On Saturday, I ventured over to the local model train shop today and had a nice talk to Doc Peter outside the shop and then with Ray inside the shop. Good to see Ray back on deck, following his little medical hiccup. I picked up an NCE QSnap and an NCE Mini Panel as well as 7 of the NCE 21 pin decoder for the Club Shop. PK put an order in on Thursday this week when he visited at work.
I then went over to
visit George at his shop and found a 3 piece lounge for $5 on his shelves. Now that
was a keeper. I was going to put it outside a house on the layout.
As round here when I catch the bus to work, I see many lounges just sitting
outside some houses ready to be picked up in junk collections. So why not
do the same for the layout?
So when I got home and finally made my way to the shed, the first think I did was spray paint the
lounge. Next up was mounting the QSnap on the layout fascia right next to
the existing one just under Fisherman Islands Yard. It was soon connected
to layout power and I then fired it up. I then had to go looking for a
piece of paper that has the addresses of the points for Fisherman Islands on
it. I eventually found that and coded up the first two outputs. I
have two points sitting there on the narrow gauge track ready to wire up to the
QSnap outputs, but that is a job for Sunday.
While walking round
the shed, I noticed that on a small diorama section of track that I never
finished, there was a Left Hand Peco medium radius point. Hmmmm.
Guess what? I ripped it off the dioarama and then installed it at South
Brisbane Interstate and added the track for the new oil siding. The track
was connected to track power and voila, a 73 class loco was despatched and
tested the track work with two old oil tanker wagons that were on the rotten
row, ready to be sold off at an upcoming Buy and Sell. They still will be
sold off, but only after I purchase 4 new oil tank or bitumen wagons for
working this siding at South Brisbane.
This view is of South Brisbane Interstate. The Brisbane Limited is in the platform, a loco is in the loco siding, and a couple of 73's are in the siding. The new oil siding is on the right.
My enthusiasm for
installing the Cement/Limestone siding at Rocklea, took a few hits during the
week. The first hit, was when I realised that I needed a dual gauge point
(Tillig) to allow me to install the siding in the first place. The second
hit was when the local seller of Tillig track did not have this piece of track
and was unsure when he would be getting it in. It is currently on order
though. The next hit was that I might have to install a set of points in
the siding area, so I can pull the empties out, before I leave the fulls.
So this all means more track work. This extra track needs to be in siding area, as the mainline is on a considerable grade, so I can't leave any wagons on the mainline.
The next job for the day was to
glue the layers of foam onto my two modules for the Modelling the Railways of
Queensland Convention. That went well and next week I will do some shaping of these.
Today I installed the new Mini Panel at Fisherman Islands. I then wired up the two point motors to the QSnap and then connected the control panel to the Mini Panel. The mini Panel was tested and most things work well. The two new points that were wired up, through in reverse. So I just swapped the wires over. Two points in the yard at Fisherman Islands are giving me some grief. A crossover is not throwing in reverse direction. The work in the normal direction. One of my dual gauge points is also not throwing at all. So that means more work in the future trying to get these operational.
The new QSnap is on the right. The new Mini Panel is above the Fisherman Islands Yard on the right hand side of the picture.
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