Back to Terra Forming

Tuesday this week my shed was packed out with 11 visitors coming over for our scheduled meeting of the Tuesday Nighters Crew. Due to the numbers and lack of space inside the shed, various groups form – some near the door, some near the jug in the kitchen area, and some near Fairy Hill Loop in the recess around that area. With one first time visitor attending, I spent some time taking Ray around the layout so we were everywhere.  Ray was interested in how the rocks were made and the helix among some other areas. I think it was a good night. We checked out three of Mike’s locos in which he had recently installed DCC chips. The first ran well. So we set it to address 9 - its cab side number. The second caused smoke to be produced on DC. Whoops, that was not good. The third ran well on DCC, but we did not put it on DCC as I was thinking that he maybe had not installed a resistor inline with the LED headlight as it was very bright on a low DC voltage. So I asked him to check that before we ran it on DCC and submitted it to full track voltage. On DC we could just give it a low voltage to check it out and everything did look fine apart from the blinding headlight.

 

Yesterday and today I reverted back to that ago old past time of Terra Forming. I did some more work on the southern side of Lismore around a road I’m putting in and further south around the Lismore Loco siding and the Lismore Shell Oil Siding. I then went up to the top deck and started working near the Kyogle Dairy Siding. I then went over to the Bonalbo Ballast Siding and have started in that area.

So here is a photographic update of my plastering over the last few weeks.

 

The Cassino Loco area is in the foreground.  4803 is in the yard with the shunt to the Cassino Meatworks.  The loco area is at a lower level than the main line.

The Dairy Siding at Lismore.  The plastering is to the right.  I think I will have to build the actual Dairy buildings here eventually along with some sort of platforms to offload the various dairy related items.  The collection of wagons in view here have been dropped off by various trains running north during the last operating session.  They will be picked up by those trains retruning south later in the evening.

The road (made from a sheet of balsa) that I am installing is in the background covered by paper towel and masking tape.  I have plastered up to the road.  The set of points to the bottom right is the start of Lismore station and its loop.

Looking further south along the road.  More plastering on the front side of the road has been completed.  The track is covered by paper towel.

Looking further south, we see the work I've done around the Lismore Loco area.  A 44 class and three old petrol wagons are in the Shell Oil Siding.  I will replace these and 4 other oil tanker wagons (currently sitting at Old Cassino) when someone brings out some Shell Oil tankers.

Kyogle has a few sidings.  One is the Dairy Siding, but I just needed to break up the flat earth around here and installed a small hill.  In the background in the siding is my rail train.

Looking further north you can see this embankment to the west of the main line has been blended in, and then ends up lower than the tracks a bit further along.

To the other side of the Dairy Siding at Kyogle.  The track has been covered in masking tape.

Looking at this new work from the other side of the layout.  You can see the small embankment that has been installed.  The yellow level is sitting up on the Fisherman Islands Branch.

This picture shows the main line snaking past the Bonalbo Ballast Siding.  The embankment has been installed to the left of the track.

Further north we show where the siding branches from the Main Line.  Right at the bottom of the picture is where the Richmond River Bridge needs to be built and installed.  That won't be a simple task.  My collection of cut up tissues is in the centre of this picture.  I dip these into my plaster mix and lay then over my styrofoam.  I then slap straight plaster over the top.