Tuesday this week was the fortnightly meeting of the Tuesday Nighters at my place. That made Monday cleanup day in the shed a little. On Tuesday morning I had to clean the benches, test the urn, and get the tea, coffee, cups, milk and sugar out. Also on Monday and Tuesday I did some painting of some 3D printed vehicles. I worked on 3 perway vehicles and 5 x 4 wheel drive vehicles. The 4x 4’s had their wheels painted Floquil Grimy Black with a brush. Just that small amount of work made a difference to these models. They were placed on the layout before the event.
The guys came over and discussions centered around my shed entry awning. They came to the conclusion, to not attach the awning to the shed roof, but add two more posts, and have it sit on top of the four posts. I got some good feedback about the painted 4 x 4s. So a review of the layout after the crew left, revealed that I had mysteriously acquired another 4 wheel drive flattop vehicle on the layout. I didn’t see any extra KD’s or mutton birds though. We had a good night talking about lots of stuff.
So on Wednesday I did the rounds for local steel distributors looking for steel posts. I decided at a steel place at Coopers Plains. They delivered and the posts were supposed to be here on Thursday afternoon. Wednesday was also spent digging the poles for the posts. The right hand side hole (facing the shed) was very easy. The left hand side was a bit complicated by the existence of a storm water pipe from the side of house to right next to where the post was to go. Bugger! That just meant that I needed to dig slowly and use a water jet to help break up the sandy soil. I then used a small spade to remove the soil. Eventually this task was completed.
On Thursday morning while I was on my morning work, I got a phone call from the steel delivery driver that the steel was being delivered in 17 minutes. So I hightailed it back home and carried the steel delivery around to the shed. The posts were temporarily sat in the holes I dug the previous day. I then got them out and drilled some screws into the base of the posts so that they get some extra grab into the concrete when that gets poured. I picked up 5 bags of postcrete from Bunnings, along with some other hardware. This included some bolts and two more ‘L’ brackets to support the awning from the post. I also had a small amount of postcrete left over in another bag already at home. The posts went back into the holes and I measured up the correct distance apart that they had to be and I ensured that they were square with the other two posts. I then braced the posts so they were square and had a good old rest.
It was Friday that I bit the bullet and then filled the post holes with the concrete post mix and added water. They were left to set. I then read that the posts should not have any stress put on them for 7 days. Bugger! I was going to put the awning up on the posts today. So I have delayed this activity until next Friday. I will put out a call to rally the troops and see if I can get 3 or 4 of them come over at about 3:00pm to help me lift the awning onto the brackets on the posts while I then screw the awning to the brackets.
Saturday was Club day and I was very annoyed with the traffic both ways over and back to the Club. I will go via gateway next time. I have no idea why people will sit in all lanes and not to do the speed limit when there is no one in front of them. While at the Club we were helping people do some programming of locos on the programming track. Checking out the new electronics that Laurie has rigged together and pushing some of the guys to 3D print some QR 2000 Class Railmotor shells.
On Saturday night I watched a live feed of Marty and Darren running on Aaron Stinson’s layout with Tyler dispatching. It was great with Marty, Darren, Tyler and myself all on discord chatting watching online as the signal panel updated in real time. This went for 2 and half hours before I bailed. Great work by Aaron developing this.
Today I started doing a bit of maintenance and a cleanup in the shed again. This time I started with the phone system. That was working OK. Next I moved to the headsets. Well I decided to pull it totally apart. I tested it with the single North Coast Controller headset and there was a squeal in the headsets. So I think I can confirm that it is not related to any of the plug-in panels and the long cable runs parallel to the DCC bus. That was what I thought it was. The test today did not have any plug-in panels connected. But I think it is the actual amplifier module. Maybe something went bang in it and now it is not working 100%. I will check out JAYCAR to see if there are any more around that I might be able to buy and retrofit into this into our shed circuit.
I then moved outside the shed and I then drilled two more bolt holes into one of the new posts for the bracket and that side is now ready to accept the awning. I lined it all up with a small 2 metre piece of steel substituting for the awning. The third post has a bracket attached, so now I will wait until the awning it up to add the bracket to the fourth post and hopefully get the awning next to perfect level. I will then drill two holes in post four and add a second hole in the third post, and add the bolts. It takes a while to drill through the posts with my screwdriver and drill bit. The more I use the drill the blunter it gets.
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