Progress this week on the modelling front

A bit of progress this week on Illavearf. Wednesday evening I was able to start gluing down the Scalescene terrace houses onto cardboard. I didn't get very far as I was watching a movie (Beneath Hill 60 - not a bad flick) on my laptop at the same time. Not a good idea as the flick started to get more interesting than gluing down paper! Well it's a start. Saturday arrived and with it a rainy day.The morning was busy with the usual shops outing but the afternoon was spent in the shed for longer than an hour! Son # 2 didn't want his arvo nap and was getting feral. The missus was arcing up and said take them to the shed. OK, I don't need to be told twice ;-) So while the boys mucked about with Lachlan's layout and various other things I got to do some stuff for me for a change. I had printed out some Scalescene's rubble wall sheets which I used for the village retaining wall. A thin layer of PVA on the 3mm MDF sheet cut last weekend was followed by the paper sheeting. Using a hobby knife I sliced off the overhang and then sprayed dullcote to protect the ink. A few blobs of liquid nails on the reverse side of the MDF and this was then glued into place. Not bad. I then followed this with the capstones (again Scalescenes from the same design pack) on the top of the rubble wall. Looks pretty good. It was then time to go inside for the night.


Sunday arrived and once again the morning was shot with other commitments. Lunch was followed by a nana nap with Son # 2. Didn't think this was going to happen but he toddled in and climbed up onto the bed where I was having a post-lunch rest. After a few minutes he wanted me to go to sleep with him. Once again I don't need to be asked twice, and we both nodded off for about 1.5 hours. We eventually got back to the shed late in the arvo. i was hoping to do another retaining wall cutdown but Lachlan's DC engine decided not to work for some reason. So I spent the next hour troubleshooting and eventually found a loose connection at the motor. The connetion wasn't actually broken but if tension was removed from the wire it wouldn't work. Bizarre. Fixed by pulling the wire tighter. By then the afternoon was gone and it was time to get the boys ready for dinner, and have a drinkie while getting dinner ready.


BTW Scalescenes have released a new model of a Gantry crane for an intermodal facility. Go to here for a look.

Also on Friday my mate PK showed me a neat little computer, the Raspberry PI, which might just be the ticket in placing a very small computer with JMRI installed on the layout without going overboard with Netbooks, etc. Unfortunately the little thing was sold out, 12000 sold globally in one day! At US$35 it's a bargain, just add low end monitor, keyboard, mouse and wireless connectivity and Bob's your uncle. JMRI still have to fix a few things on the software to allow it, but the newsgroup is saying as soon as one of the developers gets his hands on a Raspberry Pi, then fixes wouldn't take that long to do and test. Here's hoping. In the meantime, hopefully PK has put his usual backorder in?
So this week is looking a tad busy on a couple of evenings. Not sure whether I will go to one of them. Either way modelling might have to take a backseat as I have a couple of job interviews next week that I probably should put some 'homework' into for preparation for them? Next Saturday is Club Day so the afternoon will be busy down at the club. The missus has mentioned that she wouldn't mind doing something on Sunday as she is getting cabin fever! So the liklihood of anything progressing this week is very low. Let's see what the week brings. You never know!