QR 2050 Class Railmotor Build Progress

So this week I did complete the last few light additions to Kyogle platform.  I re-flashed an Arduino and swapped out the one running the lights and the flickering of the ‘bad’ light resumed.  However, the Arduino that I swapped out, was placed on the layout track on the bottom deck at Lismore underneath where I was working on the next deck up at Kyogle and I saw it light up.  Whoops!  It must have conducted some power through the Arduino and now that Arduino is Kaput. 

So I received some plans for the 2000 and 2050 class QR railmotors early this week.  So after perusing these, they were put to good use.  I started scratch building a 2050 stub end railmotor – aka the intermediate car in 3 or 4 car sets.  The railmotor roof I started last weekend did not work out.  So I spent two days looking at the MK II roof.  I laminated a couple of sheets of styrene together and then used my burnishing wheel and shaped it to a reasonable likeness to my railmotor elliptical roof.  So the next step was to work out how to make the curved sheet steel fluted sides of the railmotor.  I found some appropriate styrene in my styrene box and started creating a styrene shell frame and then started putting everything together.  So far I have put everything together and I’m pretty happy with the result so far.  The next railmotor model I do will be better and I might have to work with my 3D designer mate Greg (Hint! Hint!) to see if he can print off all the windows along the railmotor in a single 3D sheet print.  One print for the front windows (in front of the front door), one print for the long middle section windows (between the doors) and a third print for the rear section (after the rear door) windows.  We will then need a set for the left hand side and another set for the right hand side of the railmotor.  Cutting out 12 windows for the middle section of the railmotor is excruciating slow and that is the worst job you can do in scratch building in styrene.  I just hate cutting out windows.  I might have to discuss this with Greg on Monday this week while on our Gympie trip.

On Wednesday this week Greg advised that he had 3D printed some sample Cassino awning brackets.  They look pretty damn good!  The order is in, and I will get them delivered on Monday this coming week.  Next week I think I might spend some time building some supports for a travelling crane for my Rocla Sleeper Siding.  That was why I had the photos up on the blog the week before.  Then I can start looking at building the Cassino Station building.

Yesterday afternoon and today I did more work on my 2050 class railmotor.  I am just putting together the finishing touches, like the skirt at the front and the underfloor detail.  I have no idea what type of motor I will use, but I would like to see if I can use a very small under floor motor.  I would like to see if I can actually make a working model of the throw over seats.  Well at least one – just a proof that it can be done.  Yesterday Kevin, Arthur and myself were chauffeured by PK down to the NMRA meeting at Jack’s place at Palm Beach.  It was a good turn up with about 30 people there.  It was a great meeting, with PK, Arthur and myself all presenting along with Dean.

Layout Brackets and Styrene Builds

Things did not go as expected this week.  I decided to watch replays of the Olympics during the day instead of doing  work in the shed.  I did take a few photos for a presentation and I did work on the notes that will go with the presentation, but that was about it.  We all went to Tuesday Nighter’s this week at Brendan’s place.  I think there was 8 of us venturing to the end of the earth (or at least you could see the end of the earth from Brendan’s place).  A couple of people were running trains on Brendan’s layout and the comments were that it ran very smoothly in slow speed.  The conversations around the outdoor setting were great and it wasn’t that cold either.  It was a very good night.

On Friday I decided that I needed to get on with building my Cassino Station building.  The first thing I needed to build was a station awning bracket.  These hold off the roof of the station awning.  I built two and went down to the shed and see how they worked on the building mock up.  Well as I had shortened the awning overhand, the awning bracket was two long.  Doh!  Of course I new that.  So I made two more smaller.  I took then back down to the shed and test fitted them and they worked a treat.  So I made two of them.  I quick check of the scale plan and worked out I needed 18 more for the station building and 22 for the refreshment room.  Ah!  I don’t think I want to scratch build that many.

On the left of this photo is one of the awning brackets

Another shot of a bracket

There are actually two needed back to back in this area

You can see down the platform, that these brackets support the roof fascia.

So I made a trip to the Club yesterday for our monthly meeting and I asked Greg if he could 3D print the station awning backets to the measurements of my scratch built ones.  He took one of the scratch built assemblies and he will look into it.  It might take a month for him to finish them among the other things on his plate.  As long I don’t have to build another 40 of them.

While at the Club I was checking out a few other things going on around the Club layouts.  I took some photos and I had an idea for a moving container gantry crane for a future exhibition layout.  I also spoke to some of the QR modellers and I now have some high level plans for a QR Silver Bullet 2000 and 2050 class railmotor.  The dimensions are not that prominent.  I was thinking about what I needed to do to scratch build one of both of these models.  I started some initial tests today, but I think I will have to rethink my intended process.

Some coal wagons and a guards van at the Club.

Grain wagons, ALYs and a low floor wagon.

I nicely coloured and weathered QLX

A model of a travelling crane that I need to scratch build for the layout.

Maybe this week I will get around to completing some lighting additions on Kyogle and Cassino platforms.

Track Work and Station Progress

Earlier this week I decided to take the XPT for another run.  This time from Cassino platform to as far north as I could go without running into something blocking a crossing loop.  So I went north from Cassino and had an issue inside the helix between Cassino Meatworks and Fairy Hill Loop.  So I went inside the helix and watched what was happening.  I just needed to add some card under the outer rail and the XPT no longer derails inside the helix.  At another point inside the helix, another loop further along inside the helix I did the same fix.  All good now.  The XPT ran well until it went over the bridge over Fawcett’s Creek just north of Kyogle.  I rail joiner had moved between two rails and it was not holding one rail, so there was a height mis match between the two rails.  So I adjusted it and the XPT then ran over that joint very smoothly.  The XPT hit a signal that had fallen across the track just outside the tunnel into Border Loop crossing loop.  So I fixed that and it continued running north.  It got to Acacia Ridge and there was a dead spot in the point work from the single track into the yard fan out.  I changed the points back and forth a couple of times and that came good, and the XPT continued further north.  When inside the Acacia Ridge Yard, I got smart.  It ran via a newish cross over from track no. 1 to the dual gauge track and then run onto the dual gauge mainline and got to the Rocklea Siding standard gauge points and then it had its next issue.  The point actuator wire has too far through the point and every bogie had an issue going through there.  I will make a mental note to use the Dremel to reduce the height of that throw bar and re-run the train.  The train could only get to half-way into the Clapham Yard tracks, as they are all blocked with various trains on the standard gauge.  The train then rack back to Acacia Ridge Yard.  It had issues taking that newly laid turnout in the yard in the opposite direction, so we backed it back up and tried going through the normal track no 1 all the way and everything was smooth as a baby’s bottom.

The standard gauge crossover on dual gauge track where the XPT had issues.

Later in the week, I was able to spend some more time on working on the Cassino Station Building.  I took 5mm off each side of the Cassino Station Platform Building roof.  I then made some decisions about the Cassino Refreshment Rooms.  I adjusted the overhang on the main platform side of the roof, by the same 5 mm as the station building.  But what I actually did was move the back platform side 5mm further towards the platform edge.  Given the required width of the platform overhang on the mainline side, I had to adjust the width of the refreshment room back wall so it had the same overhang as the front of the building.  So that was done, and the measurements all seem to make the platform buildings look good.

The layout of the Refreshment Rooms section of the station building on the Cassino Platform.

The layout of the Cassino Station building at the southern end of the platform.

This view up the platform shows what the platform will look like when complete.  The roof line will need to be constructed separately.

On Wednesday, I finally started to paint up the signal frame that will go inside the Kyogle signal box.  I think it has come up reasonably well. 

The Signal levers that will eventually go into the signal box above.

On Saturday morning I went to Modellers Warehouse to ask if he had some N Scale street lights, as I had purchased some off him previously (years ago).  There is nothing on his website, but he had a look out the back in the warehouse and he have about 6 packets.  I only needed a single packet of 4 lights.  So I purchased them and started planning where they were going to go on the layout on Kyogle Platform. 

I also bit the bullet and gathered up all my old cheap HO street lights that had a grain of wheat bulb and removed them, and then fed an 0402 LED with attached wires, down through the street light post.  I completed 4 and found that I have another 4 lights with grain of wheel bulbs on the layout, that will be swapped over with these LED ones, and then those ones will have their grain of wheat bulb swapped for an LED.

I then realised that I could not find any of the components that I use to create my layout power supplies, (rectified DCC power), so I made out a shopping list for Sunday’s trip to Jaycar.  I went there today and picked them up and purchased enough bridge rectifiers for 10 power supplies and 7 capacitors.  That was all they had of that component.  I have started working out where these will be deployed.  Today I tinned all the electrical components ready for use.

The Week Prior

Last Saturday was our NMRA meeting down the Gold Coast.  So the three of us who travelled down to Casino for our train trip got up early in the morning and went via the Bakery in Casino and hit the road north.  We were looking like arriving way too early.  So we went via Tweed Heads, and filled up with some cheap petrol.  Then over to Maccas for a coffee and Mcmuffin.  Then a quick detour across the road to the conveniences, as we had been travelling for a couple of hours.  Then back onto the road to Labrador.  However, the traffic was hideous.  We got there about 50 minutes after we had planned.  We missed half the first presentation.  At least I got to listen to the second presentation from a mate and then the third presentation was by Barnacle Bob himself, talking about Mosquito Creek.  This is an absolutely brilliant layout.  Hopefully it will be open for viewing at the 2025 NMRA Convention in Brisbane.  If you have the opportunity, please check it out.

The centre peninsular of Mosquito Crteek.  Mosquito Creek is to the right of the light house right the way along the peninsular.

The right hand peninsular.

Our host for last Saturday also had a brilliant layout.  It is very simple, but the modelling on display was second to none.

A nice waterway behind some houses

Fresh fruit and vegetables being sold out the front of the house.

A view of the town.

This week I had to attend work for 4 days.  So I did not get around to anything model railway related.  Now while the Olympics on TV, I will sit around and watch the idiot box and watch all the events.  This morning I was picked up by Shelton and we went to a local Buy and Sell.  It seemed well attended in terms of both sellers and purchasers.  There was some bargains there.  I saw about 20 or so NMRA members and about 3 or 4 from RMCQ and a few other friends, so I had a good time having a chat.

Today I did my first trial fit of the Cassino Station Refreshment Rooms.  I think I know the width that this building is going to be.  I will complete the mock up this week.

Cassino Station Building Planning and a Trip for Good Measure

Late last week I was planning my modelling activities for this week.  I was going to be reviewing the dimensions of a future model of the Cassino Station building.  I was provided copies of plans a while back and I thought I had everything ready to rumble.  However, while reviewing the plans last week, I realised that the distance between the left hand Station Building and the right hand Refreshment Rooms, and their Breezeway in between did not look right.  So on Monday I double checked the Station building plans and everything was scaled to HO size correctly.  When I looked at the Refreshment Room plans, I realised that these were drawn to a different scale compared to the station building.  Never assume!  That was the reason that my scaling of the Breezeway between the two buildings was incorrect.  It was supposed to be a hairs breadth under 105mm in HO scale.  My original figure was 66mm wide.  I could hear those alarm bells.  Now when I adjust the Refreshment Rooms to be at the correct scale, the breezeway works out almost exact.  Problem solved.

So on Tuesday morning after mowing the grass, and before visiting Barnacle Bob (whom was entertaining Clinton and Peter), I was able to visit Office Works and get the plan of the Refreshment Rooms scaled up by 345% to print the plan in HO scale.  So maybe 340 might have been good enough, but it is close enough.  So when I got home, I traced the outline of the Station Building and Refreshment Rooms and took that down to the shed and overlaid that onto the platform at Cassino.  Whoops!  Basically my selective compression has made the station platform just a tad short.  The Station Building with its roof overhang needs to start at a particular place on the platform as the platform takes time to widen out to fit everything.  The Refreshment Rooms roof is also slightly wide for the rest of the platform.

So I think I need to do a couple of things.  I might reduce the width of the Station Building roof by about 5mm on each side.  I think the Refreshment Rooms are enormously wide.  In my first attempt, I will potentially reduce the width down to three/quarters of the actual width.  I will also reduce the roof at this part by 5mm on each side.  The station length is long enough to take the full length building.  But I will need to do a scale mock up out of 1mm styrene for the building before I make any more decisions.

So on Wednesday I put together the scale mockup of the model of the Casino Station building.  I have yet to reduce the roof line by the 5mm on each side.  But I have affixed the roof to the square temporary rectangular base.  I also started building the Cassino Refreshments room model.  The base and the roof are currently the full width.  I have the platform side joined to the base.  I also have added some styrene placers on the base, so I can fit the rear wall 25mm in from its actual position, without glueing it in.  The rear wall just slots into the placers.  By adding more of these styrene placers to the base at other locations, the rear wall can be positioned at other locations to produce a narrower Refreshments room model.  This will help me work out how wide this building will be.

On Friday morning PK picked up Barnacle Bob and we all went down to Casino to catch the LVR 620/720 railmotor from Casino to Glenapp Loop and back in the afternoon.  I was going to measure up some things in Casino on Friday before my trip on the Lachlan Valley Railmotor.  On our way down through Tamrookum, we saw some railway workers with a high rail vehicle on a bridge just north of the Tamrookum Loop.  I immediately thought that there might be a broken rail at that location.  As we travelled a few hundred meters further south, we saw two NR class locos and a freight train sitting in the Tamrookum Loop waiting to come north.  They were not scheduled to be there, so I knew something was up.  We continued to Kyogle where we wanted to photograph one of the morning trips from Casino to Kyogle Loop of the Railmotor.  While there I took the opportunity to take a few measurements of things on the platform at Kyogle.  It also appeared that the northbound railmotor was running late.  We heard an announcement at Kyogle that the south bound XPT was due in 45 minutes.  It should have been through a couple of hours earlier, so it looked like it had been caught up in ‘our assumed’ broken rail incident.  In a few minutes a northbound Aurizon freight carrying mostly sailboat fuel (air) went north.  I thought that the XPT would cross it at either Kyogle Loop or Loadstone Loop if there wasn’t a train in Loadstone.  We were then met at Kyogle platform by a husband waiting for his wife to arrive on the southbound XPT from Brisbane.  He had been advised by her that there was a broken rail causing a track signalling issue, delaying their train.  That confirmed exactly what we had surmised.

We then decided to head to Casino as we would get a better photo there.  As we went south, we saw the railmotor in the distance heading north.  It was trying to make Kyogle Loop.  I thought it would have time to terminate and reverse and head back to Nammoona Loop to allow the southbound XPT to overtake.  So when we got to Casino, we did what any normal person would do, and started to measure up many of the buildings, to compare them to the plans that I have.  We measured the width of the Station building.  The width of the Breezeway.  The width of the Refreshments Roof building and then took lots of photos.  At Casino, we waited and waited and about 4 hours and 10 minutes late the XPT arrived.  Boy were those people going to get in late to Sydney.  Thinking that the railmotor might only be 6 minutes out we waited for the railmotor.  But it was about a half hour late when it eventually returned to Casino and left north again.

Refreshments Room building from the Breezeway

I didn't know that there was a cut off on the corner of the Refreshment Room building.

The roof work under the Breezeway

XPT Arrived at Casino

XPT Finally on its way south

Morning tour people disembarking

Afternoon tour people getting on the railmotor

The first return trip to Glenapp Loop then left immediately, but it was about 1 hour and 30 minutes late.  We hadn’t checked into our Caravan Park cabin for the night so while we were offered to run early on this trip, by the very helpful LVR crew, we waited for our trip.  We went and got something to eat and then checked in and returned to the station.  The earlier trip returned and we jumped on.  It had made up a few minutes.  Only 5 people were in our compartment, there were more in the other half of our trailer car.  It was a good trip, but being so late, we missed seeing most of the sights heading north as it was just too dark.  Heading south it was completely black, even though the moon was out.  Given our lateness, we thought that there was going to be as issue at Casino station.  The night time XPT was in at Casino getting there at 18:40pm and remains there until 19:30pm (before departing south) while we were also due in there at the same time, due to our lateness.  Thankfully a smart Network Controller allowed our train to enter the end of the platform at Casino while the XPT was also there. We arrived at 19:15pm.   What a great day!  Football, Beer and Pizza followed, but in reverse order.

Travelling over Fawcett's Creek at Kyogle and I only now noticed that there is a water supply pipe across the creek.

Disembarking from the Railmotor while the XPT is also in the platform.

Toowoomba Trip

So on Tuesday I finally rigged my Arduino test platform with some LEDs and downloaded my Kyogle code to the Arduino sitting on my work desk.  The LEDs on the test rig, worked, so I was very happy.  So I then took that Arduino to the shed and plugged it in.  The first 6 LEDs connected all fired up correctly.  Two were on the southern end of the Kyogle platform, a third was for the platform that flickered, one for a fettler’s shed just off the platform and two for the Signal box.  One is inside and one is outside the signalbox.

I then started looking at how I was going to wire up the Kyogle station building.  On Thursday I started soldering the various wires to what will be the fascia mounted switches and spliced in the connections to the above board LEDs to the station building and to the plugs that allow the station building to be removed from the switches via these plugs.  I drilled two holes in the baseboard to allow the wires between the plugs to be fed through.

Sometimes I really hate the wine enameled wire on the pre-wired 0402 LEDs, as I just cannot get the wires tinned, to allow them to join to other wires with solder.  They just keep disconnecting from the soldered connections.  Anyhow perseverance solved that issue.  I installed the various LEDs in the station building, and down through the floor of the building.  One for the open waiting room, and two for under the platform awning at each end of the building.  I attached the plugs (that will feed through the baseboard to the Arduino) to the LEDs on the station building.  I then took the station building to the layout and fed the wires through the holes in the baseboard.  I then connected these to the Arduino wiring and below layout plugs and turned everything on.  Amazingly, it all worked. 

Saturday I went to the Bayside Model Railway Exhibition and was quite surprised by the collection of layouts, and the quantity of public attending.  I spent close to two hours there talking to various people and inspecting the layouts.  I then high-tailed it to the Club for our monthly meeting.  I was also very concerned about the raffle drawing.  Whenever we buy  multiple tickets in the raffle, we are given tickets in each book on the go.  Usually five different coloured books.  Usually well over 100 tickets are sold each month.  First prize went to orange D18.  Second prize went to orange D17.  Third prize went to orange D20.  I went off like a frog in a blender.  My ticket was orange D19.  It was rigged!  It had to be!  Everyone present roared with laughter when I loudly and verbally reacted to every prize being around my orange ticket.  These tickets were drawn by three different people.  All other coloured books missed out.  I could not believe my luck or lack of it.

Today I was picked up by Geoff who already had Darren in the car, and we then made our way to Brendan’s place and then up to Toowoomba.  We visited Bill and his Tenterfield layout, which now has almost all of his track down, just a couple of passing siding or industry sidings still to be completed.  We ran trains for a couple of hours.  Very enjoyable.  We also imparted our $0.02 of wisdom and then had a very delicious lunch.  This was followed by a cross town trip to Ben’s place and an inspection of his layout in his shed.  Darren had been there before, but for the rest of us, it was our first viewing.  We also got to do a few shake down trips around the layout.  A bloody brilliant day, spent with friends and doing some operations on two layouts. 

My time next week will be taken up revisiting the measurements needed to make the Cassino station building and refreshment rooms and the interconnecting breezeway.  I had scale plans by something is nor working with one of my measurements.  I’m actually heading down to Casino next Friday with PK and Barnacle Bob for a trip from Casino to Glenapp and return on Friday.  From there we will spend the night and then travel to the NMRA meeting on the Gold Coast on the Saturday.  Another action packed weekend of Railway related activities coming up next weekend.

South Brisbane Interstate Station

Sometimes when I get to look back on the week just completed, I forget what I have been up to.  On Monday and Tuesday I had to work, but when I was home I was reading one of the Australian Railway History magazines that I scored on Sunday last week from Mark.  The one in particular that I read had an article about South Brisbane Interstate Station with some diagrams.  As I have that location on my layout, I was very keen to see what was written about it.  It was nice to hear what sorts of trains made their way to South Brisbane.  The article also said that there were many light engine movements, to and from Yeerongpilly Loco.  In particular, the article said that a 73 class loco was sent from South Brisbane late at night to Yeerongpilly Loco to refuel.  A couple of hours later it ran back to South Brisbane Interstate early in the morning.  I base a 73 class loco at South Brisbane Interstate as a shunt engine.  Looking at my layout operations timetable, I did not have these two light engine movements included.  So a quick glance shows that I can fit these two movements in.  So I did.  They may have been about 30 minutes later than real life but I now have two move trains in the timetable.  While there were a few goods trains coming and going to South Brisbane Interstate, my timetable had them at different times, but similar trains.  That was good enough for my modeller’s license version of the timetable.  The train that left newspaper wagons at Park Road, actually went all the way to South Brisbane.  I had that train terminating at Park Road Sidings.  Again that is good enough for me.

The most significant arrival and departure from South Brisbane each day is the Brisbane Limited Express.  That train was always in my timetable.  My arrival time, may be up to 20 minutes later than historically timetabled, but departure time is spot on.  Most of the goings-on that occurred at South Brisbane Interstate has been sort of replicated in the timetable.  While I shunt trains from the platform to the various sidings in the yard, I do not have a lot of tracks to play with as I leave some spare wagons sitting in some of the outer tracks of South Brisbane Interstate.  So I did look at consolidating some of those spare wagons to Acacia Ridge Yard, to allow me more flexibility with the tracks available to use at South Brisbane.  I will consider that in the future.

On Saturday morning I did consolidate some wagons in track 8 at South Brisbane Interstate.  So track 7 is now available.  I did find one VR wagon in track 8 had some very dodgy wheels.  The tyres where off the tread and the wheels were under gauge.  So a little bit of super glue was applied and an NMRA standard gauge was used and everything seems back to be working when I pushed the wagon through some trackwork.  The wagon does need couplers so I will get around to that.  Speaking of couplers, the last Tuesday Nighter’s meeting was held at Geoff’s place.  As he is one of the main protagonists of KD coupler dropping on my layout, I thought I would strike early and strike often myself.  So two KD’s may have found there way onto his layout.  He found them and sent me the photos.

I did spend some more time on Saturday afternoon on my Armidale Presentation.  It is pretty close to completed.  However, I did think of something early Sunday morning when I woke up, but I have since forgotten what I was pondering.  I might have to sleep on it again to see if I can remember what it was.  At the time I thought it was a good example to include in my Presentation.  That part I do remember but that was it.