NMRA Gold Coast Convention

Friday 21^st September was the first day of Layout tours associated with the NMRA Convention being staged at Helensvale on the Gold Coast on the 22^nd and 23^rd September.  I had arranged for four mates from my model railway Club and regular members of my operations roster to come over and help me operate the layout.  As well as being an open layout, I was also operating a timetable operations session from 10:00am until 1:00pm.  Basically the guys started rolling up from 9:00am.  I think by about 10:30am everyone was in attendance.  I had PK, Darryl, Darren and Greg.  Darryl assisted by bringing over quite a few of his 12mm locos, and about 3 dozen pieces of 12mm rollingstock.  His collection dwarfs mine.  So along with my meagre menagerie this made up the 12mm roster for the day.  Darryl set about inspecting the track and following a test run on the 12mm found quite a few blobs of solder that when attacked with a file, not only removed the blob, but also the wires providing power.  So out with the soldering iron and about 3 or 4 wires were replaced.  The 12mm gave us some trouble, with low cow catchers on some of the longer wheelbase 90 tonne QR locos seeming to hit every piece of track that transitioned from code 100 to code 75.  Hmmm.  I really need to taper these track joins.

Anyway the Operating Session eventually got under way and things settled down, after quite a few early hiccups.  However, if there was not an issue, the crew would feel strange as I think they need to be able to stir me about some fact or 20.  We did get one of our nominated visitors for the Ops Session arrive and it turned out that he had run into PK and Darryl at our Club on Wednesday and he remembered them from when our Club exhibits at his Club’s exhibition in Bundaberg in March each year.  So he was shown a throttle and helped complete the shunting of the Cement Train at Murwillumbah, and he then took the Brisbane Limited and ran it from Grafton Yard to Kyogle.  Apparently he had not used NCE before and was using it after about 10 seconds.

While this was happening, four more people turned up having previously been at Arthur’s place inspecting over there.  Arthur had rung to see if I could fit another four in the shed and of course the answer was always going to be yes.

So bit by bit issues were fixed up with the layout and trains continued to run the rails and next time we looked it was way after 1:00pm and it was time for me to temporarily shut down the layout so I could feed my crew.  Two of the visitors stayed and had their lunch at the same time my crew had their BBQ snags on a piece of bread.  Of course we also had cheese and onion and a variety of sauces to complement the snags.  We may have also had a beer or two or in my case four.  

So I did notice that we had a few runaways of wagons in sidings.  So on Saturday morning I added quite a few more tooth brush bristles to the Nammoona Ballast Siding and to Clapham Yard in the dual gauge and in one of the narrow gauge tracks, and two narrow gauge sidings.  So upon testing these tracks in the afternoon, I think I have now fixed the current issues, but I will lay quite a few more tooth brush bristles in other areas in the coming weeks.

On Saturday afternoon, I resumed my task of completing the second diorama module for the upcoming Modelling the Railways of QLD Convention in Beenleigh in 3 weeks time.  So I completed one small road bridge and substantially completed a second bridge built from scratch and also erected quite a few fences.  Today I completed the bridge laid some transoms and then laid the track and added a few trees, etc..  There is still some detail items yet to be added.   That just leaves me with next week to complete my notes for my session.  I have started that, but it still has a fair way to go.

Also on Saturday afternoon, I decided to revisit a dual gauge point that is in the dual gauge lead into Acacia Ridge Yard.  This allows a HO scale (16.5mm) shunt engine to be located here.  However, all the trains were stalling going throw this set of points.  So I identified that it was all the result of the point blade not making sufficient contact with the stock rail.  So that was fix and I have now successfully run a 12mm loco through this point in two directions very slowly and it no longer stalls.  I have also run the 16.5mm shunt loco through and it also no longer stalls.  I did also use my razor saw to smooth the narrow gauge wheel path where it crosses over the diverging point rail from the standard gauge.  So I must admit, that while all the rollingstock does rock and roll through the points, nothing derails.  So this work can be described as very successful.

Today I went down and reprogrammed my NCE Mini Panel located at Loco Pilly and added the throwing of a standard gauge set of points fitted with a relay to ensure that when my narrow gauge track 2 is set, the relay ensures that the frog has the correct polarity.  That has been tested and works well.  While I had the NCE Mini Panel accessible, I decided to connect up the 9 wires and a common wire that will eventually be connected to the new Rocklea Control Panel which has been built, but not wired up and installed as yet.  Maybe next weekend's task.

On Monday there is another open layout tour, which I am taking part in.  I have arranged my retired mate, Lefty, from up the road (next suburb) to come over, drink beer and run train while another at least four Convention attendees (and a few other mates) to pop over for a visit.

I also had a bit of a win on Saturday while at the local train shop.  I picked up a set of 3 Wuiske louvre vans as a birthday present and on Monday I should also be getting another three tautliner wagons off a mate.  So from those two transactions, my number of 12mm wagons had almost increased by 50%. Seven wagons will become 13 wagons.  By Christmas next year, I might have most of my roster completed, that is if I can get the various 12mm wagons that I'm after from the shops.  Maybe a rerun of the various coal and grain wagons may be needed.