400th Blog Post

Well that is correct.  This is my 400th post on this blog.  Hopefully these posts have a benefit or give some sort of pleasure to a number of people who take the time to read these posts.  Hopefully, they also can inspire other modellers to get in there and have a go working on their own model railway empire.  It will only get built by taking the first step, and then continue to take small steps along its progress.

This Saturday I ventured over to the Border Region, after my son's cricket match in the morning, for our normal monthly operating session.  There were 6 of us in attendance.  The session was extremely smooth in operation and Anthony had implemented a number of suggested possible improvements from his last session.  I was Train Control and did not do too many incorrect things.  I'd like to think that I do less silly and incorrect things each month.  At least there was no photo evidence of me doing anything incorrectly.  I had one driver run through a set of points set against him – he blamed his eyes.  I didn't check before I gave him the road to exit the staging road onto the main to Nankiva.

There was plenty of good banter and lots of good talk and the new sets of train cards have more detail on them for the driver to understand what he needs to do with his train at the various locations along the route.  There were over 30 movements in the session.  I only saw two locos derail at points and two wagons jump the track and these occurred at extremely slow speed upon exiting the staging and I think they were fixed before anybody really knew what had happened.  It was a really good session.

It was after 3:00pm that I finally got down to the shed this afternoon and I was not there long, as I mowed the grass and washed the car from about 4:30pm.  So when I was down the shed I installed a LH narrow gauge point into Clapham Yard at the Loco Pilly end.  This is to create a narrow gauge passing loop within the yard.  I also did a very small amount of work adjusting the spacing of the tracks in the yard so they are all equally spaced.  I think I will have to add a few more jumpers to the track at this location – maybe next Sunday.  I pushed a few wagons - both narrow gauge and standard gauge through the point work at the Northern end of the yard and all seems to be operating satisfactorily. 

 

I also got thinking about perhaps adding some more sets of crossovers between the three narrow gauge tracks at Clapham Yard so that some shunting can occur here in the future.  But for that to occur I'd need a narrow gauge loco.  Hopefully in the next month or two my 2300 loco might turn up.  So when I actually wire up the various points that I still have to electrify at Fisherman Islands, and electrify the recently installed crossover at Acacia Ridge, and the current narrow gauge passing loop at Clapham Yard I'm currently working on, I will investigate the feasibility of adding these crossovers at Clapham Yard.  So this will just cost me lots of money, with points, point motors and point controllers and a control panel or two.

 

While I was thinking about re attaching the wire to the NCE Mini Panel under near Border Loop all week, I did not get around to it.

 

I also spent some time giving my Park Road Good Shed its first spray of a grey undercoat.  Next weekend I will touch up anywhere I missed today, and then look at some alternate colours to give it some age.