Modelling Comp Entry Completed – Other Fun Models Almost

This week started off with NMRA-X last Sunday.  I was giving my presentation at 11:00am my time.  I started watching from around 8:00am and went through until the end at about 2:00pm.  On Tuesday night and Wednesday night I also got online and was talking to a few people.  On Friday I went to a local cheap shop and purchased two LED candles.  These were the basis of two pot belly stoves that now have a flickering LED in them. 

On Saturday morning I met up with Darren, Geoff and Brendan at the Modeller’s Warehouse open day with sales tables and a BBQ.   I was dumbfounded when we were all out the front and a bus pulled up.  It had RailBus on its destination board – OMG.  Someone has hijacked a rail-replacement-bus and driven it to the model shop!  It turned out being the guys from AMRA had hired a bus from their clubrooms over to the shop.  

The Railbus outside Modeller's Warehouse

I may have bought a few trees at the sale day.  I did see a few NMRA members there, a couple of RMCQ members and a few Logan guys.  It was a great day.  I showed off my Flickering Pot belly stove and I think the guys enjoyed it.

A pot belly stove with its flickering LED inside

A closer up photo

When I got home, I decided to work on my diorama for the RMCQ Christmas Party Modelling Competition in 2 weeks time.  Well It is now complete.  It is a small 6 inch x 6 inch diorama.  I am quite happy with it.  It comprised a couple of trees I purchased today and some other items that I had purchased previously and other items I scratch built.  I will post a photo in 2 weeks time after the Competition judging.  I am thinking that I might have to add a tree house to the tree, but this may not get completed and added.  I’m still undecided.

So today I sat at the kitchen table and built up another 6 pot belly stoves.  These have been assembled, have working opening front doors, and have been painted up.  I’m just missing the flickering LEDs.  I will try and get 6 flicking LEDs tomorrow.  I know where they are supposed to be stocked.

Bob's Visit and NMRA-X

On Tuesday this week the Tuesday Nighters gathered at Barnacle Bob’s place for our fortnightly meeting.  We got another look at this fantastic layout.  I have quite a few photos to add to this blog entry at the end to show off the layout.  I took some of my new HO and HOE wagons to Bob’s place and loaded three onto a siding.  Bob soon dispatched a loco over to where they were and took them for spin.  Well, they needed some additional weight.  The coupler on some had locked up so that needed some work and the bogie screw was too tight on some and all these things together made them run quite poorly.  But they get round and back again even if they had to be re-railed a few times.  So on Friday afternoon, I added some sheet lead weights to the bottom of the five 12 mm wagons.  I moved the couplers back and forth to break the glue hold and did a quick job to free up the coupler swing< when the couplers were installed, a touch of glue must have got inside my coupler pockets.  Nothing that cannot be quickly overcome.  I also adjusted a couple of bogie screws.  Next job was to dull coat the insides of the wagons.  So I have given then a basic run at home in Acacia Ridge Yard and they might still be too light,  I will look at installing some more lead weight next weekend.

While we were at Bob’s I glimpsed an old pot belly stove.  I asked Bob is it was one that I made and he advised yes.  It scrubbed up quite well.  So the conversation turned to making it have a fire inside it, just like my incinerators.  Challenge accepted!  So I rummaged around at home on Saturday and found some styrene to make up some new pot belly stoves or three.  The plan is to buy some more LEDs (I didn’t get around to doing anything this weekend) and maybe also have a door that can open on the front of the pot belly.  So I have made up three new stoves, and cut the door out.  One night this week I will try and make a hinge on the door so it will open and close.  I will then install the LED, connect it to a power source and see if it can boil some water.  Watch this space!

Today was the latest NMRA-X convention online on Facebook and YouTube.  I was rostered on at 11:00am to talk about Building Pallets.  My presentation was a very simple demonstration of how to build some HO scale pallets and features some prototype photos and model photos of using pallets around the layout.  Now that this activity has been completed, I need to prepare my next NMRA-X presentation next year on creating a timetable graph for an operations session.  However, before this task, I need to do a few more things on the layout.  One job is to install some more crossovers in Grafton Yard on my concentric return loops.  I also have to do some more testing of the narrow gauge timetable, given that the numbers of wagons keeps growing.  I also need to potentially add one if not two more 12 mm sidings to store these additional 12mm wagons.  Another task I need to do before the next Operations Session is to build maybe another 5 flat wagons for various loads like sugar bins and cement bins and a few more items coming soon.

I believe I have about 5 weeks to set all this up and get read for an operations day.

So here are some photos from Barnacle Bob’s layout visit on Tuesday night this week.

Some beasts in a yard fattening up.

Close up of the beasts.

This wind mill turns and it looks like water is pumping into the open trough.

A baby osprey is nesting up the mobile tower.

The local school sees some action.

Inspector Bob is supervising the car being removed from the creek.

Crickey!  Vegemite sandwiches.

This shot shes the detail of a ditch next to the road overrun by weeds.

An incinerator roaring away.

Work site.

Shopping trolley lost in the mangroves.

Fire extinguisher at the work place.

Two tree fellers with a chain saw.

Seconds later, the tree comes down.

Concrete being laid.  The cement truck has its bowl turning.

A boat with rods in the back along with life vests.  Bob thinks of everything.

My pot belly stove.

Rural fire station will bell out the front.  Next door is the local toilet block, with light posts guiding the way around the outside.

Rubbish in the mangroves.

Someones boat with a tree growing up through it.  A crab is walking through the shallows in front of the boat.

Security access point in the business to open the automatic gate.

A tyre in the mud on the banks of the creek.

Someone fishing off the jetty.  He has pulled into two mud crabs.

Silver Bullet crossing the automated level crossing.  Detection circuitry and logic by me.

is that PK in the trailer?

Some ducks swimming in a very dirty creek.

Bee hives in the bush.

An old derelict church.

A gantry crane to load/unload logs at the saw mill.

A very nice log wagon.

Jack chopping some firewood.

A rubbish bin on the wharf.

The garage has a working hoist and some spare tyres for sale.

Some of the crew inspecting the layout.

Looks like some business has just been transacted.

A HO and 2 x HOE wagons.

Some more junk on the banks of the creek.

A skeleton of a cow in Mosquito creek.

Another shot of the lights outside the toilet block.

Washing going up and when completed, I'm Mary will sit in one of her chairs under the shade tree.

5 New Wagons Almost Ready For Use

So this week I was diligently sitting at the Kitchen table on some evenings adding more details to the next lot of 5 QR wagons for the layout, until I ran out of the particular sizes of styrene strip.  So in the morning on Saturday I stopped off at two hobby shops - the third was closed, and picked up some packets of styrene at one, and another packet of 5 pairs of 12mm bogies at the other.  The bogies are for my next lot of scratch built QR wagons.  I then went to the Club for our monthly meeting, sausage sizzle and a natter.  Yesterday afternoon after returning from the Club, I cut up the remaining pieces of styrene to make the centre sills on the wagons.  Today I made up my own coupler pockets and added the top lip of the wagon sides.  I then got the wagons ready for painting.

I then bit the bullet and masked up the two HOE steel carrying wagons.  I then painted the insides of the wagons a mission brown colour.  After that dried, I masked up the wagons again and then painted the outside of the two wagons a nice white.  After another couple of hours, I sprayed some blue paint into a small cup and then used a paint brush to paint the bottom lip of wagon a blue colour.  The blue paint I had is just slightly lighter that the pictures I had of the wagons.

I then painted the three HO wagons a QR grey colour.  These were allowed to dry a bit, before being hit with some mission brown weathering inside the wagon.  I think these turned out quite good, if I do say so myself.

So I was lucky to receive these two photos of some HOE wagons at Acacia Ridge Yard from Arthur Hayes - no doubt taken during his time working there.

Photo by Arthur Hayes of QR HOE wagon

Photo by Arthur Hayes of QR HOE wagons

So tonight, I think I will be fitting couplers to those newly painted wagons that are without couplers and then re-fitting the bogies.  A couple of the wagons still need some lead sheet added to inside the wagon centre sill.  That will occur next weekend.  I will not be fitting the BHP decalling to these wagons.

Tuesday this week we are heading over to Captain Barnacle Bob’s Mosquito Creek Layout.  I can’t wait as this layout just gets better each time I see it.  I will take my camera this time to get some detail shots.

NMRA-X is on this coming weekend – Saturday evening to Sunday morning, and I will be giving a presentation on Sunday morning.

Back to Business

On Tuesday night this week ten of us met at Dr Peter’s place for a great night of discussion and solving lots of modelling problems.  There were a few items changing hands between attendees.  People getting rid of excess items and others sharing in a mail delivery by one of the group and splitting postage costs.  This can be a great source of savings in your modelling budget.

This weekend started with a trip to some local train shops on Saturday morning.  I was looking for some evergreen styrene strip, but they didn’t have any so I only ended up buying a single length of code 40 rail.  I use small lengths of the rail as sign posts to which I add give way and stop signs.  That could be a job for next weekend.

Today I decided to revisit my styrene modelling desk and see what was buried on the cutting board.  Lots of paper, a magazine and then I found some QR HO and HOE wagons in various states of completion.  Also on my cutting board, was what appeared to be parts of a buildings I had cut out.  Now that had me stumped.  I could not work out what I was building.  After about 30 minutes of racking my brain, I worked out that that was the station building for Kyogle Station.  How could I forget that?  Well I did for a while.  This will be put back on the 'To do' list for an early December task when I’m on Holidays.

My main aim at the moment is complete the unfinished QR HO and HOE wagons and then scratch build maybe another 5 QR flat wagons.  I will then add all these new wagons to the narrow gauge timetable and work out where I can store these wagons on the layout and modify the timetable cards accordingly.  I then intend to run through the narrow gauge timetable at least twice before the end of December. 

Now back to the task of completing the HO and HOE wagons.  On the layout I had one painted QR HO wagon which does look quite good, as well as an unpainted but substantially completed HO wagon.  The cutting board had two HO wagons and 2 HOE wagons.  So I looked closely at some photos of QR HO wagons and realised that my substantially completed HO wagon did not have a lip on the wagon underframe.  So this was easily added with some 0.030” x 0.060” styrene strip added to the underframe and I feel that this wagon is now completed.  I then added the same underframe lips to the other 2 HO and 2 HOE wagons.  The two HO wagons have had some ribs added to the sides and ends of the wagons, as well as data boards, bogie bolsters, a wagon underframe and a wagon gunwale.

I also added KD’s to one of the two HO wagons. I ran out of time to do that to the second HO wagon.  I need a length of styrene that I will pick up this coming weekend on my way to the Club.  This styrene strip is to complete the underframe detail – on the wagon centre sill.  Next Saturday afternoon, I intend to paint the three completed QR HO wagons.  After that I will add some lead weight to the space between the wagon sill sides and these wagons will be ready to place and operate on the layout.

Next Sunday I will then start and hopefully complete the two HOE wagons, and maybe even get around to painting them as well.  Over the next few weeks, I think I will have to buy another packet of 5 pairs of 12mm bogies from one of the local hobby shops.  Then I can start the building of the next lot of 12mm flat wagons.  The earlier I complete this task, the earlier I can start the 12mm layout testing, before my next Operations session after Christmas this year.

Back to Work

I had big plans for this weekend.  I had Friday off but spent the morning removing a palm tree, and some trunks off a pony tail palm and I ended up stuffing my back.  I am walking around like Quasimodo.  However, later in the afternoon, I did paint up 25 pallets a wood colour.  I also painted my two staff machines which Greg 3D printed for me.  They were looking a very nice red colour.  However, I dropped one of them in the shed and the top of one of the staff machines went ping!  It went somewhere and I had no idea where.  So now I'm reduced to one and a half staff machines for the layout.  later that evening I did sit at the Kitchen table and work on putting together a few slatted doors on some wooden sheds.  I think they turned out quite good.

On Saturday morning I met up with a few (or 7) guys I used to work with from work (and a few of their wives) at the Breakfast Creek Hotel purely for medicinal purposes and we all had a very nice lunch.  I caught the train to Bowen Hills station and walked the 1.5km there with PK and did the same in reverse.  My back is still stuffed today, so I might need a second dose of medicine!

Today I went to our Club as they hosted their first Buy and Sell for the year.  There was plenty of hand sanitiser everywhere.  Almost all tables were sold, and plenty of buyers turned up with plenty of money.  Besides the main clubrooms, the trailer shed and our front and back verandas, a number of small gazebos were positioned around the club lease and a few tables were put in each.  The gazebos were placed a few metres apart mostly down the side of the shed.  The Club also sold plenty of left over democracy sausages and cold drinks (as it was quite warm today) and I think everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.  We had a few guys visit from Toowoomba, and Bill came down from the Sunshine Coast and had the table next to me.  A few others from the Sunshine Coast were also spotted.  We also had a few Tuesday Nighter's turn up.  It was great to catch up with quite a few guys at this Buy and Sell.  It was the first time some of them have visited the Clubrooms and they were all quite impressed after having a quick tour. 

I even sold some stuff, as well as buying plenty of much needed items and still ended up with excess folding denominations of plastic in my wallet.  It looks like some of the things that I thought would go gang-busters didn’t generate any interest and if I had some more of other items, I probably would have sold them all.  So that just means that I have to build some more of those successful items for the next Buy and Sell next year.

We have Tuesday Nighter’s this week at Dr Peter’s place.  It will be good to see what Dr Peter has done on his layout since we last visited.  My Back might be back to normal by then.