Holiday Week

While on holidays I started off by doing nothing for almost the entire week.  I might have visited the shed, to get something, or take something to the shed, but no modelling was undertaken.  Tuesday night we went over to Glen’s place for our fortnightly meeting.  Glen is an ex SRA driver and he has a very nice modern-day layout with electric rollingstock and lots of diesels.  He even has a few steamers.  We had a good turn out and a natter about a few things.  As we were going, I purchased an Austrains 80 class off Darren.  Darren was trying to sell it at the RMCQ Buy and Sell two weekends back.  He has now.

On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the shed and gave Darren’s loco a test run.  It ran very smoothly, but I could not get the headlights on the number one end to work.  So I removed the 12V bulb and replaced it with an LED and a 1K ohm resistor.  This was a pretty easy change over.  So my next task is to work out where I will use it in the timetable.  Do I add a second loco to an existing train, or do I replace a loco from one of the train.  I then realised that I should do some work on the number of 44 Class locos that I have in various stages of (dis)repair scattered around the shed and in the office.  Then I can ensure everything is running well for the next Operating Session in December.

On Friday this week, I finished off a task that has been on my to do list for about 5 months.  I finally spliced in a set of 12 mm points into Acacia Ridge yard and created another run around siding.  At the same time, I also investigated what I needed to allow for 4 sugar wagons to be dropped off in the yard without inconveniencing through traffic.  I just need another two left hand medium turnouts and that will allow this to occur.  Following that, I started installing fencing along the right of way on the layout. 

Saturday was an early rise to get over to the RMCQ clubrooms before the NMRA members turned up.  We eventually had about 40 NMRA members in attendance.  We also had some presentations from Greg Beal on the ‘Modelling RM55 in G Scale’,’ Homemade DCC Wifi throttle that fits into your hand’ by Peter Akers, Laurie McLean doing ‘Animations in On3’.  RMCQ put on a BBQ lunch with some snags on bread with onions and sauce along with a cold drink from the Club fridge.  After lunch we had the normal ARC and Divisional news, and then Arthur Hayes spoke about another NMRA AP certificate, this time Scenery.  This was followed by a bit of a show and tell that covered the Diorama Competition from the New England Convention.  Four of the Div 1 members, put in an entry and they were all very good.  The attendees could then check out the various items from the presentation items up close or have a wonder around, checking out the clubroom layouts and facilities.

Today I continued installing fencing along the right of way on the layout.  This was primarily from Kyogle Stock Siding, past Cougal Spiral and into Border Loop.  I also added some from Hotham Street at Cassino past the Cassino Meatworks.  In total this amounted to about 8 metres of fencing being added to the layout.