The Trip North

Early Saturday I was picked up by Darren and Mike as we made our way to Peter's Place. From here Peter drove us up to the Sunshine Coast to visit Peter and Anna at Caloundra. Peter moved his rather large N scale layout from Algester to his new house in one piece in the back of a truck, and while there he started to do some work on it. It is currently located in his 2 car garage. He has ripped up some track and and is in the process of adding some removable wings. He is making it look like an E with three wings on it. After checking out Peter's progress, we adjourned to his outdoor area for a very civilised morning tea. From here Peter led us to his mate Gordon's place. Gordon has a shed out the back and is in the process of adding two wings onto his N scale layout. Both Peter and Gordon are NCE Powercab converts.  From here we made our way to the Beerwah Pub for a great lunch. It was here we met Frank. Frank lives a few kilometres west of the pub and his layout N scale layout is located in his barn type shed. His shed make's mine look like a very small younger brother. On one side of the barn, Frank has an area about 6m x 9m screened off as his crew rooms. The walls and doors, came from a mate's place down the road who wanted to borrow Frank's ute to take a whole lot of aluminium windows and door frames to the dump. No you don't he said I've got a good use for it. These rooms, are very well appointed with an actual lounge area, a modelling table, stacks of well organised storage, DVD player attached to a TV and tea and coffee making facilities.  Didn't I cop a few smart comments in comparison to my non-existant crew quarters.  Directly above the crew room, is his layout room. Frank also models N scale. This layout allows for about 6 or 7 operators. You can use two man crews, as you pick up and drop off cars along the ways. The layout is operated using Frank's own card system. Every wagon has a purpose and goes from source to destination and back again during the running of the various trains. You continually add or drop off the cards with the wagons.  It was certainly very enlightening and thought provoking. The system uses a Digitrax radio control system. While the layout ran superbly, I do like my NCE system better.

After a safe trip back to Brisbane, later that night Peter payed me a visit.  He and Anna had to come back down to baby sit their daughters kids.  As they live in the same suburb, Peter popped around to check out my new Telstra T-Hub as well as progress on the shed.

On Monday this week, sometimes Tuesday Nighter's visitor to my place George, came round to get some advise in setting up his NCE 5 Amp radio control system. I think he has made a wise choice.  He did have a Lenz system but was having trouble with upgrades and support.

On thursday this week I came home from work slightly early and wanted to run a train in the shed for an hour before dinner. So after starting out running the train, I ended up doing some styrene terra forming in a couple of hard to reach areas on the top deck in order to try and meet my self imposed deadline of basic scenery on the top deck by the end of the Christmas Holidays this year. Today I covered some of these areas with some plaster to ensure a little bit more progress towards the goal is made. This work will sit here for a couple of weeks before any future progress as next week Peter, Darren, Geoff and myself will be car sharing to the Armidale Convention. Any of those readers attending this convention please say hello.  Because I will be interstate, there will not be an update next Sunday.  It will probably by delayed to Monday night so don't dispair.

The weekend after is usually my day to attend the Club Meeting, however, as my daughter has a dance rehersal and recital on during the day and my son has a party to attend, so that has thrown my plans into disarray. So in order to get my fix, I think I will schedule a running session in the shed on that night for PK, and the usual car load of suspects.