Relaxing Weekend

Basically this weekend I did very little related to model trains at my place.  The weekend started soccer trials with my son, and then when we got home, it was time to visit Darren’s on Saturday and had a bit of a run on his layout.  This was Darren's turn to host the Tuesday Sighters on a Saturday.  Darren has now painted his fascia a nice dark green colour and helps make some items on his fascia really stand out.  Darren has also been doing some more scenery detailing on his layout.  He has sceniced a very nice section of railway right of way about 150cm long with fences either side, and cattle paddocks outside that.  Inside the fences, the grasses seem longer and there is also a little bit more greener.  It is just perfect.  A few suggestions were provided to further enhance the scene with some bee hives and some sort of abandoned farm machinery.  Just brilliant!  Darren with the help of his wife and daughter provided a fantastic lunch.  I think quite a few of us would have been quite content to just sit on a comfy chair and nod off to sleep after lunch.

Today the only thing I did was do down the shed for about 20 minutes and paint up about 11 tea bag tarpaulins in a nice yellow oxide colour and allow them to dry.  These are destined for use on some VR GY wagons on a mate’s layout.  I think they will turn out pretty good.

This week on Tuesday a few of us ventured over to David’s place for our usual Tuesday Nighters meeting.  David was running a Loco around the layout for all those present to see.  Proof that trains do indeed run.  I can’t wait until the last little bit of track arrives from OS and he installs it.  That will create some fantastic point work outside his Manchester station and will mean that trains can go on any route and get to every bit of track work.  That will be a great milestone.  He will then probably start running real trains on the layout.  That is locos and carriages, both passenger and goods, to shake the layout down and find any issues.   I’m sure the next major phase will be eletrofying the points with point motors and then that will then lead to the creation of some new control panels.  David does some very fine work when he builds his control panels.  That probably leads to me get involved and programming up the NCE Mini Panels with the codes to set his various routes at each of his major junctions.

My next week will involve planning for a Friday night at Simon’s Hobby Shop and attending his modelling night, and then on Saturday starting to get ready for an upcoming Operating Session around Easter.  I may even continue working on a couple of scratch built tarped QR open wagons for completion before Easter.