Happy Father's Day

This week the kids had a Father's Day stall at school. My Son got to go on the Wednesday and Daughter on the Thursday. On Thursday morning, I asked my daughter to make sure she picked up a NSW train at the stall. She gave a look that resembled "What the hell are you on dad?" She said there will not be any trains at the Father's Day stall. I said, you never know what someone could have donated and if there was anything there to make sure that she buys it for me. Well you can always dream.

Friday I came home from work early and went to school to assist the boss pick the kids up. After bringing them home and switching over to my car, I went and got my hair cut, came back home, and went to the shed to do some work on the Upper Richmond River Crossing for an hour or so.

I started at the southern end and attacked the first pier across the flood plain. The pier was attached at the top with a 1" file. I got this to the correct height and then went back and readied the abutment at the start of the bridge. I then inserted the girders. They looked fairly level. Then I turned my attention to the next one, the next and so one on for the the next 4 piers. There were filed down so they looked pretty well level across the opening. I used a length of 42 x 19 pine that was spanning the whole bridge opening behind the bridge piers as my level reference. I realised that the pieces of styrene that I had previously painted up to support the track across the two open truss sections were the wrong ones. These ones were too small. I found the correct ones on my portable workbench on the dining room and gave them a coat of grey paint.

I then did a bit of terra forming for the river section and another bit for the road at the northern end of the Bridge. This is the Summerland Way that makes its way under the northern end of my bridge opening.

Just before I got called in for dinner, I was installing the road under the northern most opening. This is a concrete bridge. I might try and make one from styrene over the coming weeks. We will see.

Photo of the Summerland Way underbridge

On Saturday morning I went to the LHS to buy some bridge track for the Upper Richmond River opening. I thought this would look better than standard track. What made me think of bridge track, is one of the newer modellers at my club has built an approximate 5' bridge opening in N scale. I think this is for somewhere on the N scale club layout but I could be mistaken. This guy scratchbuilds code 40 points in N scale and I think they look better than anything you can buy commercially. They are just magic.

Well when Ray at the Hobby Shop said it was going to cost me over $30 I nearly fell off my chair. I thought I'll just cut up some Peco track and move the sleepers closer together. Then Ray mentioned about hand laying the track. Bing! The light went on. At home in the shed near my still unfinished workbench I had some bridge transoms in a packet that I bought years ago. I could lay these and then hand lay some Code 83 rail on these. I spent some time on Saturday arvo in the shed doing more work. I found my packet of transoms and discovered that I had already stained a few hundred or so. So I stained the rest - another couple of hundred. I then attacked the layout. I glued the transoms to the 4 girder pairs at the right hand (southern) end of the flood plain, the through truss bridge, and started on the main scratch built bridge as well. I then got greedy and decided to lay the transoms on the second through truss bridge, and then layed it across 4 spans I had completed about 3 years ago that are the start of the Richmond River bridge at Cassino. I have one more girder to lay the transoms on (at the northern end of the Upper Richmond River bridge) - that will have to be next week I think.

Sleepers being laid across the bridge

The bridge across the Upper Richmond River with sleepers and track laid across it

Sunday dawned and after an early trip to church, home for pancakes, I received my presents. Damn! I didn't get a loco from the school Father's Day stall. I must have a word to the Principal next time I see him about improving the presents for the Fathers - I bet the stall was run by women!

Anyway I did get out to the shed a couple of times today and finished laying track across the flood plain.  I just need to fix the track down before I run a train across the bridge and hope it does not collapse under the weight of the train.

The view across the whole flood plain