Building Wagons Continues

On Tuesday night we visited Shelton’s place, just 5 minutes up the road from home.  He had his layout operating in a semi-automatic mode, where the train that he was controlling was doing two circuits of his inner loop, before automatically being switched to doing a circuit of the outer loop.  The outer loop has a crossing loop and station on it.  The points between the inner and outer loops are changed automatically and the signals set and reset as the train passes.  This is pretty interesting, as you just follow the route and just obey the signals.

We had about 8 of us in attendance on Tuesday Night.  As usual discussion was interesting and we had a new attendee – Glen a former SRA driver.  But we won't hold that against him.  I think he enjoyed himself.  I know I did.

On the night, I also took along my two QR HO wagons to show to the crowd.  I also had one of my original QR HO wagons which was built to a different standard.  The original wagons (built a number of years back when I build 4 of these HO wagons and 2 x HOE wagons) were built according to the 3 foot rule.  At that distance, you cannot see the wagons codes and if the wagon just looked like the wagon in question that was good enough.  paint it a believable colour and throw a bit of weathering around and everyone is happy.  However the next two iterations of this model, which I am building now are being built to demonstrate the process of building a wagon in styrene for our local NMRA get together in about 4 weeks time.  I will also submit one of these as one of my NMRA assessment models by Arthur for my Master Builder of Cars.  So Arthur had an initial viewing on Tuesday night.  He went from the original wagon, to the newly detailed version, but he mentioned those words again – no internal detail for this open wagon.  So I gave him the third wagon, which was built with that in mind.  His initial comment was that it is half way there.  I thought that was not bad, as I still had the underframe detail to add, as well as brake hoses, wagon lettering and more internal detail as well as painting and weathering.  So I was pretty content, but I still have a long way to go.

During the week, I was busily completing some clotheslines to hand over to Modeller’s Warehouse so he has some stock for the Brisbane May Model Railway exhibition next weekend.  While dropping off some to the business on Saturday morning, I picked up some interesting detail items from that shop on Saturday morning.  Some of those items have been assembled this afternoon, ready for placement on my layout at a later time.  The next task was completing some more work on the QR HO wagons I am building.  Not much has been occurring on them, apart from about 15 minutes last night.  However, work was continuing on my track cleaning wagons.  I had planned on having half a dozen available before next weekend.  I just need my rollers to be made.  I have not heard anything from my source of the rollers as to their progress as yet.  I might have to follow up tomorrow.

I have already started packing everything up to take to the May Show next Friday.  Hopefully we will catch up with lots of mates, buy some bargains and see some good layouts.