500th Post, Watchout For The Fruitcakes, and I've Lost my Mojo Again

Believe it or not this post marks the 500th time I have logged into Blogger and put hands to the keyboard and typed a blog post.  Hopefully along the way, I have provided enjoyment and possibly some learnings to a least a couple of my followers.  With a bit of luck, there may be another 500 posts left in me, as I conservatively predict that I have almost 10 years worth more work to complete Cassino, with the future scenery, and all the detail items that I need.  I also need some more lighting installed over the top deck.

So for this weekend, I went down to the shed a couple of times, but I could not seem to get motivated to start working on any number of about a dozen different projects that need to be progressed.  I guess this mojo loss does occur from time to time, especially after I push myself to get to a milestone which passes and then leaves me lacking in motivation to push further onwards. 

On Saturday before lunchtime, I took my son to the local park for some soccer and basketball, before my state member turned up with a lunchtime BBQ to talk about the Inland Rail project.  Now that could have really been my main reason to go to the local park in the first place, so I thought my not kill two birds with the one stone.  Well isn't there just a huge lot of NIMBYs and some absolute fruitcakes who lack decent logic and reasoning skills that turn up at these types of events and just love to hear the non sensical sound of their own voice.  The local railway line has been in place since 1930 and predated everyone who has lived in this area and it seems that the current 51 trains a week is causing them some inconvenience.  Bad luck!  When the Federal Government's Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail Project is complete and when in full swing by about 2035 there may be 48 trains a day some double stacked using the line.  So what!  Some of these trains will be rerouted narrow gauge trains that current come down the range from Toowoomba with coal and grain on their way to the Port of Brisbane.  I must find out how you double stack a coal or grain train.  I'm sure some of the bozos at the meeting would have known!  These trains currently travel via Rosewood, Ipswich, Corinda, Yeerongpilly, Dutton Park and the Port.  They will just bypass Rosewood to Yeerongpilly and come down from Calvert to Kagaru, to then travel to Acacia Ridge and then onto Yeerongpilly and then the port, bypassing a lot of congested suburban running.  There is also talk of a future alternate route from around my area to the port - although everyone denied that that was being considered, even though it is listed in the Inland Rail documents that I have in front of me.  Any government with a half a brain (and most only just qualify for that) will create a new transport corridor beside the current Gateway Motorway extension from Parkinson to the Port of Brisbane and bypass even more suburban inconvenience by going though the existing bushland.  I think quite a lot of the attendees must have be natural blondes and have messages written inside their glasses that they read every 5 seconds that say breath-in, breath-out! 

I just wanted to get a free sausage, listen to what crap was being said, talk to the state member - who just happens to be my ministerial boss at work.  I did get to talk to the local councilor and the state member about a few things and provided some feedback.  All Good.  I must admit that the State Member was very logical in her discussion and she is basically in favour of this nation building infrastructure.  So am I, if we ever get around to building it.

So on return from the park I did do some running of a couple of locos around some track in the shed.  I started with 1557 a Narrow Gauge QR loco and tested it around Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard.  This caused me to remember that the three dead end narrow gauge tracks here had not yet been wired up as yet - damn.  The other loco I ran was an old AR Kits 45 - 4519 which I ran over the dual gauge trackage in Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard.  I did also find that there might be a short when a particular dual gauge point is thrown in a particular direction.  I will have to investigate that further.  Anyway I then got the drill out and drilled holes in the baseboard for jumper wires and then soldered the power bus wires between the three roads in Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard and a subsequent retest of the narrow gauge trackage by 1557 showed that everything ran quite well.  So I guess I did accomplish something this weekend.

Today I went down to the shed and decided to fire up the Raspberry Pi and check it out following issues last weekend.  It did fire up, but it was very, very slow in responding to the phone I was using.  It did not repeat what occurred last weekend, where we could not enter a loco into the system.  This weekends issue I think is related to the Raspberry Pi being just overloaded with all the tasks we have now got activated in its very small memory.  I think I need to upgrade to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B from my much, much older version.  The new model certainly has lots more grunt than my old one, as well as double (or maybe 4 times) the memory.

This Tuesday we venture over to Dr Peter’s to see what changes he has done since our last visit.  This is followed by Saturday which is our Club’s rescheduled AGM (due to most of the old Executive being at the N scale convention in Adelaide this weekend just passed).  I cannot attend the AGM, so I will have to submit my proxy, as I am heading down to Darren’s place to help his run this layout for an NMRA meeting also on this coming Saturday.

At this stage I do not know what I will try and do next Sunday.  But it is school holidays so I'm sure the boss will have a few activities arranged.