This week I returned to work after a week of holidays. I hate work! I finished early on Friday and got everything read to take to the Club for our Modelling Competition and Christmas BBQ. There was quite a few members in attendance at the Club yesterday - maybe over 40. There were a few invited guests from the Local council and ex-councillors. It was good to say thanks to our leaser.
There was some good models in the competition, but unfortunately I didn’t get a trophy. There is always next year. The competition has basically reverted to a popularity competition and we no longer judge modelling ability. I think we need to re-introduce some different categories next year so we can have different types of models correctly judged against items of similar construction. This is what we used to do, but the number of entries had declined until this year, when we got well over 20 entries. There was some very nice entries, including some scenes on our Club layouts that were entered. To me printing a model in 3D and presenting that is not in the same category as scratch building the same item in wood or styrene. The voting yesterday was just a popularity contest and of course none of the voters judged those entries against a list of skills and techniques which would be taken into account for a modelling competition. Oh I like that in green – tick – that is my vote.
Anyway, it was a good day. I had some good discussions and plenty of laughs. I also missed out on the 7 or 8 Christmas hampers that we assembled for the day.
Before I went to the Club, I stopped off at a couple of hobby shops. I needed some rail joiners which I got at Austral Modelcraft and some styrene which I got from the shop near the club - RC Models.
Today I went down to the Shed just before lunch and ran the remaining 13 trains. I adjusted some bogies, couplers and some track. I also re-read the timetable cards to ensure that the instructions make sense and are able to be followed. The timetable cards have been re-ordered. The timetable has now been reset ready for the upcoming Operating Session in a couple of weeks time. Everything in the standard gauge setup is in its correct place. I need to print off a couple of timetable cards, as these were written on during the last time they were used. That is what the crew is supposed to do – to report issues to me.
Late this afternoon, I started installing the series of crossover points in Grafton Yard. That will allow trains to slip between track 1 to track 2, track 2 to track 3 and track 3 to track 4 in the various return loops that is Grafton Yard. I will complete this activity tomorrow afternoon and then I will need to add some electrical jumpers around the various sets of points. I still have three other sections of track that has track connectivity issues so that will be investigated at the same time tomorrow afternoon.
Tomorrow I hope to also do some adjusting of the wagons in consists of the Brisbane Limited and the North Coast Motorail. I will add some of my Auscision RUB coaches and FAM Sleepers to each train and remove some of my Calipari coaches – some are even unpainted. The new consists will then get a run on the layout end to end to test them before the Operating Session. Now where did I place my train consist information?
The only major task left to do before the Operating Session is test the headsets – next week’s job. I know that some of these plug in points need some work, as I damaged at least one plug in point when I added some fascia.
I will then start planning for the next lot of narrow gauge wagons that I will be building over the Christmas Holiday break. After the next four wagons are complete, I will be building some more removable steel loads, some clothes lines, and some box trailers.
No comments:
Post a Comment