2014 Christmas Party and Time in the Shed

Yesterday was the Annual Club Modelling Competition.  I did not get any prizes, but we had a good time as usual.  There was some very good models presented.  I thought that a couple of dioramas presented were very good.  Apart from the Modelling Competition, we also have a Christmas Hamper, or in our case about 10 of them.  Unfortunately I did not win any of the prizes.  A couple of people won multiple times.  I have shown a couple of items that I thought were very good.

A small diorama by the President.  This had nice water scenes on it.

A close up of one of the water scenes on the above diorama with a bear foraging for some food.

 

A couple of the building kits.  The one on the left won best structure (I think).

Our junior entrant (9 years old!) took away two trophies for this effort.  Well Done!

My NSW Road over Rail bridge on a small display diorama.  This bridge has now been placed back on the layout.

A complete N scale layout was also entered.

Yes some NSW rollingstock.  You just gotta luv that stuff!

 

Today I got to the shed about mid afternoon and ran a few trains around.  But first I used some builders adhesive to glue my strings of LED lights up under the layout.  The sticky backing on the strings of LED lights does not stick too well to raw wood.  So I have used some builders adhesive.  I will advise how this turns out at a later date following this test.

 

So for my running activity, I ran the CPH that was sitting in Glenapp Loop, around to Kyogle Loop and then ran it back to South Brisbane Interstate Station, and then to staging for the next running session in Loco Pilly.  It ran well, but when it is not moving, the horn will not sound.  However, when it is moving at any speed step, the horn does sound.  I think it will need a reset the chip in the unit and then I will check it out again. 

 

While running the CPH I found a V/Line VLCX hiding in the Cougal Spiral Tunnel.  It is amazing what you find around my layout!  I assume it came from the Paper Train.  I have no idea when it was positioned there, but it is on the train now.

 

I next decided to run my Brisbane Limited passenger train from Grafton Loops to South Brisbane Interstate.  I then ran the locos around the train, added the buffet wagon that was removed in the last running session for poor performance, and ran the train back to Grafton Loops again.  This all occurred without any issues.  I did glue the weights in the Buffet car down and adjust one of the bogies before it was put back on the train.  However, when this train was running through Grafton Yard, a mysterious short occurred when the locos got to a certain point – so to speak.  I have some large radius Peco insulfrog points in a cross over from track 3 to track 2 in Acacia Ridge Yard.  As the train was running wrong road in Acacia Ridge, it was going over the point on track 2 and it caused a short, that could not be resolved until the power was turned off and turned back on.  I took the nail polish to the two points and once it has dried I will try this again during the week.

 

I’m back at work tomorrow so I will have a few hundred emails to catch up on and no doubt a few things to fix up.  So much for my holidays.  At least I have another almost 2 weeks off in about 10 days.  Imaging the modelling I will be doing in that period as well.