On Monday I visited a local Hobby Shop and it helped me plan for what track I will need to procure for my future layout. On Tuesday I got the vacuum out and gave the shed a once over. I had daddy long legs spiders everywhere, but now they and their cobwebs are now in the garden via the vacuum cleaner. I had 12 guys come over and when they left the pergola they thanked me for the light show of the moon changing colour throughout the night. PK was caught putting signs up on the layout. I'll have to do something about him. I ran the XPT from Cassino to Grafton and still some swear that it did not run. A number of attendees where watching it run. Others purposely ignored it so they could deny the truth. It is sometimes hard to get good help. I also had my signal panel out for the group to peruse and when I was demonstrating it, at least one switch did not acknowledge its throwing. I knew I had a wire off. This was the switch for signal D2. So I could not run any shunt movements because of that wire issue, as I could not turn off the Down automatic signalling.
On Wednesday I open up the signal panel and the wire providing powering to D2, D2Shunt, D1 and SS2 (for shunting out of the narrow gauge siding) had come adrift, so it could not provide feedback to the Arduino and thus these switches could not be set. So a quick solder and everything was as good as new. Maybe I should have tested the panel on Tuesday afternoon as I could have quickly soldered that wire back on and had it working 100% for Tuesday night’s show.
Also on Wednesday when the boss was out I took over the kitchen and family room floors and started layout out paper and then track to work on the future layout's track plan. I am getting there. Maybe I need a box or two of track to lay down on the floor as I am quite short of lengths of flex track and dual gauge track.
We had a working bee on the NMRA Division 1 FreeMo modules on Saturday and two corner modules received some treatment. I think they look a lot better than they did before we did the work on them. We also came up with a plan of attach on these modules to add some more detail at the next such session. It is amazing how a small amount of effort can bring a module to life. We built a bridge with supports, added dirts to the painted baseboard, and then added some fencing and then coloured scatters. A few telegraph poles were also added. We also blended dirt around some items that were glued down on the module, and were sitting quite proud of the baseboard. So we added quite a bit of dirt and they now look quite natural in the scene. We even added some static grass from a static grass machine to one section on a module and that looks good.
Today with all the rain I started working through the list of items that I need to build for the FreeMo modules. I have built some roadway - stained balsa that will be cut up and glued on a module. I have put together a small section of fencing, and made a few gates for one property. But the gates need to be painted yet, as does the fencing.
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