10 Men in the Shed

Tuesday this week, was Tuesday Nighters and it took place in my Shed. We had 10 visitors including two first timers - Clayton and Brendan, plus me. As usual when the guys come over, they spend a few minutes acquainting themsleves with what has occured since they last visited. There had been quite a lot of plastering undertaken, as mentioned in last week's update. I ran a couple of trains to show the first timers how the layout worked, and we split up into a number of groups within the shed. Barry and Shelton were near the yards talking operational processes on the Interstate Mainline about a kilometre from my place. Raymond and Geoff and a few others were near the Kitchen - chin wagging, The rest were near the door and flowing out of it. I was showing a few points off to the visitors and infrequent attendees like George. later on during the night Darren advised that he had an issue with his NCE Radio handset. The Layout-id on his handset has mysteriously changed to ID=1. We knew how to fix this, but we couldn't get the EXPN key to show the menu for us to change the value. However after a while Darren fixed this up.  THis was accomplished by holding the EXPN button for a number of seconds before the handset sprang to life and then we were able to change the layout-id back to 0.
As a result of the last running session (the previous weekend) there were a couple of issues to address. So, yesterday I pulled up the track between the Running Creek Tunnels to basically fix a kink in the track just inside a tunnel mouth. But at the same time, I wanted to install a short trestle bridge over a creek. I had planned on installing a new piece of rail but I thought I would try just removing the track pins and relaying the existing piece of rail after I installed the trestle. I had two timber piles that I had lying around, that I built quite a long time ago. I had to cut some 5mm dowel and drop it in the bottle of stain for 2 minutes, let it dry and glued two pieces on top of each other for the bridge girders between the piers. I also threw a bit of glue around under the track inside the tunnel to help it say alligned and used a clamp to hold it in position over night. I also installed some 0.8mm balsa under the outer rail around the curve between the Running Creek tunnel portals to see if a little bit of superelevation would make the section of track look better and possibly enhance the ride qualities of wagons around this area. I gave the track a test drive this morning and the trains ran quite well around this relaid section of track.  Although the trains are very close to the inside tunnel portal side.  So I may have to lay a new piece of track eventually if some of my long or wide wagons and passanger carriages hit the tunnel portal - with my luck some will.

The newly installed trestle

Is that a light at the end of the Tunnel?  The kink was just inside the tunnel.  The newly installed super elevation is also seen in this photo.

Yesterday I also decided to rip a bit of the high facia down at Kyogle and install a section of below track styrofoam before a layer of plaster will eventually installed (maybe next weekend) over the top. This will allow for an area of the scenery falling away from the track to be modelled.  I also need to put some more styrofoam in on the other side of a tunnel facia (the above photo) around Kyogle one of the sidings at this location. This just helps to blend in the scenery between various places on the layout.

The styrofoam between the facia and the track with the scenery falling away slightly.

This morning also adjusted the heights of the KD couplers on about 4 wagons by installing KD washers under the bogies.  I also adjusted the heights on two troublesome 48 Class locos, 1 x Trax and 1 x Powerline.  I did this by using the overset couplers in place of standard #5's.  So they now seem to work a lot better.  After this I had a short run of a couple of trains between a couple of cross loops.  Here is a photo of one of the runs.

In a treeless Border Loop, the 620/720 set in stowed in the siding allowing another train to pass.

This afternoon I went to visit Shelton's layout, up the road about 2 kilometres.  We spent the time discussing how he could get some additional running line within his shed and introduce a hidden staging yard or two.  That is something I will ponder for the next few weeks.  I can feel a diagram coming on.