A Side Trip to Sydney

Well this week started off real early with a 3:30am rise in order to get to Roma Street Station for an XPT ride to Sydney.  We went to have a week in Sydney and visit the son whom now lives down there, and to spend our Anniversary date down there.   The XPT was very slow out of Brisbane to Yeerongpilly.  I could have almost walked there faster.  I think the reason was that QR had stopped trains running from Salisbury to Moorooka on the Down line, due to a new bridge being constructed at Moorooka over Stable Swamp Creek.  So QR suburban traffic was running on the dual gauge and we were trying to run in the opposite direction at the same time, so we had to wait for the line to clear.  At about half-way down to Sydney, the train manager approached us and the people on the other side of the aisle and asked if we wanted to move to a sleeper compartment for the rest of the trip.  We said yes, as we could spread out more.

Looking out one side of our compartment.

Looking out the other side

We did not cross any other traffic until about 1:45pm when we passed a northbound steel train near Wauchope.  The next cross was a northbound XPT in a loop at about 1:54pm.

The northbound Casino XPT

At Taree I checked out the new staging area for the new intercity trains.

We were mostly less than 20 minutes late all the way south until we got to Newcastle.  We had whittled the deficit down to about 6 minutes late at Newcastle, where we had to sit behind an interurban down to Sydney and again from Hornsby to Strathfield.  We ended up only about 20 minutes late into Sydney.  As we walked along the platform to collect our luggage, our son met us on the platform.

We’ve had a great time in Sydney.  Lunch with the son in Sydney on Tuesday, and Wednesday over to Manly and Watson’s Bay.  Thursday I trained it out to Blacktown and spent about an hour and a half talking to Maria at MRRC.  I then caught a Blue Mountains service back to Parramatta to visit Bergs Hobbies.  I then caught the train to Liverpool and again spent about an hour and a half talking to Joe at Casula Hobbies.  The modelling items I wanted to pick up in Sydney were obtained and I got a few other items.

The diagram showing trains near Parramatta station

Thursday was a trip to the Blue Mountains.  While waiting for our train to depart Sydney Central, I heard an announcement on the platform that there was a change of platform for our train.  What?  We were already on it.  So we left the train and proceeded to platform 6.  There was no train announcements, just a platform announcement.  So again we left about 12 minutes late and got to our destination about 7 minutes down.  We checked out the tourist walk to the 3 sisters, and plenty of shops at Katoomba.  We then caught a 4 car train to Elura and checked out the shops and caught the next 10 car train back to Sydney.

Saturday started early as I watched the Socceroos on TV, it would have been too cold to walk to Tumberlong Park where lots of people assembled for the broadcast.  We then went to the Glebe markets and later in the day we went to The Rocks Markets to check out the local merchants.  I was able to attend most of the NMRA Div 1 Meeting virtually in the morning/afternoon and also the British Region Brew and Natter in the evening.  We were lucky enough to see a cruise ship leave the Internation Cruise Ship Terminal in Circular Quay just after 4:00pm.  There was a bit of a network shutdown in Sydney on Saturday so we couldn’t catch a train from Circular Quay or a Metro from Martin Place to Central so we had to catch a bus back home.

The moorings being released

The ship disappearing behind the Opera House

A quiet day today at the local shopping centre having a look around before we prepare to come home tomorrow morning.  A very nice week.

XPT Fun and the Layout Model is Shown Off

Late on Monday I went to the shed and ran my XPT from Grafton to Fairy Hill and return.  Then I ran it to Kyogle and return just for kicks.  I think I noticed an issue inside my helix.  So I investigated.  A section of track had lifted, so I glued it back down on Tuesday morning and put a weight on it as the glue dried.  The next time I powered the layout on, I forgot that I had a weight on the track.  I got a short – Doh!  I realised so I then removed the weight and that section no longer had a short.  The XPT then ran smoothly through the helix section.  I also identified two sets of points at Kyogle where the XPT was jumping when it was travelling through that location.  So I shimmed the check rails with two slivers of 0.010” styrene and that seemed to help wonderfully.

On Tuesday evening amid all the expectations of the Tuesday Nighters, I successfully ran the XPT from Kyogle station back to Grafton Staging.  I was then asked to run it back the other way.  So I ran it from Grafton Staging to Border Loop.  I identified an issue with a set of points on the southern end of Border Loop.  The rail had come adrift from the throw bar.  So I attempted to push it back in.  That seems to have done the trick.  I also identified that two particular coaches on the XPT, the centre one and the last one seem to be causing random derails.  I had a suspicion that the bogies had wheels out of gauge.  On Wednesday morning I got the NMRA track gauge out and sure enough some wheels were out of gauge ever so slightly.  So I did a bit of adjustment and put the coaches back on the train.  Later in the arvo I had some time and ran the train from Border Loop back to Fairy Hill crossing loop before reversing it again and sending it back to Border Loop.  I still seem to think that I had a couple of other bogies that are out of gauge ever so slightly.  I will eventually check them all out.

Earlier in the day I cut up some pieces of styrene, including ‘I’ Beam, ‘H’ Beam and various slabs ready for painting.  These will help make up various steel loads for numerous open wagons.  It will also help provide some loads that someone wants me to make for them.

Saturday was Club Meeting day.  I decided to take the scale model of my future layout to the Club for comments.  It sat on the back seat of the car.  I fielded many questions throughout the day about what it was.  

The model of the Modules for the future exhibition layout.

While at the Club, Greg showed me some 3D printed signals that he put together with some brass tube used for the post.  I purchased a tube cutter from Bunnings today and then went to Jaycar and picked up a stack of LEDs for the signals that Greg will eventually print for me.  I have assembled the first trial signal that Greg printed and gave to me yesterday.  It looks pretty good.  I will eventually get around to making the RJ45 connection from my control panel to the signal as another piece of my layout puzzle gets materialised.

The Week That Wasn't

This week I have done relatively little modelling except from building a couple of small detail items for the Div 1 FreeMo modules.  I have built a set of back steps from styrene, and then added a railing to the steps from styrene rod.  This will go out the back of a house on one of the modules.  Next modelling activity was with some fine phosphor bronze wire lines that can be added to a number of the clothes lines sitting in the back yards of various houses on the modules.  I also put together various types of ladders from kits that I had sitting around in my spares bucket.  One of these ladders will allow the guy currently sitting on the roof of a house to get up and down to/from the roof.  This guy is installing the TV antenna on the roof and he is connecting the co-axe cable

However, today as I started to clean up the shed in preparation for the meeting this coming Tuesday night at my place, I realised that I had promised to create a few detail items for one guy to pick up at the upcoming Brisbane Exhibition.  I spoke to him at the last Buy and Sell for our Club, and I did not have any of the items that he wanted on my table.  But I am now working towards fixing that issue.  I created 5 long and 5 short steel wire loads for various HO wagons.  I think I had sold the last of my long loads at the Buy and Sell.  I then made a large batch of 4” x 4” pieces of wood (to be used as dunnage), and painted these to install in a large number of steel wagons or open wagons, so various steel loads can sit on them on.  This allows the forklifts to get under the loads to help with unloading.  These have been made to go inside my steel wagons for NSW and QR.  I have currently made up 4 large pipe loads of various sizes and painted these.  I have also made up 3 x 6m loads of small steel rod bundles.  These were also painted today.  I need to make up some steel plate loads and then add some “I” and “H” beam loads.  That is this week's job. 

I had plans of adding the various windows to my Old Cassino station building this week, but I did not get motivated to do any work on that project. 

On Tuesday this week I will also add an extra NCE Throttle to my layout, as Darren recently picked up two NCE throttles online, and I went halves with him - so one each.  This throttle will not be radio.  However, after I take the throttle apart to check that it has a JST plug inside, I might eventually treat myself with a Wifi-Trax wifi module for this new throttle.  These modules work pretty well and are relatively cheap compared to installing NCE radio into a throttle.