I visited a local hobby shop on Monday and purchased some paint. I wanted to paint up some NSW perway trucks and a compressor trailer. I bought a yellow for the compressor, and the Freight Rail Blue (Teal) for the SRA trucks. I painted them with a brush. The outcome was suitable but not excellent.
On Tuesday I did a deal with Anatol and purchased two second hand Trainorama 44 class locos and a Austrains 80 class to add to my collection. These came from a deceased estate that he helped dispose of. The 80 class was donated a decoder from an old Lima 44 that I had, which has now been set back to DC only. I will dispose of this now DC Lima 44 class at an upcoming Buy and Sell. I took an old Tsunami decoder out of an old thumping 44 class loco and moved it to the new Blue 4483 class loco. However, me being very clever, I did not notice that I already had a 4483 in the roster. But my other 4483 was Tuscan. So I had to swap the shell over to a red terror 44 shell that I had sitting around. I changed the decoder address to the new shell number. I think it is now 4475. I also obtained 4473 from Anatol, and I eventually found a donor sound chip from another 44 class. When I tested it on DC it would not run. Then I realised that some of my very old sound DCC chips did not run on DC. So I tested it straight on DCC and it ran well. So 2 more working 44 class locos back on the layout. So at this stage I also had a current dummy 44 ready for the layout.
On Wednesday I found another old Lima 44 class that has a chip in it, that will donate its chip to another 44 class – the current dummy loco. The old Lima 44 was also re-DC’ed. This will also be disposed at an upcoming Buy and Sell. I have a collection of old Trainorama 44 class shells and a few 44 class mechanisms. One Trainorama 44 class mechanism has a broken universal. I had planned to try and build a new universal and re-fit it to the mechanism. I also had two broken Trainorama universal shafts. So I enclosed then in a styrene sleeve, and drilled a larger hole in the Trainorama chassis for the thicker drive shaft to go through and I installed it in the loco with the missing drive shaft and it was tested and it ran OK. I also had some steel wire that just fitted into some universals ends which I had previously bought from Austral Modelcraft, so that is some years ago. I doused the join where the end and the shaft meet in super glue and two universals have now been set aside as future spares.
It had been a while since I removed the wheels on a 44 class bogie. But I figured it out again and swapped some wheels over. I’m getting pretty good at it now. Screw driver in and lever a bit, squeeze the base with the plyers, move to the next place, squeeze there and lever some more, and move to the last position and squeeze with plyers again and it pops apart. I had one mechanism that was binding in one of the power bogies. So hopefully I donated a DCC chip and this upgraded bogie and get another 44 back onto the layout. This is potentially 4468, as it has a position in the timetable, and it being run by an alien loco. I then did some work on making 4473 rise again, but it is currently lacking a DCC chip unless I can find one hanging around. But it does seem to be running quite smoothly as well. Overnight I thought that I had a chip that I had set aside for a future brass QR DH locos that I have not budged on for about 2 years. So I set about putting the decoder into the 44 class loco. About half an hour later, it was complete, so I took it down to the test track and it was test – all OK. I then brought it back up stairs to the kitchen table and added the headlights to number 1 and 2 ends. So another 44 class can be used on the layout. These 44 class are multiplying.
I still have four x 44 class bogies left over. Two of these have a bit of a bind inside. Another two bogies, are lacking the keeper plate to lock the wheels into the bogie. But they also are lacking the top gear in the bogie, so they cannot be made to be motorised.
On Friday, after another long period of procrastination, I started installing the decals on my QR HO wagon. Two x red spots, and two x HO decals, and two x 5 digit wagon numbers later, and then the wagon was complete. My next task is the rust application on the QR HO wagon. Thanks to the Wuiske Models website, there are some great photos of a QR HO wagon. But they are very rusty. So the plan is to replicate this rust application. While I had my decal tools out, I decided to check out my Freight Rail Blue 44 class shell number 4483 into 4480. So I scratched out the '3' and then found some ‘0’ decals to install over what remained of the '3'. It fitted quite well and now from a distance this loco is not 4483, but 4480. I should have done this earlier in the week.
On Saturday with all the rain around, I decided to do some more 44 class bogie work. I removed the keeper plates on the two binding bogies. I replaced the gears on 2 x 44 class wheel axels with a piece of styrene tube (I had already done this to one wheel), checked for correct gauge and put these axels into one of the bogies without a keeper plate and added a keeper plate and made up a dummy bogie. On another bogie I just turned the wheels around so the gears did not mesh with the gear train, added a keeper plate and this bogie was all go. I now had two dummy bogies. They went into a 44 class chassis and then under the 4480 class shell. So now I have a dummy 44 class loco also for the layout. But with no decoder, it has no lights etc.
Now my attention turns to another wagon to add some more
detail to and make it presentable for entering into the modelling comp at the
upcoming NMRA Australasian Convention in August. I was also tidying up a
desk in the office and found some photos on this particular wagon. So I
really need to do some more building before adding the detail. But I have
a plan. I have made a list of steps in order to attack the rebuild and
started putting the various items aside for this to occur over the next few
weeks.
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