Progress Being Made

I had plans this weekend to continue work on my QR HO wagon, but nothing has been done as yet.  Yesterday I went to the Club and showed off the progress on that wagon and my three AKFX/Y wagons, and my rail loads.  Again I get the question about what size rail did I use.  The answer continues to be none - it is styrene.  I also had on display two QR HWO wagons which I had painted/weathered the inside of the open wagon.  While at the Club, I was able to score two pair of 2CN bogies from B2.  Thanks mate.  These will be used for my next two standard gauge scratch built wagons - whatever they turn out to be.  I also had to do some maintenance on a kit wagon (after sales service) that I had assembled and sold at a previous Buy and Sell.  One bogie on one of the three wagons kept coming off.  So I drilled a deeper hole for the screw and re-screwed the bogie and all was good.  I was also given four lengths of code 80 N scale flex track, which I will get around to cutting up to the same lengths as my AKFX/Y wagons rail loads.  So hopefully I will get around to building two real rail loads for these wagons and paint them and see how they look.

I was having discussions that the Club should arrange a day where members could bring a few wagons along and we could give their wagons a light weather.  I just hate pristine wagons that many of the ‘Plonkers’ in the Club run.  To me it just shows off, who has the biggest bank balance and doesn’t care about modelling skills – either learning or demonstrating.  There are a number of guys in the Club, who over the years have ably demonstrated that they can handle a spray gun to either dust up a wagon, paint the sides of the rails or dirty a loco grill.  Hopefully we will get a few of these guys together and set up a production line for members to bring one or 10 wagons and members can watch and learn.  Then we can get rid of the illusion of club full of ‘Plonkers’.  Maybe we can do it before the upcoming May Exhibition in Brisbane?  The Club’s new exhibition HO/ HOn layout is starting to come along quite nicely.  I think it might make its debut in Bundaberg in a few weeks, but I think it will also be going to the Brisbane May Show.  I might have to nick away from my Structure Building Stand at the Brisbane Show and put a train of scratch built and weathered QR wagons on a track and give them a lap or two around the layout.

Anyway today I sat in front of the TV and watched the cricket from Melbourne on TV and did some modelling.  Today’s task was to build a rail load for B2 and PK’s N scale wagons.  So I built two N scale rail loads, but only got around to painting one.  I also decided to paint the insides of three QR open wagons that got missed when I built and painted them a while back.  The 'white styrene look', just looks bad on a nice scale wagon.  So these were quickly painted with a quick spray of grey primer and returned to their current location on the layout.  I will go through my open wagon sin the near future and weather the insides of more open wagons.  I guess I should practice what I preach.

I also got my paints ready and tools ready for next weekends modelling day for the NMRA meeting.

But as of now, I still have not done any more work on my QR scratch built HO wagon.  I will see what juices flow tonight, when the family watches that TV show – I’m a crap dancer or something like that.

Tuesday night this week is up the road at Shelton’s, so it will be good to catch up with the crew again and see what they have all been up to.