A Week Away

I spent most of week just gone down the Gold Coast.  It was quite wet on Tuesday and early Wednesday.  But I did get to the beach and the pool on every other day.  So I did some styrene building on Tuesday.  I made two strings of pallets.  However, that was my extent of my motivation to build anything.  I had plans to do lots of work, but never got around to it.  I did check out the local $2 shop at Coolangatta and found some LED flickering candles that were controlled by an infra-red remote on-off switch.  How good is that?  So I just had to buy a packet of 12 of these.  I experimented with two and by just directing the infra-red remote directly at the candle you can get one to turn on/off independently to the others.  I will remove the IR circuit from the candles and add it my various LED power circuits on my layout – car headlights, street lights, incinerators, and other items, so that I can now independently control them now without having a switch positioned on the fascia.

The only other activity I did during the week was draw up some track plans for my NMRA AP paperwork for Model Railroad Engineer – CIVIL.  That was completed and now I just need to tweak these diagrams and I am almost ready to submit that paperwork for assessment.  I also did some drawings for a stub ended set of dual gauge points for Acacia Ridge Yard.  That is on my future building list.  I also did some detailed planning for my walk over bridge above Grafton Yard Loops to gain entry to the access point inside the return loops so I can work on Acacia Ridge Yard and Rocklea Sidings.

When we came home on Friday night, I was able to spend some time modelling on Saturday and Sunday.  I started off doing some decaling.  I had two PGC Scale Models QGA grain wagons, that needed decals to be applied.  That was easily done and I might have tweaked the decals slightly.  I remember standing on the platform at Corinda station on my way to school in the late 70’s and seeing a grain wagon going around the angle from Sherwood towards Tennyson.  That wagon had ‘Bulk Rain’ on the side.  I assumed that some smart aleck had removed the G from the work Grain.  I always remember this sighting, so now I have one of those wagons on my layout as well.  Arthur advised that another wagon had its signage tweaked, was another  Bulk Grain wagon that was enhanced to become a ‘Bulk Pain’ wagon.  So I now have one of those wagons as well.  Settle down PK, there is no mistress here to inflict the type of pain you might be interested in.  I took the completed wagons down to the shed and gave them a run.  They look very nice.  I now have 16 narrow gauge grain wagons, in service, split into two rakes of 8 wagons.  While shunting those grain wagons in Acacia Ridge Yard, I had two other grain wagons lose their bogie screw sand the bogie fell off.  I almost had grain spilt everywhere but we were only travelling at low speed.  I had only just recently added these new 12mm bogies and screws and maybe I used a too thick drill to tap the screw holes.  So these two grains wagons were fixed last night.

I also spent some time yesterday applying Panel Line Accent Colors on a CGL models HWO and a HWOS wagon.  These came out just brilliantly.  The next task today was installing some styrene sleepers under a gauge splitter turnout in Clapham Yard.  This was completed and the turnout is now ready for ballasting - maybe a task I will complete one night this week.  I also painted the PC board sleepers in this turnout and in another piece of track that I must ballast before submitting my AP paperwork for Model Railroad Engineer – CIVIL. 

Next task today was to pull out some timber and start cutting it up to make the walk over bridge for above Grafton Yard.  A quick check on my screw supplies, revealed that I had enough to allow me to join some 90mm x 35mm pine together to make the bridge.  So the bridge was also completed.  I will add some ply to the walkway next weekend, and then think about the ladder to be positioned in the layout room aisle to gain access to the walk over bridge.

Next weekend is the Club Christmas Party and our modelling competition.  It is also the NMRA Divisional Christmas Party.  I can only be at one place at a time, so this time the Club event won out.  I plan on entering my two QGA grain wagons, and the HWO and HWOS wagons and a building or two that I kitbashed or scratchbuilt during the year, into the yearly modelling competition.  This only works out to be a popularity contest and voters don’t take into account the work that has gone into making any of the models.