Well the week started with me going back to work from holidays a day early, because I was going to take Thursday off instead to attend a funeral. On Tuesday night we had about 8 Tuesday Nighter’s came over for the meeting at my place. Some others were unfortunately prevented due to Covid isolation, or recovering from medical procedures. Hopefully we will have them all back on deck in the near future.
Someone in attendance picked out the layout backboard changes around The Risk and I received some good suggestions to go even further to improve that area. We had a good discussions when sitting in the pergola eating supper.
While Wednesday in Brisbane was a public holiday for the Ekka, I was required to attend my son’s school sports day. In lieu of that day, he gets the next two days off school. Fair deal I think. It was my son’s last sports day and I had a natter to a couple of other parents, while watching all the events. In the afternoon, I got down to the shed and did some further work on tidying up a few things. I decided to spend quite a bit of time ballasting around the Cassino Meatworks. Almost a couple of years ago I had pulled up the mainline track there and relayed it, but never re-ballasted it. The area around the Hotham Street level crossing, and some back sidings in Lismore Yard were also ballasted.
On Thursday morning I spent a couple of hours in the shed and got out the old diluted PVA Glue and the pipette and gave the new ballast a soaking. Later in the afternoon I did a few more jobs in the shed.
I was at it again on Friday afternoon. I made a new fence to go beside Hotham Street in Cassino. I then painted this a galvanised silver colour and allowed it to dry. I also cut up some old round wooden fence posts into split post for another fencing activity on the layout. I might have to cut up a few more of these.
I am about to launch into trying to paint some 3D printed track workers. My initial foray was not looking good. So on Saturday I detoured to one of the local hobby shops – Aurora Trains and picked up some tins of paint. Saturday was of course Club meeting day, so I met up with the crew over there and also picked up some styrene from PK and paid him off. I also purchased a few 3D printed detail items of Greg. I picked up some small witch’s hats, some car tyres and some water tanks.
On the way home I stopped off at Bunnings and picked up two more sample pots. A black for the layout fascia and a light blue for the skyboards. When I got home, I went down to the shed and bit the bullet. I sprayed the 5 water tanks silver and got the tyres ready for paint. I got out the paint I just purchased from George that morning and started trying to hand paint the 11 track workers that I had. The bright orange vests were done first. The paint coverage was OK. I then decided to find some white paint and painted their hard hats next. Next I decided to try and paint some trousers. I used two shades of brown, and two shades of blue. They turned out OK. I set them aside to dry.
I had invited Lefty and Son over on Sunday to have a beer and talk model railways. ‘And Son’ was on call, but Left rocked up at 10:00am. He only had coffee and had a very nice chat. I have Lefty a tour of the layout highlighting some things that had changed since he last visited. After Lefty left, I started to tick some things off on the ‘To DO’ list. I mixed up a small batch of plaster and added some thick plaster between the fascia and layout near Hotham Street. I then painted this a dark colour. I was going to then add some dirts and scatters, but I just left it painted. I then painted up 16 car tyres and allowed them to dry. Later on, I added these to various open wagon loads to prevent damage caused by shifting loads. I cut up the 10 small witch’s hats and placed them at a couple of locations around the layout. I then decided to look at the West St level crossing at Old Cassino. I installed the two level crossing flashing lights and then added a few road markings. I also added some road barriers and a buffer stop to the perway siding at Old Cassino. I also added some check rails to the level crossing and installed some balsa wood which was stained between the check rails to look like bitumen roadway. I then added the fencing at Hotham Street. The chain wire fence went on the Station side and some wooden fence on the Brisbane side. I think it is starting to look quite nice in that area. I also got the track rubber out and cleaned the track around the areas that I ballasted during the week. I’m sure I had some glue spray on the rails from my ballasting efforts. So trains should be able to run through those areas without any issues next weekend.
I then had a bit of a clean up at Lismore. A few items got packed away. The dispatchers desk will be cleaned up on Friday afternoon. This week, I have Friday off work to get ready for the NMRA meeting at my place on the Saturday. I’m expecting about 40 people in attendance for the meeting. I will provide some photos next weekend of all the things I have updated.
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