Inspiration and Then Weathering and Loads

On Tuesday night this week, we ventured over to Bob’s place for our regular meeting.  It was a good turn up and we were treated to some fantastic progress on Mosquito Creek.  This layout already had a very nice terminus section with some perway sidings and other industries already installed.  Last time we visited we got to see the fantastically scratch built bridge that spans over Mosquito Creek.  This bridge just looks like a typical Queensland Railways bridge that spans a flood plain where the bridge dips down in the middle.  When Bob runs a loco over it, even a very light QR Silver bullet (2000 class) Railmotor you can even hear the creaks and groans of the old timber beams under the weight of the train.

This visit was no exception with even more progress.  Holy Crap!  I have never seen mangroves modelled before.  The creek that leads past the wharf area, and which will be the main town location (most probably started on our next visit), then runs off into a small creek.  The mangroves along the banks of the creek were fantastic.  I could even small the mud at low tide.  I'm sure a saw a crab or two out of the corner of my eye.  It was one of the model brilliant modelling efforts of any sort of water way that I have ever seen.  I think all in attendance that night were just blown away.  Further up the creek, there is boat ramp and a small camping ground.  The detail is just phenomenal.  I think people were having night mares when thinking of the quality of Bob’s work.

I viewed this layout just when I could not get motivated to do anything down in the train shed except sit down and vegetate or maybe just walk around with a can of cold ale.  This inspirations visit to Bob's place, followed by hearing that I have an article in the next AMRM along with another Tuesday Nighter, and that started to get the modelling juices flowing again.  We then found out that Arthur had sent down an article about loads for open wagons and we have seen his finished product, that he is talking about.  More inspirations!

This Friday afternoon, I went down to the shed and decided to glue some coal dust onto three more styrene loads.  That was completed and that was it.  I think that was the sum of my modelling efforts for the whole week that I had a home following some surgery on Monday evening to remove a few BCCs around my face.  I did look like some horror movie character with the bandages on my face for a few days.  Now you can hardly see where the dissolvable stitches were placed.

Saturday was RMCQ meeting day.  I had a good time talking to my mates over there.  I have decided to run a modelling session in maybe February next year at the Club, where we will make various removable loads for either coal wagons or ballast wagons.  We could even do some wood chip wagons for the US modellers if they are interested.  Maybe we can do some Iron Ore loads, as I saw quite a few of these wagons running around on the Club layout yesterday.  I will call for expressions of interest and numbers of each type of wagon.  I will source all the products required and we will put them together on the day and attendees will pay just a couple of dollars for the expendables used for each wagon load.  We don’t care if the wagons are HO or N scale.  We will try and get the members into doing some actual modelling.  At the Club meeting, it was resolved that the Annual RMCQ Modelling competition will be on the Saturday in December.  While the RMCQ Christmas party will be on the Sunday.  So what this means is that I need to create a few items for the modelling competition.  So last night I started to make a list of potential items that I can create over the next month for the modelling competition.

So this arvo I went down to the shed and did some weathering.  Firstly I added some graffiti decals to two of my four narrow gauge coal wagons.  I then weathered all four narrow gauge coal wagons.  While at it, I decided to weather another four narrow gauge wagons.  I did this to one WHO open wagon, two taughtliners and one QLX louvre van.  I think they came up pretty well.  The next task for me was to try and make some 4x4 weathered timbers for stowing in my WHO wagons.  While at it, I decided to try and make some wire reo-bar loads for my open wagons.  I had a coil of 0.9mm galvanised wire in the shed, and then was laid out and pulled tight, and then wrapped around a couple of screws and then cut off into 5 bundles of 10 lengths of wire.  These were then bound with some other very fine wire that I had lying around.  They look quite nice sitting in two of my WHO wagons.

So I doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that I might be presenting a graffitied loaded coal wagon or two, a few more weathered narrow gauge wagons, maybe another wagon with a load of reo-bar in it.  Still plenty to do to complete these models.