A Few Small Jobs

Thursday night this week, I broke out the basswood strips while sitting at the kitchen table and installed the roadway posts and railings on my NSW 18’2” Timber Overbridge Roadway built as per the DataSheet Plans. 

 

The following night (Friday) after the glue had dried, I stained the posts and all the rails with my ink and metho solution.  I think it looks pretty good and I just need to install it in my small display diorama for our Club modelling competition held at our December Meeting.  While I was working with wood, I decided to grab a few balsa wood sleepers that I had previously cut and throw them in my ink and metho mixture.  I had a plan for them to be used near the rail crossing I installed near Cougal Spiral last weekend.

 

Also on Friday Night my mate David was due to come over.  While awaiting him in the shed and watching the cricket on TV, I decided to do a small amount of plaster painting in readiness for adding some dirt and ground cover scatter in the coming weeks.  I was working around Old Cassino and Murwillumbah.  I also installed the balsa wood sleepers at the track crossing near the access gate around the Cougal Spiral area.  When David arrived he came with two locos to decoder up and a signal module from Traintronics (in the UK) for me to work out how to incorporate with some of his signals.  I created a little test board for the signal model this afternoon.  I'm not having much success!

 

On Saturday night while the boss and the kids were at the school disco I installed the decoders into David's two locos.  I tested them this morning on DC before unleashing DCC on them.  The first one is an average runner and the second seems to have a seized motor setup.  At least the decoders are working.

 

Saturday at midday at the Club, I presented the second of my modelling skills sessions and had three or four guys working on their own modules and then about 3 or 4 other guys who were going to go home and replicate the techniques on their module at home.  We do have some good facilities at our Clubrooms.  We just take out three or four fold up tables and put them on the back veranda of our Shed and we can present away.  We sometimes have club meetings on the back veranda when it is really hot and we can all just fit in.  This area always gets a very good breeze.  This month’s presentation was plastering over the base polystyrene scenery that we had carved up the month before.  The modules are starting to look pretty good.  There will be no modelling skills presentation next month, but we will resume again in January.  At that meeting we will be painting the base scenery and installing ground cover and adding some rock work.

 

This afternoon, besides working on David's signalling model, I decided to try and fit my scratch built bridge into its display diorama.  I will need to cast two more concrete bases to sit the piles on during the week.  On the layout, I also installed a small bitumen roadway leading into Lismore Yard.  This was done by using balsa sheet as the road base and staining it with my ink and metho stain solution.  That area is also starting to look good.  If I get time this week, I will try and blend the existing scenery around Lismore Yard in with this new bitumen road.

 

This week we have Tuesday Nighters at Geoff's and then on Friday, a few of us head down to Armidale to the New England Convention.  It will be good to catch up with some mates down there.