Last Operations Session for 2020 – Might Also Have Been the First One as Well!

This week, I have been working towards getting about 24 HO scale clothes lines completed.  I also painted the last two of my scratch built 12mm wagons.  A quick stocktake reveals that I think I have about 26 scratch built QR 12mm wagons on the layout.  More are planned for next year.

I also had to do some maintenance work on the layout including fixing the headsets system.  I had one plug in point for my head set setup that was broken when I did some fascia work during the year, and I also found two other points that were also playing up, as two wires came off the headset plug in point and knocked that plug in point down stream out of action.  So a test on the layout on Thursday was quick to identify what was wrong with the plug in point when I damaged it when I did the fascia work.  The other two were also easy to fix. 

I did a bit of a tidy up inside the shed by removing many half-finished projects and then got the tea/coffee making facilities ready.  I also washed down the outdoor furniture ready for the crew to come along.

So some of my other down time during the week, has been spent making another 52 pallets.  These will be painted on Tuesday this week.  The next tasks will be to build two more QR wagons.  I also have to add some nice 3D printed detail that a mate gave me to the layout.  More on that next week - or maybe during the week.

Today I had the pleasure of having 9 mates come over (1 other so called mate decided to go drinking somewhere else, two other mates were away with their families) to run a train or two for the last time in 2020.  I had most of my usual crew and Brad along for the first time.  Brad and Marty were there to film some footage for a session to be broadcast on NMRA-X on Monday 28/12/2020 at about 11:00am Queensland time.  We ran 27 trains in the three hour Operations Session.  Some of these trains are very short in terms of time to complete, while others take a long time to run and have to cross sometimes three other trains in the opposite direction on my single track layout.  They can take close to an hour to run.  Some have some rather difficult to follow shunting movements to complete.  Sure we had some issues, but other bits ran very well.  We had some issues with our headsets.  I different one that didn't touch during the week, decided to go down.  I can see a wire off the back of this one.  I think I will have to disconnect the whole headset system and then re-connect it bit by bit and see if I have some sort of crossed wire somewhere, as there is a huge scream in the headsets.  I don’t think the scream is caused by the headset bus line, being parallel to the DCC track bus.

So I recently replaced some of my old NSW RUB cars with new ones from Auscision and wouldn’t you know it, this train caused all sorts of issues when it was run.  So the old train ran well.  The complete new RUB set ran well, but when intermixed, they did not go too well together.  Of course because they ran well separately in their original trains consists, I did not test the new hybrid train prior to the Operations Session.  Guess what I will be doing next week?  A couple of other trains stalled at various locations, a few wagons derailed, my steel train ran abysmally, one loco went belly up and stopped working.  So I will re-run these trains during the next week and try and sort out their issues.  I have a couple of track sections to fix up where some power feeds were displaced.  While the camera crew got photos, I did not get any. 

Thanks to my crew for coming over, participating in the Operations Sessions, and having overall good time.