Club 12mm Update

This week I had to go back to work after 2 weeks touring through NSW and attending the NMRA convention.  What a let down!  Anyway, I was able to take Friday off, as I needed to get my daughter to the airport at about 4:40am for a flight to Cairns and then Townsville.  She comes back on Monday night after talking to some people up there.

So used the time later on Friday to get my tax done.  Looks like I’m in for about a $600 refund.  I see none of that, it just goes into the back account.

Saturday was Club Meeting day and I made my way over there early.  What I noticed was that the extension to the front of the Shed was complete.  There is however further work about water proofing that and the rear extensions and putting insulation into the walls.  It is looking pretty good.

After the meeting, I went down to the rear HO shed and had a look around.  Holy 12mm batman!  There was truck loads of it on the layout.  Most of the goods wagons were weathered, and weathered very well.  I think there were a few BB18¼ steamers running around on the layout.  There was at least three sets of SX cars.  There was also two complete sets of lander cars.  It seems that we might have become the centre of the QR 12mm universe over the last couple of months.  We have quite a few new QR modellers joining the Club.

There was also people running on the outdoor live steam as well.

Back Home

After last week’s blog post we jumped in the cars and went to Marcus’s place for dinner and an Ops Session.  It was great to catch up with Marcus.  Most people ran a train at Marcus’s and had a great time.  While there, Marcus also replaced the RJ12 connection in my Powercab.  It now works like a treat.  I also purchased some new battery terminals as the old ones were tarnished by a previous battery leak or two.  These were replaced when I got home.  Nothing like a throttle that works as good as new.

Some of the crew at Marcu's Place for dinner

Next morning we started our way north, and went to four layouts on our Layout Tour Day.  We went to Rob Peterson’s, Alistair Gilmore’s (Some of us had been there before), back to Marcus’s, and then David Howarth’s.  We were running late and could not get to Ken Scales place.  We stayed that night at East Maitland.  We had a BBQ dinner after a run to the shops for some snags and other items.

At Rob Peterson's N scale layout

John Z working as one of the station masters

Trains running

Control's Desk

More trains running

BBQ Dinner on Monday evening

Next day (Tuesday) we started hitting the stations up the main line to Werris Creek.  We seemed to catch quite a few trains on this section of the trip.  We left Werris Creek for Armidale just after the Explorer left and we saw it at a couple of locations on route north.  We had dinner in the Bowls Club and stayed in our usual motel.  On Wednesday we were planning to visit Rohan’s layout, but he had a plumbing emergency that he had to deal with so we did not catch up with him.  We still had a few stops at Glen Innes, Tenterfield, Warwick and Aratula before we split up and made our separate ways home.  My car got back to my place, and then Pk took over driving Glen and Clinton home.

Muswellbrook dock with a captive coal wagon

A Hunter Set about to head back to Newcastle at Muswellbrook

Tenterfield Station

Tenterfield Station

Tenterfield Station again

Tenterfield rest break eating a sausage roll

Willow Tree waiting for a number of trains to roll through for Tuesday lunch

Werris Creek Station from the overbridge

Armidale Bowl Club

We did over 2,100 kms, saw many trains and railway locations, went to a convention, dropped in on lots of layouts, and maybe some of us actually learnt a thing or two.  I know I did.

Not being content with all this railway activity, on Friday Night Darren and myself along with Brendan went over to Geoff’s place for a night of pizza, drinks and modelling.  I started to work on my entry for the RMCQ Christmas Modelling competition.  This model will be something very different and will cause some in the competition to scratch their heads.

That's a Wrap!

A fun filled week has almost been completed.  We have an Operations session scheduled for later tonight at Marcus’s place.  This week we travelled down frpm, Brisbane to Sydney, via Border Loop, Casino, Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, and Newcastle.  We had a few cars in tow at various times.  This was all to attend the NMRA Australasian Convention at Rosehill.  We had some layout tours on Friday, before seeing lots of the inside of one of Sydney’s tunnels when road traffic ground to a halt.  The convention proper started on Friday night with model comp entries being submitted, Canapes, and a few drinks.  Convention Sessions started yesterday and today they continued.  One and a half sessions today were by me.  The half was with PK.

Last night at the Convention Dinner, I also was surprised with a third place prize for passenger cars, second place for freight cars, and first place for non-revenue cars (must have been the only entry).

We have more layout tours tomorrow.  Then we still need to get home.  We have had a ball.

Gold Coast Exhibition

This week we ventured down to the Gold Coast Model Railway Exhibition at Nerang on Saturday.  I was on the NMRA stand with Marty and Clinton.  They are two of my crew for travelling down to the NMRA convention in Sydney next week.  The funniest thing all weekend was Marty installing a dead short into a Blunami decoder he just put into a Loco, then blaming the power supply not having enough grunt to run two trains.  We gave him heaps.  Well it must be said, that the Blunami decoder handled Marty’s challenge easily and once the wiring was fixed, it operated very well.  No worries at all.

At the Exhibition there was a good selection of shops, some very nice layouts and lots of good company on the day.  I may have purchased a couple of needed items.  I spent most of the morning folding up about 50 tarpaulins.  In the afternoon I made up 4 of my three cubic metre industrial bins.  We did get quite a bit of foot traffic and spoke to quite a few interested parties.

On Sunday morning there was an NMRA-X broadcast and this time it was quite reasonable for us in Oz.  It started at 7:00am and we have three presentations.  Marty broadcast live from the Gold Coast exhibition after the last presentation at just after 10:00am for a few minutes.

During the week, Geoff and I booked our accommodation for our road trip, so we are now all set.  So I’m starting to pack my items.  Beer, clothes, models, PC to post next weekend.  What more do you need?

We are in for a blast.

Tick Tick Tick

As the clock ticks down to our trip to Sydney for the NMRA Convention, our travelling party have basically finalised our itinerary both down and back.  We hope to visit some mates on the way down and back and also take a few photos of trains and railway infrastructure at various locations.  We have also wrangled ourselves an Operations session after the Convention.  How good is that.

Yesterday we had our local NMRA meeting and 49 people turned up.  We had three very interesting presentations and a lot of good information passed around.  We also had a few laughs.

On the modelling front, I have just tried to install some retaining screws into a passenger wagon this weekend, so the roof can be attached to the basic frame of the wagon.  With the crews, the top can be removed from the bottom and I can get access to some electrical components inside.  But I’m having some issues at one end of my wagon.  Just as I write this, I got a brain wave.  So I went and implemented it.  I will see how well it worked after the glue dries.

I am also working on another couple of potential articles for AMRM.  We will see how they go.

The activity I’m spending most brain power on at the moment is preparing the paperwork for my modelling in the modelling competition entries at the upcoming Convention.  Working out what photos or plans I need to include is a killer.  We don’t want to provide too much info, or it will not be looked at.  Too little info and it won’t prove some of the points I am talking about in my judging forms.  Well I am only looking for a few Merit Awards, no sheep stations here.

Next Saturday is the Gold Coast Model Railway Exhibition.  I will be attending on the Saturday working on the NMRA stand.  I think I will be working on a couple of simple models.  Then I will start looking at what I am talking down to the Convention.

Still More Prep to do!

At this point in time, I'm still ticking off the last couple of items on my 'to do' list in preparation for the NMRA convention in a couple of weeks time.  I decided to add some more detail to the last two wagons.  I still need to add one more piece of phosphor bronze brake piping to two wagons.  

On Monday this week I ordered some detail items from Casula Hobbies.  They rocked up a couple of days later.  Fantastic service!  This allowed me to complete the brake wheels on my last two wagons, a QR HOE wagons and QR WHE wagon.  But once I had done this work, I found my stash of brake wheels in various sizes and number of spokes.  How did I know that was going to happen?  I also found some brake cylinders, and some brake triple valves.  So they also got installed on the two wagons.

On Saturday I went to the Club.  I checked out some of the changes being made to the facilities.  What a difference they have made so far. It was also AGM day.  So I assumed the chair when all positions were declared vacant.  I also spent some time with Laurie McLean MMR and he reviewed my forms for the NMRA modelling comp entries.  He assisted me and provided some good feedback and added a bit more text to them.

Sunday morning was spent watching trains run on Dave Abeles’ Onondaga Cutoff layout, on the other side of the world.  He live streamed to the Internet.  I saw a few other NMRA Div 1 modellers online, Marty, Brad, Darren and Geoff.  I’m sure there were more.  I also saw some other Australian guys around as well.  I also saw some others from around the world that I know also attending.  What a great hour we spent watching trains run on his layout with great commentary.

The next task I need to do is print off all my paperwork to take to the convention.  I need to gather all my prototype plans for the various wagons and a photo or two to show off what I am modelling.

Next task is then the itinerary for our trip.  Maybe that will be completed by next weekend.

Count Down

As the clock ticks down to the Australian NMRA Convention, I continue to put things in place for that event.  I think I have completed the various Entry forms and Judging forms for my modelling comp entries.  It will be interesting to find out how my entries get judged.  I’m just after a Merit award or two.

Today I added some brake pipes and decals to two new models that I will be entering into the competition.  I have been looking at these models for quite a while, and while I scratch built these models, I did not put all the bells and whistles on them, as they operate on my layout and in this case I use the 3 foot rule.  You don’t need all this fragile detail if you are continually touching the model, shunting in operations sessions, and the detail might get damaged and fall off.

I still have a couple of weeks left to super detail these items.  I am in the process of adding some wagon steps that I bent up this afternoon, and will solder the intermediate rung on later tonight.  I might also install then tonight or tomorrow night.  It will depend upon what is on the idiot box to watch. 

My only issue is finding some appropriate brake wheels for the various wagons.  I can’t seem to find any shop that has the correct size wheels and number of spokes.  I might have to settle for near enough.  I have asked a mate to see if he can find any 3D printed ones around, as they might do, and get me out of a pickle.