Technical Consultant

Tuesday this week we visited my mate Dave’s place for our fortnightly get together.  He had an issue on his layout, where the throttles on his NCE Power-Pro system were not firing up.  I knew what that was.  He had to take his command station apart and try reseating his mother board.  The first time, I felt the top board sink into the bottom board, but it still did not solve the issue.   So I did it again, I slightly lifted the top board and then pushed it home again and this time the system came good after the next power on.  Later we heard that Dave’s command station might have had a fall from a 12-18 inch high shelf onto the baseboard below.  I should publish my consultancy rates:-

• Me fixing your problem $20
• Me fixing your problem with you watching $50
• Me fixing your problem with you helping $100

This weekend, I have spent most of the time sitting in front of the TV watching the cricket.  This afternoon I did that at a family get together in front of someone else's TV and having a few ales at a family get together.  So not much was accomplished train wise this weekend, except that I painted up about 8 teabag tarpaulins yesterday.  These just need to be cut up and rolled up into individual tarps.  I also got around to a task that has taken well over 10 years to do.  I mounted some picture frames on one of the A-frames in the shed ceiling.  These included some nice A4 water colours of NSW railways, and the first two of my NMRA achievement certificates.  So these were mounted yesterday.  On Tuesday night, Arthur, our NMRA Achievement Program representative for Div 1., handed out my first two awards at our Tuesday Nighters meeting, as I did not get to the NMRA meeting the previous weekend as I had some family activities to attend to.  Normally there are quite a few NMRA members at our regular Tuesday night get together, but there were not many there on this Tuesday.

So this was a bit of a thrill.   That just reminds me I need to pull my finger out and complete the paperwork for the next three of the awards that I wish to apply for over the Christmas period.