Extra Long Weekend

This week I took advantage of the ANZAC Day public holiday and made it into a 4 day extra long weekend.  I spent time sitting at the computer doing some more Powerpoint presentation tuning.  I also purchased lot of tins of spray paint on Friday and Saturday.  This paint was from SuperCheap Auto, Dulux, Aurora Trains, and Bunnings.  All up 14 cans of paint in various colours.  These are all for various presentations that I have coming up over the next month. 

I also tried to purchase an Arduino single relay from various local Jaycar stores, but no one had one in stock.  Fortunately, Greg (from the Club and work) had one at his (almost local) store and was able to pick a relay up for me.  I will exchange it for dollars tomorrow at work.  The relay is so I can test an enhancement to my Arduino level crossing detector circuit, so that we can also install working boom gates controlled by the relay.  I think it should work, but I really need to test it before I can tell people it works.

I was also able to move my old spare PC back to the shed and with the recently installed wifi I was able to get online from the shed on Saturday arvo and talk on Discord with some NMRA mates online.  I initially had trouble with my microphone on this PC and was the brunt of Marty's jokes because of this.  What are mates for?  Isn't it so you can go one better.  Watch out Marty!

I watched NMRA-X this morning and enjoyed the presentations.  Today I was able to construct and paint the door for my Kyogle signal box.  This model has to have some internal detail added over the next few weeks and I also hope to add lights.  

I have also started down on the path to paint up a number of ‘O’ scale tarpaulins for a NMRA friend who models VR.  Some other mates who also model that railway outline may also be a winner when it comes to VR coloured tarpaulins.  The tarps are all shades of green.  We will see how they are judged at a later date.

Next weekend I will be at the Sydney Model Railway Exhibition put on the Epping Club.  I have not been to this exhibition previously, so I am really looking forward to it.  I will be travelling back rather late in the evening, so my blog update may be late.  That starts my next period of Long Service Leave.  During this period of leave, I have to work on my Presentation for this year's Armidale Convention.  That will take at least 2 weeks to throw together and find supporting photos.

Meetings and Running Day

This week I did not motivation to do any modelling.  Tuesday Night was at Glen’s place.  He had a couple of nice trains circulating around his layout while we viewed his layout.  Glen had a couple of locos that short out the layout when they run over some points.  This usually occurs when the tread of the wheel travels over the ‘V’ of a Peco insulated point and spans both metal rails at the same time where they meet the ‘V’.  This can be solved by putting some clear nail polish over this part of the ‘V’ to insulate the wheel from those two pieces of metal.  Over time this nail polish will wear off and will need to be replaced.  So that is easily fixed.

Saturday was our NMRA meeting and it was held down at the Logan Clubrooms.  They had their layout running and the projector set up with the chairs down the old open area, which was enclosed many years ago.  I gave a presentation on my two Grain wagons which were presented at the 2023 Australian Convention.  One of them got a merit award, but I have no idea which one.  Anyway it didn’t matter.  My presentation discussed what was done to the wagon and how to do the various enhancements to a kit to see if you can get to the merit level.  After that presentation, we had the AR region AGM, and that was over quite quickly.  Then we had Paul and Bob talk about part 2 of their recent OS trip.  This part dealt with the European segment.  That was followed by a fantastic BBQ lunch provided by the Logan guys and then Scott from Bowen, whom is building an O scale layout in a huge shed showed us some updates.  Scott has been having an article published on his progress in the AMRM bi-monthly magazine for the last about 18 months or so.  We also had a bit of presentation from Arthur for the various AP awards in our division.  The president and the Secretary both received their Official AP award.

For something completely different, today a stack of us ventured to the Border District for a running session.  There were 4 crew, a hostler, the station master, Train Control and an official photographer.  Anthony’s layout is going to be the topic for a presentation at this year’s Modelling the Railways of SA Convention.  The layout is looking a million dollars following the work done on it over the previous couple of weekends.

With ANZAC day this week, I’ve taken the opportunity to get a long weekend.  I hope to complete a few jobs, like building some clotheslines, work on a Powerpoint for May meeting and do some more scenery work on the area near my Rocla Siding.  I will also circle back build a door for my Kyogle Signal box.  Then I can work on the various internal items for the signal box, and install some lights there and in the station building.  I can then fit then into the layout. 

The week after is the Brisbane and Sydney Model Railway Exhibitions.  I'm heading to Sydney for the first time.

Signal Box Progress and Ops Session

This week started with some correspondence about my signal box from an old modelling mate.  He sent me various photos of his model.  Phil Flynn had built the model from Hawksmoor models and provided me with various measurements from his kit.  I think I have done a reasonable effort given how close my guestimates were compared to Phil’s model.  I continued working on my Kyogle Signal box.  Later in the week, I realised that I needed to build the concrete block base for the fibro signal box to sit on.  I was hoping I did not need to do that.  But again I had plenty of styrene to use to build my model.  It did come up quite good.  I have so far painted the roof of the signal box Silver to represent the galvanised iron.  I have not yet painted the guttering the maroon colour that I need to paint the model in to fit into the era I am modelling. 

On Friday I launched into my plastering task.  I left this to last.  I did most of it on Friday, but I had a bit left to do, which I completed this afternoon.  This afternoon I also gave all the stark white plaster a raw umber colour.  After this I usually work in small sections and apply various dirts, sands and dusts to the baseboard covered with a watered down white glue mixture.  After a few coats of this, I then go back to add various green and brown grasses to bring the baseboard up to a full covering and make it complete.  The next step will be possibly some fencing and a few trees for the trains to run through.  I will leave this task until my next lot of long Service Leave in early May after I attend the Rosehill Model Railway Exhibition in Sydney.

On Saturday I went to Darren’s place along with Brendan and met up with some of mountain men from Toowoomba.  This was Bill, Smithy and Steve.  Smithy kept saying something like  ‘I’m a mountain man and I like mountain (sic) wom….’.  Anyway, we had a great afternoon.  Thanks Darren.  We had a coffee, and late morning tea.  Then lunch was served, and then the brain had a workout running two train runs on Darren’s layout.  Darren has two man crews and I was teamed up with Steve, an ex-Driver.  The first train was an empty wheatie.  We started at the terminus station - Wattle Flat – after which the layout was named and swapped over three empty wheat wagons at the silo for 3 full ones.  So the full ones were put on the front of the train.  We made our way past the first crossing loop and passed Brendan coming the other way, a few toots on the train horn and then we made it to the next crossing station.  But if you are not taking the branch here, it is a bit of a pain to actually cross someone.  Here we had to again swap three more empties for three fulls in the grain siding.  This location has a facing siding for the grain silo, so we ran around the three empties using the load dock and did the same for the fulls we pulled out of the silo siding, before adding these onto the waiting train on the mainline.  We were soon underway and made our way to the mainline station.  A crew was busy shunting the yard here when we made the yard limits.  We were able to take the main line and again swap three empties for three full grain wagons in the grain siding.  That left us with a train of 9 full wheat wagons destined for export via the port.  We then had to do a swap in the yard.  This entailed leaving our fulls where the next empty grain train was already sitting in the yard, put our guards van onto the rear of the waiting empty train, and take those empties out along the branch back to Wattle Flat for tomorrow’s pickup train.  However, before we left we had to do a loco swap from a 44 class to a 45 class loco.  I might have grabbed a cold drink as I ran passenger with Driver Steve back to Wattle Flat.  On the outbound trip we again passed Brendan at the crossing loop on the branch.  Brendan’s mate was someone new to me – called Mr Nobody.  This time, Brendan was bringing in his pickup freight from the branch.  He had already set up the points for us to perform the cross when we got there.  When we got to the terminus, we had to set a few handbrakes and move the guard’s van onto the rear of the train and send the loco to the loco for servicing and go to barracks.  First thing tomorrow another crew will swap out the first three empty wagons for three now full grain wagons at the silo and the whole process starts again.

This morning I went to a Buy and Sell that I saw advertised at Birkdale.  I had planned on being there at 9:00am, but the son had a call up for an early shift for his checkout chick job, so the wife wanted to make sure he left before we did.  She also wanted to go to some markets at Thornlands, so about 20 minutes out of my way and I got to the Buy and Sell late.  It was pretty well attended.  There were lots of people that I knew there selling stuff.  There was some interesting stuff.  Someone was selling 41 packets of evergreen styrene.  Well I bought that for a good price.  I missed seeing PK at the Buy and Sell, but had a few good chats with those in attendance.

Unfortunately I am back at work tomorrow, but I only have 2 and a half weeks of work, before my next 4 week stink of long service comes around.  This time, as I said earlier in this blog, I’m off to Sydney for the Rosehill Exhibition and then I’m back into the shed and doing scenery and more work on the Kyogle station precinct.  I think I can get used to this permanent holiday stuff.

Kyogle Station Building Progress

Well what has happened this week?  I painted my Kyogle Station building and it does look fairly reasonable.  Next I decided to repair my Kyogle platform, which has been sitting in position at Kyogle on the layout for quite a few years but the under platform structure has broken in about 6 pieces.  So I had to try and repair it.  I cut out a strip of styrene to be used as a sub-structure and bit by bit I glued the under-platform structure to the sub-structure.  As I went along, I straightened the posts, and fixed any broken framing bits.  Eventually everything was reassembled and again it looked fairly reasonable.  The next task was to paint it.  I used a grey and then weathered it with browns and reds to look a bit like rust.

The next phase was to create a platform top.  This was concrete and is a rather dark colour as well.  So I cut a piece of 2mm styrene to an approximate size and gave it a spray paint with some grey paint as well.  This was fitted to the platform base and the next step was to try and add some legs to my station building so it ended up at the correct height for the platform.  I used some 2mm square (0.080” x 0.080”) styrene and cut a number of these to length and then glued them to the base of the station building.  There were a few that dried to a shonky angle, so I removed them and re-glued them with some better support structure.    

I have also cleaned up under the Old Cassino baseboard for the installation of my railway Digests in storage boxes.  This involved cutting up some old baseboards from Cassino Mk 1 from inside the house.  Some old pine framing was unscrewed and added to my spare pile and some old foam and plaster was just thrown in the bin.  The old 3 ply baseboards were kept. 

Yesterday I went to The Border District for a working session.  I was working with Jeff and we were ballasting Nankiva.  We had a ball.  I used my ballasting method, with is filling up an old honey bottle with ballast and then adjusting the screw top to regulate the flow of ballast out onto the track.  We then go back and use a soft brush to spread out the poured ballast.  This method works pretty well.  I even had Jeff and our host Anthony using the method by the end of the day.  Anthony was working in a different area.

Today I have been having a bit of a tidy up inside the office and going through some old magazines and books looking for plans for a NSW signal box.  In my case the one from Kyogle.  That is my next building project.  I understand that Hawksmoor Models produced a kit that was very similar if not the exact copy of the Kyogle Signal box.  I was wondering if I could get a NSWGR plan for the signal box from somewhere as I want to find out the actual dimensions of this standard NSW building.  Being a big boy and on holidays, there is nothing better than to scratch build my own model if no kits are available.  I have a few photos, but it is a bit of a long trip to travel to Kyogle to measure up the signal box.  But you never know!