Nice Relaxing Easter Break

On Tuesday this week, we had our second consecutive meeting at Geoff’s place.  It was a great meeting.  We just had enough there and we had a good show and share.

On Friday this week, Greg came over from the other side of town for a few hours in the arvo.  He did some more work on my Raspberry Pi reconfiguring it so certain panels started with various defaults and he was trying to make the JMRI fastclock the master of the NCE clock.  There are some issues that sometimes, the NCE fastclock does not restart, while those using smart phones are getting the time updated.  But I’m sure we will work out the correct process to fix this.  Previously Ray Pilgrim had sent me his fastclock procedures so I will have another look at them as well.

While Greg was working on the Pi, I was running my Brisbane Limited around the layout, until it derailed.  The water tank fell off one of the Auscision sleeper wagons and caused some havoc as the train was coming into Clapham Yard.  A bit of glue and everything seemed as good as new.  I did find a section of track without power just before Clapham Yard, curtesy of my moving some points around and removing some precious power connections.  So a temporary connection was made and everything was OK again.  However, I then found that about 7m of track did not have any power connections to it.  Power was being made through the rail joiners for that whole distance.  So I will need to purchase some suitable wire for the DCC bus tomorrow from Jaycar and wire that up along with a few track jumpers.  At the same time, I will also buy a roll of standard wire (as I am completely out of wire) so I can connect all my power supplies to the track bus to make various LED lights work around the layout.

On Friday and Saturday I also made up about twenty tarpaulins.  These will be used as scenery detail around yards and in wagons.  I think I gave a few to Greg to take home as well.  On Friday I also started looking at painting the water in my Richmond River opening just south of Cassino.  I have painted the river a base colour that I was not too happy about.  This morning I mixed up some more accurate muddy brown paint and recoated the Richmond River and this looked a whole lot more accurate.  That was before the paint dried.  I will see how it looks in the morning.  My plan is to paint a good clear finish over the top of the water colour and give it a nice reflective finish.  I have a few detail items to add to the river as well.

My only other modelling activity today has been looking at Assembling a laser cut station building kit that someone from the Club gave me.  So far I am completely amazed at how easy this kit is to put together.  I intend to take lots of photos and this construction will be a separate blog post in the future.  I also intend to try and paint this kit as I am building it.  I received a few photos from Arthur Hayes and some instructions as to what he uses for his station buildings.