A Good Weekend Turned into a Great Weekend

Friday afternoon I came home from work and went down the shed and worked out what was causing the short in the Acacia Ridge to South Brisbane Interstate section.  I have a dual gauge point (electrofrog) that needs to have a switch fitted to power the now combined frog.  So when I power up my layout, I have some Digitrax DS64’s Quad output point controllers that randomly throw some points.  I’m sure there is some logic as to what gets thrown, but the last time I successfully powered up the layout, a point in Clapham Yard was triggered and caused it to throw and cause a track short, As the live throw rails were touching the third rail and causing a short between different polarity rails.  For the time being I have thrown the point back but I will eventually install a switch on the Peco point motor to change the polarity of the frog and isolate the frog from the point rails with my trusty dremel.  Simple to do.  I also picked up a couple of Peco switches to do this yesterday.

 

This weekend was our Club’s Model Railway Exhibition at the Strathpine Community Centre.  There were about 30 exhibits in attendance.  Attendance on both days was about middle of the road in terms of attendee numbers when comparing to all the other exhibitions we have run.  At times people were streaming in, at others there were not many coming through the doors.  I had a great time on the door.  A few people asked if I was this Blog’s Author so I had to confess I was.  Some scenes from today at the Exhibition.  It was a good weekend.

 

As usual we had some great exhibits on display and some very talented modellers. 

This is the LDMRC (Logan District Model Railway Club) layout.  It runs both 12mm (HO narrow gauge and HO standard gauge.  I particularly like this piece of track.

This is Bakestondale.  I ust love looking at the scenery that the British Modellers produce.  I also like the canals.

Another British outline layout - Two Up Two Down.  Again a canal shot.

Should have known.  All three of these guys (Grover, Brendan and Geoff) are asleep (eyes closed - must have been a big night back at the Clubrooms) instead of modelling!

These next shots prove that your layout does not have to be large to get attention and maintain interest at an exhibition.  These three guys, past members of the Club produce great layouts.

Barry Turner's Midwest Pacific is a very compact layout in N scale. 

Ron Everingham's Yandilla Sidings is even smaller but is OO in scale.  It is a shunting puzzle and looks more complicated with the optical illusion of an extra row of wagons in a siding behind the yard with no connection to the sidings.

Ralph Simpson's Dan-Brae is also very compact and is very nice.

The next scene to the right in Dan-Brae - a Wye.

Well it now looks like these three guys were actually working after all - see their cheeky smiles.

 

Yesterday was my birthday, and luckily my wife and family allowed me to spend the day away from them at the Club’s Exhibition.  Last night we all attended a work mate’s 50th birthday party back over the other side of town, so I did cover some Km’s yesterday.  It was nice of my workmate Rod to throw a party for me.  Quite a few of my workmates were there and we had a very nice night.  Good weather, good laughs, great food and a great time.  I would hate to see what some of the attendees looked like this morning as after my wife, kids and myself left, the 20 year old Jim Beam gallon bottle was cracked (from Rod’s 30th) and apparently after that, a 10 year old oak cask of Bourbon (from Rod’s 40th) was also brought out.  I also would have liked to see Rod in his lycra (well maybe not), ride his bike this morning after Fitzy from work, took to it and added girls handlebar streamers, a nice large pink honker of a horn and a pretty girls flower basket on the handle bars.  It looked so nice and caused a great eruption of laughter as it was brought out during Rod’s speech and cutting of his birthday cake.

 

Now back to today at the exhibition, I think possibly my bestest birthday present was being able to view (and eventually being able to scan) some 300 photos of Casino station and surrounds taken by someone I have had a few email conversations with, whom turned up at the exhibition to have a look around.  Paul allowed me to look through his photo album while to toured the show.  It contained photos taken in the early to late 80’s.  Oh my God!  There are photos that I would kill for!  These photos are brilliant.  While I have almost exactly the same photos of some, some others are unique and hence priceless.  There are photos of the loco area, sidings, overhead station building, scenery, trains etc.  I have been entrusted with this album temporarily so I will get to work and scan the photos.  Thanks Paul.