What a Great Hobby!

Last Sunday as usual I updated my blog documenting my activities and then a few hours later in my in-box was an electronic version of the plan that I had already obtained from the NSW railway archives.  It was sent from an acquaintance in NSW.  How good was that?  The electronic version was in the form of a TIF file.  This file format allows the drawing to scale and not cause the lines to grow in width.  It is a high quality graphics file format.

I did not see the email correspondence until the next morning.  After an exchange of emails, the drawing of the Casino Refreshment Rooms also appeared curtesy of this same person.  That certainly saved me from trying to contract the ARHS to see if they had a copy of that particular document in their archives.

Anyway, I also received a couple of other plans for Casino based items, in particular the Shunters and Examiners Accommodation, Workshop and Store.  This is one of the next items that I need to scratch build.  Thank you very much Bob!

I am currently waiting for a phone call from the local hobby shop to advise that their delivery of brick sheet has arrived.  Then I can start cutting up the sides of the station building and then the refreshment rooms.  I think that these station buildings will take me for the rest of the year to fully complete.

So today, while looking for things to do to while away the time, I painted up two AR Kits NOCY wagons.  I think one of these will swap places with another of my scratch build NOCYs that I made many years ago, and it will now be my match truck on my oil train.  I also spread a small amount of paint over a small section of plaster I laid in Kyogle the other weekend.

I then re-painted the old scratch built NOCY wagon whose paint job was chronic.  It was painted when I was running out of paint and there may have been bits that were not well painted at all.  So now the wagon also looks pretty good.  I then got around to applying decals to the two AR Kits NOCYs.

I finally updated my timetable cards for my oil train – both loaded and unloaded cards.  I also gave the train a bit of a run, and one wagon kept uncoupling.  So the troublesome wagon was taken aside and some time was spent trying to work out the best way to remedy the low coupling height issue.  So eventually I took some cotton and rigged it between the buffers with super glue and up under the coupler, so now it has lifted the coupler to be almost perfect.  We will see how long this solution lasts.

I also looked at adjusting the goods shed at Old Cassino.  This has been hit one too many times on the layout, by operators and some trains.  But it just needs re-seating on the layout.  The roof sections also need to be glued to the building.  This will also give it some rigidity.  So I will finish this job this coming weekend.