that section no longer had a short.  The XPT then ran smoothly through the helix section.  I also identified two sets of points at Kyogle where the XPT was jumping when it was travelling through that location.  So I shimmed the check rails with two slivers of 0.010” styrene and that seemed to help wonderfully.

On Tuesday evening amid all the expectations of the Tuesday Nighters, I successfully ran the XPT from Kyogle station back to Grafton Staging.  I was then asked to run it back the other way.  So I ran it from Grafton Staging to Border Loop.  I identified an issue with a set of points on the southern end of Border Loop.  The rail had come adrift from the throw bar.  So I attempted to push it back in.  That seems to have done the trick.  I also identified that two particular coaches on the XPT, the centre one and the last one seem to be causing random derails.  I had a suspicion that the bogies had wheels out of gauge.  On Wednesday morning I got the NMRA track gauge out and sure enough some wheels were out of gauge ever so slightly.  So I did a bit of adjustment and put the coaches back on the train.  Later in the arvo I had some time and ran the train from Border Loop back to Fairy Hill crossing loop before reversing it again and sending it back to Border Loop.  I still seem to think that I had a couple of other bogies that are out of gauge ever so slightly.  I will eventually check them all out.

Earlier in the day I cut up some pieces of styrene, including ‘I’ Beam, ‘H’ Beam and various slabs ready for painting.  These will help make up various steel loads for numerous open wagons.  It will also help provide some loads that someone wants me to make for them.

Saturday was Club Meeting day.  I decided to take the scale model of my future layout to the Club for comments.  It sat on the back seat of the car.  I fielded many questions throughout the day about what it was.  

The model of the Modules for the future exhibition layout.

While at the Club, Greg showed me some 3D printed signals that he put together with some brass tube used for the post.  I purchased a tube cutter from Bunnings today and then went to Jaycar and picked up a stack of LEDs for the signals that Greg will eventually print for me.  I have assembled the first trial signal that Greg printed and gave to me yesterday.  It looks pretty good.  I will eventually get around to making the RJ45 connection from my control panel to the signal as another piece of my layout puzzle gets materialised.

The Week That Wasn't

This week I have done relatively little modelling except from building a couple of small detail items for the Div 1 FreeMo modules.  I have built a set of back steps from styrene, and then added a railing to the steps from styrene rod.  This will go out the back of a house on one of the modules.  Next modelling activity was with some fine phosphor bronze wire lines that can be added to a number of the clothes lines sitting in the back yards of various houses on the modules.  I also put together various types of ladders from kits that I had sitting around in my spares bucket.  One of these ladders will allow the guy currently sitting on the roof of a house to get up and down to/from the roof.  This guy is installing the TV antenna on the roof and he is connecting the co-axe cable

However, today as I started to clean up the shed in preparation for the meeting this coming Tuesday night at my place, I realised that I had promised to create a few detail items for one guy to pick up at the upcoming Brisbane Exhibition.  I spoke to him at the last Buy and Sell for our Club, and I did not have any of the items that he wanted on my table.  But I am now working towards fixing that issue.  I created 5 long and 5 short steel wire loads for various HO wagons.  I think I had sold the last of my long loads at the Buy and Sell.  I then made a large batch of 4” x 4” pieces of wood (to be used as dunnage), and painted these to install in a large number of steel wagons or open wagons, so various steel loads can sit on them on.  This allows the forklifts to get under the loads to help with unloading.  These have been made to go inside my steel wagons for NSW and QR.  I have currently made up 4 large pipe loads of various sizes and painted these.  I have also made up 3 x 6m loads of small steel rod bundles.  These were also painted today.  I need to make up some steel plate loads and then add some “I” and “H” beam loads.  That is this week's job. 

I had plans of adding the various windows to my Old Cassino station building this week, but I did not get motivated to do any work on that project. 

On Tuesday this week I will also add an extra NCE Throttle to my layout, as Darren recently picked up two NCE throttles online, and I went halves with him - so one each.  This throttle will not be radio.  However, after I take the throttle apart to check that it has a JST plug inside, I might eventually treat myself with a Wifi-Trax wifi module for this new throttle.  These modules work pretty well and are relatively cheap compared to installing NCE radio into a throttle.

Working on the Modules

This week I have been working on my mini modules.  All are complete and tried to fit them all together.  I added some guides to one end of each module, so it slips inside the next.  I also purchased some packets of small pegs from a local $2 shop.  These allow me to ‘clamp’ or should I say peg the modules together as they are assembled.  I added foam to the modules along the front of the layout – the equivalent of a 2” sheet of foam.  Then I needed to added transitions back down to just baseboard level.  The 2” foam was so that I could model a creek running underneath the track in one of my modules.  After adding foam to my mini modules, I then realised that I can remove this foam from all but the module with the creek, and just add it to the module with the creek to it.  I will make this module have legs that 2” shorter than the rest, to make up for the 2” of foam on top.

All the left hand end front scale modules

This shows where the Branch line comes off the main module.  In the background is the Old Casino Station building before the left end extension was correctly sized and built.

This is where the branch line joins back up to the side module to then go around to the rear staging.

On Tuesday we went to Bob’s place for our fortnightly meeting.  We had a very nice civilised view of the Brisbane River and all the city cats going for a run up and down the river.

I also got around to scaling out the measurements for the extension to the Old Casino Station building.  I then got around to cutting out the doors and windows.  This week I will have to go looking for my box of windows and see if I have enough to fit in the current window openings of the building.

Saturday was a working bee on the Division’s FreeMo modules again.  We did some nice work.  As usual we had plenty of laughs and a good deal of work did get done.  Never as much as you expect.  I think some of the items that we added will create some interesting scenes that people will talk about.  I came away from the day with a list of items to build, or acquire before the next working bee so I can install these onto the modules on that day.

Styrene Building and Planning for Some More Styrene Building

After borrowing a packet of Styrene from PK on last Sunday afternoon, I got started cutting it up on Monday.  Initially I put together 4 frames and the packet was gone.  These frames were for my 1:10 scale models of the modules for my future layout.  On Tuesday afternoon I received a text that my styrene order had come in.  That meant that Wednesday morning was a drive to Corinda station followed by a train trip to Ipswich. 

Previously at Ipswich station there was this strange signal on platform 2 that I had talked about before. 

The signal on the left has a weird route indicator on it.

When I was coming home from Ipswich, I saw a "Special" come into platform 2 at Ipswich and sit there.  Platforms 1 and 2 were closed as they were painting the platform, so we were on platforms 3 and 4 for our trains.  I saw the signal in question on platform 2 light up, with the route indicator first, then it went from red to yellow to green.

The 'Special' train was going from platform 2 to the Down Main.

While I was at Ipswich I picked up 5 packets of styrene and when I got home, I made up another 6 scale model modules.  Attention now must turn for my non-standard modules.  So at this point in time, I have assembled everything except the last module for the branch line around to the stabling/staging.

Today was the day that I added legs to all my scale model modules for my new exhibition layout.  They look quite good.  I still need to build the last module.

I received an email from Brad in Lismore on Monday afternoon helping me with the size of the extension on the Old Casino station building.  He said that there were 18 sheets of iron on the roof on that section of the building.  That was a great start.  With each sheet being 760mm when overlapped, that made the station building extension about 12.16m long.  In HO scale that is 139.6mm.  With 2 doors and three windows to include in the front of the building extension, I can now try and guess the actual size of each item and the spaces between them all to fit into my 139.6mm.  My initial calculations with a few tweaks, has the building coming out to 140mm in size.  I will draw that up this coming week and see how it looks compared to the photos I have and see if I need to adjust anything, before I commit to cutting up a piece of styrene.

Thursday I had to ring Anthony and pull out of his Saturday Afternoon Ops session due to my persistent cough.  I suggested that Darren could fill my place, if he was so inclined.  After some new medication on Thursday night and Friday and Saturday, I still ventured over to the Bayside Exhibition on Saturday morning where I ran into Darren and Brendon on their way to the Ops Session.  I also had a nice chat to numerous people at the Exhibition, some Bayside club members, Logan Club people, Action Club people, some mates I ran into people walking around and a number of various shop owners at the Exhibition.

There is a Point!

I took the easy way out this week by trying to adjust the trackwork on my dodgy dual gauge point.  I ran wagons through it and they all worked.  I waited a couple of days and brought out the power pack on Wednesday and successfully ran 12mm and 16.5mm locos through the straight track.  I tried to run a couple of 12mm locos through the point through the diverging path and they all derailed.  They could travel from the diverging end to the toe, but not the other way.  Bugger!  So I did need to get PK’s point jig out and build a new one.  I cut up the sleepers and gapped them on Wednesday afternoon.  I then cut off the various lengths of rail and just placed them in the jig.  Later in the day I went down to the shed and used my grinding stone to chamfer the two point V’s and then cut out the stock rails where the point blades meshed with them.  I then reduced the point rails to fit into the stock rails.  At this point I lost interest and went onto other activities.

On Thursday after picking up my Railway Digest from the local newsagency I soldered up the various V’s and attached them and the stock rails to the sleepers in my dual gauge point.  Bit by bit I soldered everything else together.  Everything seemed good with the point.  I could not run locos as the insulation gaps were not cut.  But wagons went via all routes.

On Friday I spent some time rummaging through the shed for items to sell at the Buy and Sell and put all this aside. 

Saturday was NMRA AGM day for both the Australasian Region and our Division.  We knew the outcomes before we started, as all positions had either one, or no nominations.  I got there early as I had to help get the Div 1 FreeMo modules out of the container and put them up in the garage for viewing.  I then transformed into a parking controller, ensuring everything attending got a good park.  The meeting was a good civil, organised event, with a Div 1 Show and Tell, then the Special General Meeting for the AR up first, followed by the AGM for the AR.  Then the Div 1 AGM.  At the Show and Tell, PK cut the insulated gaps in my dual gauge point.  The day’s activities were all streamed to the region and our division.  That was followed by some presentations, with one presentation, done so remotely by Aaron from Newcastle, on the topic of remote operations.  We had Tyler in Tasmania, as Controller and Anthony and Geoff at the meeting running trains on Aaron’s layout, on the large screen at the meeting.  The day ended it all with a tour of the inside of Paul’s FAM coach in his back yard.  When I got home I had to resolder a couple of rails to sleepers, and in doing so, I bridged one of these micro cuts that PK did – Bugger!

Sunday was another early start with our Buy and Sell on.  I sold a couple of items, but that bad man Barnacle Bob was selling some unbelievably good books for cheap prices, and I had to assist with rehoming some of these.  That was fine until I found someone selling a stack of code 83 points for fantastic prices and I had to also rehome them for my future exhibition layout.  I also received some order for some styrene steel loads.  I have not built these for a while, but I will build a few of these to be ready for the upcoming AMRA Exhibition in July, where one guy will pick them up from me.  On the way home, I detoured by PK’s and had a beer, and he recut an insulating gap in one of the rails of my dual gauge point.  PK also loaned me a packet of styrene to tide me over before I pick up my delivery this week.  When home I started on the task of reading all the new books I picked up today from Barnacle.

This coming week I will pick up the styrene that I need for a building project, and put one packet aside to give back to PK.

Not Doing Much This Last Week

Not much was happening this week.  However, I decided to create a model of my future model railway.  I was using a 10:1 scale, and cut up a number of 3mm styrene sheets to represent the top of a number of modules for my future layout.  The sheets of styrene were 6cm wide and 24cm long.  This will represent the 2.4m x 600mm modules.  I also propose to cut up some 2.5mm x 2.5mm styrene strip to simulate the 25.4mm aluminium square tube that the modules will be made out of.  A check of my styrene supply reveals that there is only one strip left in a packet that I have.  I was thinking that I needed to buy at least 3 packets, maybe 4 packets to provide enough styrene.  I then may have to get some more in the future if I model the legs and other components on the modules, like back boards etc.

The other activity was rounding up all my dual gauge pieces of track and connection flex track to each end and then connecting them to a DC power supply.  I then ran narrow gauge and standard gauge locos through the various routes.  Some of the points had a short.  But a quick look at the sleepers, or using an Ohmmeter on the sleepers I quickly found all the issues and remedied them.  So the locos went all the pieces of track quite well, except for one.  On that piece of track the diverging route kept derailing the narrow gauge locos.  So I thought I would have to build a replacement piece of track.  That would entail a trip to PK’s and borrowing his dual gauge jig again.

I made a trip to the Club on Saturday for the early morning meeting about the Clubroom HO layout.  Who books meetings at 9:00am on a Saturday?  I took my two DH’s to the Club.  I ran one back and forth on the 12mm upper deck while the layout meeting was on for a bit of a laugh.  It ran reasonably well.  The second DH was waiting for a chip.  PK provided that to me on Saturday morning.  I quickly removed the two wires from the motor to the bogie pickups, and wired in the decoder.  I placed it on the DC test track and it ran back and forth.  I switched the track to DCC and fired up the programming track.  I set its address to long address 40.  I then fired up the loco and after a few second, a few puffs of smoke came out of the decoder.  I ran it again on DC and it worked.  A couple more times it ran on DCC and then large puffs of smoke and sparks came from the decoder.  The motor still turns on DC.  It has got me stumped.

I know that the mech in the DH loco is a K&M and will draw quite some amps.  That is why we got a 1 Amp continuous and 2 Amp peak N scale decoder.  So I think this week I will pull the loco apart again and rewire it for DC and install an ammeter between the DC controller and the motor to determine how much amperage the loco is pulling.  Then I will try and work out if anything on the loco frame is live, and if so I will have to insulate it and give the DCC conversion a second go.

While I was working on my loco in the Club workshop area, Warren was showing off a 3D printed Corrugated iron roller.  He demonstrated it and the output was pretty damn good.  I put an order in for one.  Hopefully I will see him either next Saturday or Sunday at the Club Buy and Sell and procure one.  I can keep one very well employed creating corrugated iron sheets for my scratch build buildings.

On the way home on Saturday I diverted to PK’s place and he gave me a beer.  I borrowed the required jig and acquire a couple of lengths of code 83 rail.  This arvo I got out the soldering iron out and started to adjust the rail gauge on the diverging route.  So I have re-tested hand pushing bogies and various wagons through the point and it is a lot better then before I started.  Later this week I will get the DC power supply back out and test it with a loco.  Hopefully I do not have to rebuild a new point, but I might just do it for practice.