Finishing Off Some Jobs

I had Friday off this week, and wouldn’t you know I spent some time in the shed late morning and in the afternoon after mowing the lawn.  I pulled out my Far North Hobbies paybus kit and started to investigate where the motor assembly was binding.  I gave it a bit of an oil and while turned on its back it seemed to be running quite well.  But then at other times, it would run in one direction and then bind in the other.  Another issue is that it is not picking up power too well from the wheel wipes.  I will have to spend some more time adjusting the phosphor bronze wipes, or maybe replace with some wire.  But the bus has some issues.  Once it get running well, I will then have to include it into my operations session somewhere.  Another two or maybe four trains will have to be added, as the railbus runs from Grafton to South Brisbane Interstate and back and potentially, will also need to pay the guys on the Murwillumbah branch as well.

This weekend was my first run at Anthony’s Border District Operations Session for about 3 months.  As usual, the layout ran very well, and I enjoyed the session very much.  There is some slight stirring that occurs at these events, and it is even better when I’m not the intended target of the banter.  I even met a relatively new operator at Anthony’s at his second run.  He hails originally from Victoria, but now actually works for up here for QR.

Before I left to go to the Ops Session on Saturday, I went down to the shed for about 30 minutes to pack my carry bag for the session and made up an incinerator with a power supply for Anthony to place on his layout.  I also threw in about a half dozen tarpaulins into the bag which I gave to Anthony before the session.

Today I got down to the shed for about an hour before lunch and installed two point actuators in Clapham Yard on the 12mm points.  I picked up a length of piano wire yesterday at Austral Modelcraft on route to Anthony’s place.  Following the point work in Clapham, I cut up some balsa that I was going to use for the new road crossing i'm adding within Old Cassino Yard.  I then stained the balsa my standard grey colour to help it represent bitumen. 

This afternoon after dropping my son off at a mate’s place, I went back down to the shed and started gluing in the balsa sections across the three tracks in Old Cassino Yard.  These pieces were left with a piece of wood on top of them to allow them to set in the correct place between the tracks.  There is still some more work to be done here for the other 4 or so pieces of balsa that will go between the rails.

I also spent a good hour working on the Old Cassino good shed that is starting to come along very nicely.  I need to add the administration centre onto the side of the structure, as my next piece of work.  Then I will have to mask it up and paint it – potentially next weekend.  Once finished I will post some photos.