In a Spiral

After a great weekend of model railway activity in Toowoomba last weekend, I found it hard to do much this week.  But I did find another bin chicken, scrub turkey, kangaroo and a wombat from Platform Printing, and gave them a paint.  These items are ready to place on the layout. 

My juices started flowing on Thursday when I started to put together what will become the weather protection in front my train shed entry.  I assembled the two side lengths, (I already had the front and back steel beam lengths assembled.  I then made a square box and screwed it all together.  I plan on ordering 4 sheets for the roof and screw the three intermediate steel beams to support the roof when the roof sheeting gets here.  I also assembled three intermediate beams to help stablise the shelter and keep it in square, and screw the roofing sheets to.  Today I made a couple of trips to Bunnings and utilised my 5% discount from being an NMRA member with my Bunnings Powerpass card and purchased some steel strip to be used to tie the square box together with two diagonal braces, and also some fittings to help it sit the square box structure above the two posts it will balance upon.  I should have my four roof sheets this week or next and then the three intermediate beams will be secured at the correct place inside the frame.  I will need to call upon a couple of mates to help me hoist this thing up into the air as I screw it up in the air.

Late last week, there were a couple of really great photos posted on various Facebook Groups of trains on the Cougal Spiral.  The views were very similar to what was on my layout.  I model back in the late 80s early 90s and back then there were not many trees around this region.  However those photos showed just a minute covering.  So on Sunday morning, I went to my tree stash and picked out a few small trees and installed them around Cougal Spiral and between there and Border Loop.  I was most impressed that this small number of maybe 20 odd trees made a big improvement to the areas concerned.

Slow Week, Then Full Mind Blowing NMRA Weekend

Modelling activity this week was very much non-existent.  On Tuesday we all gathered at Arthur’s place and ogled his new Amby West layout.  This is a 12mm QR layout that he has been making buildings for and laying track on for quite some time.  We believe it may make a showing in September as a local Brisbane Model Railway exhibition, but it will also be available for viewing before and after the NMRA Convention in August this year.  Arthur got two voluntolds to do some shunting on the layout on Tuesday night.  I think they made a couple of mistakes but they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

On Thursday I had Shelton rock up and showed him my version of ‘Shelton the Photographer’.  I ran a train through the gunzel section and the flash photographers were going off at the loco and train in the section.  I believe Shelton will be making a debut in the National NMRA magazine in the next month or two.  The real Shelton thought the implementation was great and he was taking photos of the model scene.  I think he will be making his own version as I gave him a copy of the electronics diagram to make it work and also the Arduino code for the flashes.

I was inspired after viewing Arthur’s layout on Tuesday Night.  He had a bin chicken sitting above a 44 gallon drum on his new exhibition layout.  Some modelling that I did do was the go through my 3D printed animal draw and see what I had.  I found three bin chickens and a bush turkey.  I was sure I had more, but I could not find them.  So I painted the bin chickens white and then used Grimy Black on their legs, tails and heads.  They turned out quite good.  I used the grimy black also on the bush turkey and then used some red paint on its head.  I was most impressed how that turned out as well.  I understand that Platform Printing will also be exhibiting at the NMRA Convention in August and they produce excellent models of these subjects.  I think I will be acquiring quite a few more so I can distribute them around the layout. 

This weekend was a modelling trip to Toowoomba with a visit to 6 local layout owners on Saturday and Saturday dinner and then a Sunday trip to the Toowoomba Model Railway Club’s clubrooms at the Toowoomba Showgrounds for our usual monthly get together.  This was where we held our normal Saturday meeting but this month on the Sunday.  What a great weekend.  My travel buddies with motel buddies as well.  We were in the same travelling group to the 6 layouts and we all were inspired by something at each of the 6 layout locations.  I won’t say 6 layouts because Aaron had more than 6 layouts on display at his own home.  Inspirational!  It was good to talk to different people from our NMRA division on the weekend. 

I’m ready to do some more modelling this coming week.  Hopefully I will find my missing packet of bush turkeys and bin chickens.

Small Improvements Around the Layout

Monday was a public holiday in Brisbane.  So it was a catch up day.  I was made an offer for some styrene that a friend was getting rid of, which he gave me first choice of, so I had to do an inventory of my stash.  There were some packets that that I already had, some packets that I wanted and some packets that I needed.  There was also some packets that I would never use.  So I got back to him.  The transfer didn’t eventuate.

At the Buy and Sell last Sunday, I picked up a second hand Procab throttle for a good price.  I plugged it in and the keys strokes were very sluggish, if they worked at all.  You had to almost push your hands through the front of the throttle to get them to register the key press.  So I pulled it apart, and washed the rubbery membrane in soapy water and then cleaned the circuit board with cotton buds dipped in metho.  I then gave it another test and the difference was chalk and cheese.  Now I’m on the lookout for a new radio board to make it portable.

I picked up a Weico white metal car for $5 at the buy and sell.  That was after the guy in front of me bought 4 (the one I got was a duplicate) and the guy that told me where these delights were had bought about 8 others.  The ford ambulance that I got was placed on the layout at the scene of an accident.  I might have to scratch build a gurney to place behind the ambulance.

The accident scene at Kyogle with the new ambulance under the bridge.

Another pick up at the Club last Sunday was a decoder from the Club shop.  It was to replace a burnt out decoder in a Powerline 48 class.  So I started to remove the old decoder and replace it with the new NCE DASR decoder.  I gave it a test and it is running.  So the 48 class goes back onto the layout to its stock train and the 442 loco that had deputised for the 48 goes back into the spare pool.  However, I had an issue with that 442 loco.  I had wired up the front cab light OK, on function 1, but the rear cab light on function 2 would not function.  I could not work out why it would not light up, then I got thinking.  Maybe it was on another function number, I hypothesized.  I tried function 3, 4 and then it lit up on function 5.  Then I had to try and find a manual for a Lenz decoder.  I eventually found some CV’s to read and potentially what values to change them to.  So I did that and after a couple of days of trial and error, it now working on function 2.

My growing list of spare locos.

Over the last weekend I saw Rohan running his DEB set on the Southern Highlands layout in Glen Innes.  Although I could not attend that event, I was extremely happy to see the Herbert family in attendance there, particularly Warren and Kathleen.  Rohan had a dummy loco hauling his DEB set.  I have a couple of dummy locos hanging around the layout and that gave me an idea.  My issue is the siding that I house the DEB set on at Grafton Yard, does not currently have room for the dummy loco as well.  So I did some work and made room.  I have set up a consist between the front power car and the rear dummy power car.  I think I will needs to put the front power car on the programming track and check out its CV 21 and CV 22 settings.  What I cannot do on my DEB set is get the head lights working when I run the set in reverse, controlled by the rear dummy power car.  It needs to respond to at least the headlight and horn settings, as well as potentially the marker lights.  I will look at the various functions and work out the settings required.  I really do not want to have to control the DEB set from the front power car in reverse.  That is difficult for people running on the layout to work out what one of the two power cars is the real one, what is the dummy.

My second delivery for magnets arrived, along with some SPDT switches.  Boy those magnets have some stick.  I am now wondering if I should use these to lock the roof down, I will surely rip something apart when I try to remove the roof.  I will have to do some more thinking here.

On Thursday I decided to conduct a citizenship ceremony and a couple of dozen citizens appeared to move into the Cassino district in various locations on the layout.

The work crew at Old Cassino

A landholder fixing a post with his mate.

Some guys going for a wander but hoping to catch some trains.

Running Trains and Treading Water

Motivation for this week has been down.  But I did do a bit of wheel cleaning and oiling on a couple of locos.  I pulled one 12mm loco apart and it had its wheel pickups not connected on one bogie.  So it took me a while to re-install this.  I did and gave the loco a test run.  I’m still going through the testing of my 12mm locos.  I am still working on the 12mm timetable testing.  That got boring and my attention turned to other activities.  I will go back to that this coming week.

My order of miniature magnets turned up.  Boy are they small!  I glued a couple to the Cassino Station building roof frame, and glued some to the roof as well.  Being so small, they did not create a large enough magnetic field to join the two pieces together solidly.  So I ordered some more larger magnets.  They will probably be here later this coming week.  I will see how they go.

Later in the week, I found a driver for the NSWGR DEB set.  It started at Cassino Yard and ran all the way to South Brisbane Interstate station.  It did have some issues climbing the grade out of Clapham Yard just outside Loco Pilly.  The set would grind to a halt up the grade.  It had me stumped.  I thought it was one of the rear carriages, having a wheel gauge causing some additional drag on the train though the last set of points it was travelling through.  It turned out the power car was sitting above a section of track that was dual gauge.  The third (inner) narrow gauge rail was a little bit high, proud of the of the two standard gauge rails.  It had broken away from the copper clad sleeper to keep it in gauge and level, and its excess height was rubbing under the power bogie of the DEB set.  As this section of track had been recently converted from dual gauge to only standard gauge, and I left the third rail in place to save some work, I could just remove that small section of rail.  Once this was done and the DEB set run over the section of track again, it ran with no issues.  The DEB set then ran all the way back to Grafton Yard and fits into the allocated siding. 

Late in the week, I spent some time in the shed scanning for useless pieces of junk to see at the Buy and Sell today.  Sunday was my Club's Buy and Sell day.  I actually sold quite a bit of stuff.  Oh did I mention that I bought quite a bit of stuff as well?  But the end result was I could pay back some debt to the boss.