Wifi in the Shed

It has finally happened.  After being on the receiving end of years of berating from my mates, and after a wet week of showers, and the ground being softened, on Friday I dug a trench about 30cm deep from the house to the shed.  I laid some conduit in the ground and threaded some Cat 5 cable through it.  I was thinking that my apprentice was going to help me but he slept in.  I then added some conduit to the house to snake the cable along the side, under the sliding door to the old train room in the house and then round the wall and up to where the router in the family room is positioned on the other side of the wall.  I waited for my apprentice to reappear to assist with back filling of the trench but that never occurred either.   Saturday I waiting until around lunch time and then I drilled through the brick wall and installed a fascia panel inside the house with a RJ45 socket on it. I then plugged a patch lead from that socket to the router.  Half way there!  I then had to drill a hole into the shed wall through the wall and feed the other end of the Cat-5 cable through the shed wall and into a second fascia panel with an RJ45 socket in it.  Another patch lead from the socket to my Wifi extender which I positioned up high inside the shed.  I then had to run a power cable to my Wifi extender and turn it on.  Previously my Wifi did not really reach very well out to my faraday cage shed.  I then brought my mobile phone down to the shed and closed the shed up, and fired the phone Wifi up to see if I had better service than before.  A full 5 bars was achieved inside the shed.  Success!

So earlier this week I purchased another 7 plastic tubs.  The plan is to initially load one up with all my Australian Railway History magazines.  The rest will hold my AMRMs.  I did have a bit of a clean out inside the shed, so I can locate my plastic tubs down there.

Earlier this morning, I started painting my Kyogle Station building.  The plan is to spend some time this coming week, completing this building and the station platform, which has been in a semi-built state for more than 10 years.

Lots of Presentations

So it appears I’m now locked in to do 3 presentations at the upcoming Div 1 clinic weekend in May.  The first presentation is pretty easy as it is basically a re-hash of another clinic that PK and myself did at the NMRA Convention in October last year in Sydney on Weathering.  However the other two presentations are quite new.  The second presentation is a flow on from the one we did in Sydney, and it should not take that long to put together.  The last clinic is about Modelling Tarpaulins.  I basically wrote that on Friday afternoon and yesterday.  I have three more slides to update, a few photos to take and include in the presentation, and I really need some proper drawings of some sketches I put together – to improve the professionalism of the presentation.  I might have to call on a mate to assist with that task – Hi Glen!  When you did dob me in.

I also have had a bit of an email chat with Warren from Gwydir Valley Models about his convention in Armidale in November this year.  This convention is not to be missed.  Most in our modelling group have all had our accommodation booked for the last couple of weeks.  So basically this presentation has also been started and is the least complete of all of them.  I had promised Warren that it would be complete in about 3 months.  I have some Long Service Leave at the moment so I will spend quite some time completing my various Powerpoint presentations.  While on the topic of presentations, this morning at 9:00am I gave another presentation which I also gave in Sydney last October at the NMRA Australasian Convention, but this time it was on NMRA-X to a potential worldwide audience.  I think today’s presentation went over reasonably well.

On Friday evening I also caught up with Darren and Geoff, over at Brendan’s place for a great dinner prepared by Brendan and his better half, before we sat down for a modelling night.  I let time get away from me on Friday and I was not looking at the watch and ended up getting there slightly late.  I think Brendan had an ulterior motive with our attendance. He requested assistance in installing his adhesive backed professionally printed backboards and boy to they look smicko!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It took us some time to plan the installations but we did it.  People will go off when they see these when this layout finally gets shown at a Model Railway Exhibition in the future.  The track work is very nice.  The background sounds are unbelievable.  This will be a hit when it debuts.

During the week we also had our Tuesday Nighter’s meeting down at Geoff’s place.  We had a good turn up of about 9 people.  We had lots of very good discussions.  I have also been spending time with planning a potential ‘what if’ exhibition layout for the future.  I have started to do scale baseboards on paper with the various track layout plans copied to the paper plans.  At its true scale (as best as we can estimate from various documents and plans that we have available), the layout will be probably over 6m long and may work out too big.  But once we have it fully planned out, we can then see where we can employ modeller’s license to shorten some of the sidings and loops, to see what we can realistically fit in and operate.  I think this process will take quite a few more weeks to plan.

On Friday Morning I picked up some plastic storage boxes from Big-W and I have now moved all my Railway Digests (they go back to 1974) into these plastic storage boxes.  I think I will purchase another 7 of these plastic storage boxes, and also move all my AMRMs to the same type of boxes.  These will all end up in the layout shed under the baseboards.

Today I have been continuing on with my modelling efforts the same as Friday evening at Brendan’s place.  A bit more work was done on the Kyogle Station building.  The plan this coming week is to fit the roof frame and then the actual roof.  Then will the effort to build a model underframe to sit on the layout.  Next task after that is to fit the various downpipes, water pipes, electrical conduits and other associated details on the model.  Further updates next week.

Planning and Preparation

Well I’ve been on holidays since Friday and I have already forgotten what day of the week it is.  I had a Doctor’s appointment last Friday, Dermatologist appointment tomorrow, and Dentist appointment later this week.  These events have started to keep me aware of what happens when and what day it is.  I was online last night with the British NMRA Crew for their Brew and Natter get together.  About 4 Aussies turned up.  Sometimes we get more attending.  There was an Aussie theme to that meeting, with some of the British guys talking about Australian Postcards and then the topic turned to some articles by Arthur Hayes in the current AMRM issue.  However before that meeting, well a couple of hours before I was talking to Brad and Speed.  I was talked into doing an NMRA X presentation next weekend.  This will occur while most of the Queensland group will be attending the Bundaberg Model Train Show.  So I might have to tune up my presentation this week before next weekend.  I spent some time today doing just that.  But I think there is more to do.

Today I started putting pen to paper detailing some facts about a potential location that could be built into the basis for an exhibition layout in the future.  I then remembered that there were two articles about this location a couple of years before covid.  So I will re-read these articles over the next week.  I will also discuss the pros and cons with the Tuesday Nighters this week.  I also have some track diagrams that I have found and I think there would be some interest in progressing this theme.  Maybe we won’t talk about too much detail in case we do progress it, that way when it debuts in a couple of years, it might knock some people’s socks off.  I think there could be some interest from within the Tuesday Nighters community in progressing such a project.  I will put together a summary document so we can discuss this topic.

I did not get to do any actual modelling this week.  That is next week’s job, in between other jobs I need to do at home, although I think it will be wet most of next week.

Quiet Week

This week we visited a new Tuesday Nighter member’s place.  We parked in a park and ride and walked about 80m to his place as the parking was quite scarce outside his place as the streets were very narrow and one side of the roads had yellow markings on them, to prohibit parking.  We had a very nice get together watching his US prototype trains run smoothly on the layout.  Afterwards we sat down and had a few cakes and tea and coffee and solved all the world's problems as we usually do.

Saturday I went to the Club for our monthly meeting.  I also got to see a very nice tri-bo 12mm QR electric running around the layout.  Although the centre bogie does not have wheels fitted.  You would not know this fact unless you got up close.  I do not know if fitting a centre bogie is a  future enhancement or the model is designed to only have a fake bogie there.  The motor for the bogies fits inside the bogies themselves and it is very small.  It was pulling a very suitable load around the Club layout. 

While I have my Kyogle station building sitting on the kitchen table, I have not looked at it all week.  Maybe the week after next when I am on holidays.  Although while I have some plans for my holidays – like pulling out all the plants and weeds down one side of the house, and potentially digging a hole in the back yard for some conduit, I know the boss also has some jobs teed up for me as well.

Kyogle Station Building Progress

This week I attended an executive meeting on Tuesday night and we have commenced some planning activities for a future event.  I came away with some action items, so I spent a bit of time this weekend thinking about them and documenting what I needed to do.  Watch this space.

On Friday I cut up about 80 pallets that I completed over the previous week, and painted them and another 20 pallets I already had cut up.  I painted groups of 20 pallets in different colours.  These pallets were dispersed to a 3^rd party on Saturday morning.  The rest of the weekend was spent attending a British NMRA meeting on Saturday Evening, watching some NMRA-X presentations on Sunday morning and continuing to work on my Kyogle station building.  I installed a base in that station building, and then two internal walls.  The aim here was to straighten up the sides of the building, and ensure that it was square.  I also have started trying to build a set of seats for inside the waiting room.  We will see how they turn out.

Next week, we have Tuesday Nighters and then on Saturday we have our Club Meeting.  Time is counting down to my first ever bout of long service leave.  I take the first 4 week holiday period in 2 weeks time.  I’m not sure if I have ever had 4 weeks of holidays in a row in my working life.  Usually it is 2 weeks and maybe I had taken 3 weeks previously, but never 4 weeks.  Another person whom I went to University with 42 years ago and have worked with for 39 year starts her leave period of long service leave this coming Friday.  She is our best project manager and it will leave a big hole in our organisation’s ability to continue to do complex projects.  I will be taking my whole Long Service Leave owed over the next 18 months is various short stints.