A Day with the Boys up the Coast

I was off work this week except Wednesday were I had a presentation to attend. Besides this supposed free time, I spent very little time down the shed. I did however, manage to eventually wire up the last two wires for the NCE mini panel to the control panel at Kyogle. I also mounted the second (duplicate) control panel for Kyogle at the other end of the yard. This has not been fully wired up yet. I had some issues wiring up the buttons on the first Kyogle Panel. When I pushed one button, the wrong set of points changed - Bugger. So it was undo that wire and swap it with another. Eventually I ironed it all out. I am getting some echoing or some phenomenon occurring where after some point throw, the point tries to throw multiple times, before eventually thowing and then moving onto the next point. Everything throws eventually, but I don’t know what is happening.  Anyone else get the phenoninum?

Yesterday I went with a car load of Tuesday Nighters to the Sunshine Coast and the Caloundra Buy and Sell. The trip up was certainly a wet one with a storm unleashing about 70mm of rain on us when we left my place at about 8:15am in the morning. While up at the Buy and Sell I caught up with a few modelling acquaintances and our travelling group ended up at a BBQ lunch at Peter’s place. Peter was one of the Tuesday Nighters who defected to Caloundra to live. Peter’s layout has certainly progressed since our last trip up there. The scenery was absolutely fantastic.  A real credit to his workmanship.

At the Buy and Sell I picked up two QR coal wagon kits from Wuiske Models, so after I eventually put these together, my total of 12mm wagons will expand to the grand total of 5. Pity I don’t have a loco as yet. There was a couple of item things acquired, but nothing worth talking about.

On the way back home home, we stopped off at the RMCQ Club Rooms. Barry had never been there and Mike had not been there for a couple of years. After resuming our trip south, we dropped Barry off home, and the guys came around to the shed for a relaxing beer and try out of my headphone system.

On Friday afternoon this week, I went my wife and Kyle to see the Queensland Fire and Rescue Helicopters used for fighting fires in the South East during the fire season.  This was curtasy of Kyle's classmate, whose father is one of the fireman on board the helicopter.  I got there last as I had to pick the car up from a service.  Afterwards my son went to his mates place for a further play, while I went home.  Later when Kyle came home, we had a bit of a tour of the shed for Kyle's mate, his younger brother and their mother.

Today while watching Bathurst on the shed TV, I started doing some of the jobs I had scheduled for the last week off but never got around to.  I was splashing a bit of plaster around behind the platform at The Risk, and then covered the plaster from where it end at one end of The Risk to the other end with a base coat of brown dirt.  The area towards the tunnel heading south to Border Loop was also browned up.  I also covered the small area of plaster I installed at Border Loop for 4-wheel drive access quite some time ago.  I then started on the southern side of Kyogle exactly near where the points were installed the previous week.
Next week, or even  maybe one night during the week I might get around to greening this area up with various shades of greens and yellows and light browns.

Attention now turns to trying to plan a running session in the near future.  I will work with Darren in producing an improved train diagram board for the North Coast Controller to use during a running session.  Darren says he has a 1200 x 700 sheet of steel on which we will line the track plan from Grafton Yard to Acacia Ridge yard along with the Murwillumbah Branch and any future dual gauge link north of Acacia Ridge if this gets built.  I would dearly love to install another passing loop for Clapham Yard, followed by the Park Road Sidings and South Brisbane Interstate, and a few sidings depicting Brisbane Marine Terminal (Fisherman Island) - not that this area existed when South Brisbane was still there - but don't tell anyone and they won't know.