Still Tinkering with the Timetable

Tuesday this week was our regular fortnightly meeting of our modelling group.  This time it was at Shelton's.  Shelton demonstrated his layout, which had undergone a few track changes since I last visited.  He runs trains from staging, into a yard, and then shunts the wagons into various classification tracks depending upon the destination of these wagons.  These wagons once there are enough in the classification tracks for a train to be despacted are then sent to their intented destinations.  On a non-modelling note mini lamingtons made by Shelton's wife to go with our coffee were just brilliant.

During the week I spent some more time adding a few more trains into the timetable.  These were just light engine movements from Locopilly to Park Road Sidings and South Brisbane Interstate locations and back again.  Even model locos need to get refuelled you know!  I also printed the updated timetable out on some special paper that Darren provided me.  This paper is perforated down the middle - top to bottom and side to side.  So it is divided into four sections - just like my timetable and I get four sheets fitting on the page.  It is so easy now to just tare the sheets up and then place the individual sheets into a pile.  It certainly beats having to individually cut up all the sheets.

On Saturday night I spent some time arranging these individual timetable sheets into order of departure of the trains.  I then wrote the position in the order on each sheet.  This allows me to quickly sort then before each Running Session.  The new timetable has locations north of Acacia Ridge - Clapham Yard, Locopilly, Dutton Park, Fisherman Islands, Park Road Sidings and South Brisbane Interstate.  The first sort of the timetable was on the departure time of the train even if it included these yet to be modelled locations.  As my next few timetable sessions will be run before the track is completed to South Brisbane Interstate, I then did another sort of the timetable cards and excluded any times of any departures north of Acacia Ridge.  The order of the cards within this sequence was also written on the individual timetable cards.  I just thought I would do this update of the information now and have the timetable able to run both iterations of the Running Session, one that includes the full layout all the way to South Brisbane Interstate (including Fisherman Islands) and the current extent of operation - Acacia Ridge.  The order sequence information will be added to the actual timetable later tonight.

Today I was able to get to the shed for an hour or so and installed a few of those cheap wall mounted storage bins near my work desk in the shed.  I also had a look under the layout with a view to tracking the various bus wires for the various power districts that I will be creating on the layout.  I think I might have to document these wires before I actually install my NCE EB1's.  I'm still waiting for my panel meters to be delivered from my ebay supplier.

I am hoping that my two 73 class locos might be due to turn up soon.  They were due to hit the wharves near the end of May, but there has not been any information from Auscision on their whereabouts on their website.