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.