What A Week! - I'm Exhausted

Tuesday this week started off with an early mark from work and a trip to Dick Smith to get some sub-miniature slide switches that they were selling for $0.25 each - absolute bargain! This was followed by an approx 1km walk to the Jaycar for some bi-colour LED's for the next section of staff machine control panels. After another 1km walk back to the local bus station, and 2 buses later I arrived home. Once home I made up a couple more of my styrene brackets to hold my control panels to the layout facia.

Tuesday night was a Tuesday nighters meeting in the Shed. The Boss had prepared a little supper and I had washed all the coffee cups out and pre-boiled the water, got the tea, coffee, sugar and moo juice out. Eventually the Tuesday Nighters rolled up and while they were all chin wagging and checking out the staff machines, I was installing the brackets to fix the control panels to the facias, at Glenapp Loop, The Risk Loop, Border Loop, Kyogle Stock Siding, and Kyogle Loop. The staff machines held up to much switching and proding and were met with a general consensus of approval. I also ran a few trains as did Darren testing out his radio Procab on my triple headed sounded equiped 44 Class ballast train. I also ran my 620-720 class set from Grafton through to Kyogle - the then current start of the staff controlled sections of the layout. I think Geoff enjoyed hearing my 620/720 as I kept blowing the horn on every loop of the helix right next to his ear.  Darren also brought his 49 Class Loco which he is replacing the normal electrical board in the loco with a new Tsunami sound decoder. Darren was seeking assistance with how we all thought he should wire up the front and rear marker lights to Functions 5 and 6 on the sound decoder. I think PK thought that model decoder was OK as he ordered one for his 49 class loco from Model Railway Craftsman the next day - it must be great to have money.

On Thursday I had the day off from work on child minding duties as the Boss had a specialists appointment in the morning and both kids were home sick, so I took my daughter to the doctor to get her a dose of medicine - my son had gone to the doctor two days before and got his then. It was not until about 3:00 pm that I managed to get some train time. I first went out to an electrical wholesaler and got a 100m roll of 4-core alarm cable to allow the wiring up of the rest of the staff machines. When I got to the shed at 3:45 pm, I laid the cable linking the staff machines at Fairy Hill all the way to Cassino. I also laid the cable for the Cassino to Old Cassino connection and a cable from the Intermediate staff machine just near where the main line junctions near Hotham Street on the northern end of Cassino. This cable will cater for the section of track that runs from here to Old Cassino via the Old North Fork, which has been ripped up now for many a year, but which I am modelling. I then soldered up the two signal panels at Fairy Hill Loop and gave them a test. The next Block is now controlled by staff machines.

Saturday was the day that I went over to Austral Modelcraft and ran into Tuesday nighters Lefty & Son. They had not made it around on Tuesday as Raymond was on call and I think LEfty was after some Beauty Sleep. At Ray's I picked up 20 NCE 8-pin drop-in decoders for the Club that Ray had ordered the week before. When I got home, I started packing what I needed to take to the Queensland Model Railway Exhibition at the Workshops Rail Museum. I was working on the Structure Building Stand.

Today at the exhibition I caught up with lots of familiar faces and surprisingly even ran into Bob Gallagher himself. I also met Bob Young from Balmain Drawingboard another interstater. So my output for the day was 4 HO scale coil steel cradles, 4 complete HO coil steel containers with more 2 half complete, and 5 complete N scale coil steel containers, and 1 half complete. I also found out some interesting things about the New England Convention in 2 weeks time from Warren Herbert - those attending who read this Blog will all learn about it when you get there and not before. There was also two layouts I had not seen before, one in HO NSW called Riverbrook and one in O scale NSW - Newcastle by Ron Fox. Most impressive. There was of course old favourites Coorparoo, Dagabar, Brendale and Kyogle also running QR and NSW rollingstock. There was a good selection of Shops/manufacturers - including Alco World, AR Kits, J&J Hobbies, Gwydir Valley Models, Horizon Hobbies, Little Building Co, Modeller's Warehouse, Modratec, O-Aust Kits, Peter Boorman's Workshop, Railco and Wuiske Models. I had a hoot.

Next weekend is a trip to see the North Coast Chapter of the Tuesday Nighters. See you after that.