I took advantage of Australia Day this week and made it into a looong weekend by having a holiday on Monday. I visited the local hobby store to install a level crossing detector on his shelf layout. However, someone forgot to take heat shrink with him didn't he. I went back on Friday afternoon after work, and added heat shrink and discovered that the setup was not working 100%. Mind you there is no flashing lights installed as yet, but the Arduino located under the layout also shows the flashing of the lights. So I'm not certain what was wrong. So I went home checked the code out and realised that there was one line of code that needed to be changed, however, I had installed the jumper for dual track activation, instead of single track. So on Saturday I removed the jumper and he seemed to be working perfectly. I updated the code on the flashed three more Arduinos with the latest code.
Late on Saturday afternoon I spent some time adding a three inch baseboard infill in a dogleg on the top level of the layout located in narrow gauge – Acacia Ridge Yard. This infill will allow one extra siding to be installed and join up two sections of the narrow gauge yard. So that was done in late afternoon. I plan to use this track to store my narrow gauge container wagons. I think I have 4 or maybe 5, and soon to have a sixth.
I then adjourned to the kitchen table and started doing a bit of modelling. The first activity was working out ways to create my own concrete plinths for the various NSWGR 20,000 and 40,000 gallon water tanks with steel bases that I have scattered around my layout. I had some 3mm styrene, which I cut up into (near enough) squares which will be painted grey to represent aged concrete.
My next job was working on my Kyogle Norco Dairy building. I was putting together the front and back sections of a Walther’s kit to be both on the front of the building, thus doubling the building's length. Thus my kit was twice as long and I can just have a generic 1mm styrene rear which no one will be able to see. I glued these two pieces together and then added one shed end to the construction, and I worked out how I was going to make an extended inside deck for the shed. I cut up some styrene and spliced that with the existing components in the kit. I also studied some photos of the Kyogle Norco Dairy building, and determined that in order to make my model look like the Kyogle building, I needed to add a piece of plain walling before the first shed sliding door. This plain walling has a standard personal access doorway. So I cut out a section of plain siding (i.e. no sliding shed doors) from the other end of the building and spliced that bit back together at the right hand end. It was starting to look pretty good.
Today I cut out a section of plain styrene for the rear wall and added the other end section. I also added a window to this end wall, as the Kyogle building had one at that end. I found some styrene roofing material to represent corrugated iron and spliced two lengths together and then glued the two original roof section together so that are long enough for the rear of the roof. I added some internal bracing to support the long roof and it is starting to look pretty even better. I also started on a loading platform deck and underneath detail built out of timber and this has been cut up and stained. So assembly and fixing to the model will be next weekend’s job. I now need to make a secondary roof over the platform deck as this was what the Kyogle building looked like.
Next week, I will also add some guttering to the building. The last task will be to paint the shed basically white, with some splashes of blue and then affix the deck and lots of downpipes. These downpipes will thankfully hide the joins in the various section along the front of the shed.
I went to Jaycar today and bit the bullet and bought one of those Nibbling tools. I tried it on the shed I am building when I needed to cut out the door and the window holes. This tool is just great. Pretty Good for $14.95.
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