The Countdown Begins

Earlier in the week I sent out an email to my operations crew about an upcoming Operating Session after Christmas.  Little by little the replies are dribbling in.  So far I have 6 YES's and a couple of NO's.  We have not operated on the layout since last Christmas.  But I have done quite a bit of scenery work, including ballasting, backdrops and building additions.  So it will hopefully be an eye opener for the crew.

After dinner on Friday night with nothing on the idiot box, I went to the shed and laid ballast on a gauge splitter piece of track, that I need for by AP - CIVIL.  That didn’t take long.  Next task was to come up stairs and pack my models and the items I was taking to the Club on Saturday into the car.  That allowed me an early get away on Saturday morning.  However, before I put the models into the car, I did a last minute adjustment on my two Grain wagons – Pain and Rain, I got my Panel Line Accent Colors out and did some more weathering work on them.  They had some rust added to the bogies and a few nooks and crannies got some black, and brown colours.  The walkways were weathered as well.  I also added some light greys.  I think the two grain wagons came up better looking than a wagon straight from the paint shop.

So I hit the road early on Saturday.  When I got there I saw that a tree had come down in the Club car park.  The result of a storm through the area on Wednesday afternoon.  

The tree in the carpark down after the storm

The BBQ was fired up after 11:00am and a very nice Christmas feast was cooked by the crew, with a few salads and bread rolls also available.  After that we had the various Christmas Hampers raffled off.  Unfortunately I did not win any of the 7 hampers available.  We had about 50 people turn up and there were a few presentations may as well.  Congratulations to those winners.  A very good day.  The main reason for attending was to enter my models into the modelling competition.  To put it bluntly, member participation was crap.  There was only 9 entries in the 3 categories.  I had 6 in one category alone.  So it was quite obvious that I won that category.  But it was tight between Me, myself, I, the winner, the runner up and the guy that came last.

I mentioned last week that ‘This sometimes works out to be a popularity contest and voters don’t take into account the work and modelling skills and effort that has gone into making any of the models.’ and my comment came true.  In one of the categories, there was a G Scale 3D printed train and an N scale scene on the Clubroom layout.  It was obvious what the N scale people voted for, when it was obvious to me where the modelling skills and effort were displayed.  I can say ripped off.

The beginner's category.  One entry and unanimous winner.

Fantastic Modelling here

The Border Loop signalman's house.  The winning entry.  Out the back are two water tanks.  on the verandah are some lounge chairs and a couple of side tables to but their cold drinks on.

The Kyogle Butter Factory.  this has graffiti on the back wall.

The QGA bulk grain wagon.  This one is called Pain.

The QGA bulk grain wagon.  This one is called Rain.

The QR WHOS wagon, made from a WHO wagon, with the blue ends painted on making it a WHOS wagon and a steel load added in a heavily weathered wagon.

A standard QR WHO wagon with a weathered inside.  A few pieces of dunnage and a few tarps are inside the wagon.

Anyway, I spent most of the time at the Club drinking a few tubes, talking to my mates and eating a packet of Cheezels that I bought along to share for the day.  PK dropped off my can of Yellow Oxide that he picked up a couple of weeks back.  Not bad for $4.00.  So the guys dispersed after 3:00pm and when I got home, I had time to mowed the grass.

So today I cut up some pieces of ply and made a deck for the access bridge over the Grafton Loops area, to allow quick access to the inside of the loops.  I also added some sleepers under my last piece of track required for my AP – CIVIL and then applied ballast.  So I will test the track maybe later tonight or perhaps on Tuesday before I head off to Tuesday Nighters.  Today I decided to build a portable NCE Powercab test track until I found out my existing 12V power supplies did not fit the PCP plug.  That was indeed a bummer.  The portable Powercab setup was to be used to provide power to clean the wheels of various locos in the leadup to the next operations session after Christmas, when I am in the house or even if I am online during one of the various online events that I attend during the week.  So I made a trip to Jaycar and found some plugs that allowed me to make a physical connection from the power supply to the PCP.  I manually wired the two intermediate plugs together.  I gave the test track a quick test and all is OK.  My test track is dual gauge so I can use it to test and clean HO or HOn 3 1/2 gauge locos.

Not many opportunities left to get things ready for my operations session.  So I must create a list, check it twice and actually do all the tasks on the list.  I calculate that there are about 5 ¼ work days available to do my stuff in the shed in perataion.