I must apologise for the lack of posts lately as I've been on holidays for two weeks. Not much happened in the week before going on leave, and as for the two weeks on leave, nothing modelling related has occurred. Once we started putting the hobby room/study stuff into storage I've kind of been busy with other reno type stuff. Quotes, tradies, etc over the hols. So the missus then tells me this evening she wants the hobby/study room painted before the carpet is laid, I said by whom? A painter she says. So I said that's OK. After having the pagola repaired this week I started the painting of the raw timber and reacquainted myself as to why I detest painting! So not sure when modelling will start up again.
While on hols, I received two deliveries, one from MERG for some pocket money projects for PK, Mr Mackie and myself, and the other was the replacement Zimo decoder. So I might have to clear some space in the shed to act as a hobby table so that I can progress with the NSWGR 73 conversion.
As for the shed, I finally decided to buy something I've been wanting to do for years. This year while up the coast for hols, we went to the Eumundi Markets. A wood carver who does signs was still there, so I placed an order. The result was the following:
The other thing I've been contemplating is the purchase of a VR Walker Railmotor from Auscision. I found out that dccsound.com does sound decoders for this model as well. So even though off my prototypes of interest, it is a fine looking model. Might look good cruising around the Club layout when it becomes operational. So I might just purchase this before Xmas.
So if I want to do modelling, it will have to be through the week at night as my weekends are starting to fill up with either house renos, early Christmas catchups, or usual domestic bliss ;-)
Not much modelling happened again last week however I was able to finalise the updates for the Pi HowTo and submit it to PK for publishing in the club newsletter "The Semaphore . It was released the other day and looks good. I might have to pass it by the editor of MERG's journal.
The reason for the delayed post was a nasty surprise on Monday evening when the missus pointed out an ant problem in the study/hobby room cupboard. As I hunted for a possible nest behind all the books in the cupboard I discovered a rather large break in the bottom of the wall in the cupboard (built ins). The timber looked like it had rotted away by dry rot. Initially I thought it might have been the base/floor plate of the wall framing. As I wasn't sure if this was structural or not, I had to organise a carpenter/builder to come and tell me the bad news or not. I didn't sleep much that night worried about the dosh needed for a repair. As the room is lined with old style fibro sheeting (ie asbestos!) I say "Cha-Ching!" signs before my eyes! The next problem was getting a tradie to actually come out. Eventually I had a guy come out and he gave me the best news for the day. Its not structural and can be fixed very easily. The timber that had rotted was the old boxing they had used when the concrete slab had been poured, but never removed as it was too difficult to do so. "Just clean out the rotted timber and bog it back up with Silaflex sealant". Fantastic news.
Unfortunately as we have now cleaned out the cupboard and had made a significant dent in cleaning out the room in anticipation of a major repair job, the missus then says "Well we may as well clean out the rest of the room and re-carpet it!" As the current carpet is threadbare I couldn't argue with logic like that!
So now that the hobby room is now a work in progress and most of the hobby stuff is packed up, I'll just have to see what I can manage hobby-wise. It might be more around the Pi, or if I can work out which box the missus packed things up in, I might be able to get back to the 73 conversion once the replacement decoder comes in from Europe. No word on that yet! Ot maybe even learn a bit more around the configuration of JMRI. I'm sure I can sort something out!
.jpg)
