Cassino running session wraps up a busy week

I had a week off from work this week so the family had a few days up at Noosaville Monday to Wednesday. Thursday and Friday I spent finally putting up my garden shed. Thank God that's done! Sunday afternoon was spent moving things from the Big Shed back into the garden shed. I now have easy access around the layouts and hopefully can get back into modelling. Saturday was the piece de resistance for the week. I made the trip over to the southside of town to attend a Cassino running session at Mr Mackie's. A great afternoon playing (oops running!!) trains to a prototypical timetable, communicating with the controller and yard master via radio (CBs) and having smokos. I met some very nice blokes who are serious modellers and great company.

In the time I was there I drove two trains. The first, Train 1 Down Container to Acacia Ridge from Grafton was a good run with some hiccups along the way. The second train was  Number 9 Down Banana from Grafton to Murwillumbah. This train had some extra movements along the way whereby a number of wagons were dropped off at Old Cassino (I think) and again at Lismore. These extra movements/shunts made it a lot more interesting. We stopped the fastclock when I was just recoupling to the main train so as to have smoko. Unfortunately the group got distracted and I had to go at 4pm so I wasn't able to continue driving #9 to the Murwillumbah terminus. Thanks Craig and hopefully I will be allowed out to play with you boys in August or September at your next running session!

Apart from that nothing done this week on Illavearf. However I did spend some quality time with Lachlan on Wednesday afternoon putting static grass down on another section of Beaver Springs. The lake got another coat of clear coating and we did some more ballasting.

I am heading back to work this week and I am fully expecting to be knee deep in work for the next few weeks as the project I am working on is reaching a critical phase. Time will tell whether I get to do any modelling. Things on the To Do List include sorting out the control panel resistors and wiring, connect up the rest of the point microswitches, wire up the street/platform lighting to the MRC decoder, make a signal or two and wire into the MRC decoder, make the signal box and install the lighting and wire into the MRC decoder, etc etc (the list goes on!)