Greg's Railway Modelling Musings: August 2016

I thought it might be time for an update as I have done a few things in the last couple of months.

On the modelling front, I have been continuing EVER so slowly on PK's gas and fuel depot kits for the Club HO layout. Not as fast as I would like as work and family seem to keep getting in the way ;-) Whether I get to finish these for judging at the Club Xmas modelling competition is another guess. The project that I am working on will be gearing up again for some fun (read hectic) times so more than likely I'll be stuffed by the end of the day and not have much time for the modelling side of things. Weekends might be a go now that my son's soccer commitments on Saturdays is over for the year, but I am sure the missus has that 'things to do list' to show me. She mentioned something about bathroom and laundry renos, which after 18 years in the same house are probably well overdue!

The June-July school holidays saw the family go on a road trip through NSW and to Canberra to visit the national monuments and places of interest. Enroute I was able to call into Thirlmere railway museum which was great. In Canberra we went to the Canberra railway museum, which isn't as big as Thirlmere in its collection, however it does have Garrat 6029 which is operational compared to Thirlmere's 6040 which is static. The boys and I were even allowed to venture into the cab of 6029. (Took away a piece of coal as a souvenir from its tender!). Photos below.

On the electronics front, I have been reading and researching Geoff Bunza's articles about how to use Arduinos (in their various forms) as DCC decoders. Very interesting. So much so that I sent away for the particular opto-couplers from China (via Ebay) as I couldn't source them at either Jaycar or Altronics. These arrived last week, so now to find time (ha ha!) to put the electronics together, at least on a prototyping breadboard, and see what can be done. I see some immediate possibilities such as building and street lighting control and effects which one decoder using various functions to control these. Also servos for crossing gates/booms or industrial site gates. Just need to experiment a bit.

On the computer front I have been mucking around with Linux Mint as an alternative OS for some old PCs with out of date Microsoft OS (Win XP, Win 95, etc). The Raspberry Pi side of things has been fairly stable of late, just keeping the OS up to date.

On the Internet side of things, two big decisions made in the last week. My website "GB's Shed" is no more. I didn't have the time to keep it maintained and having documents in various locations was becoming annoying. So I shifted all the documents to my Dropbox account and re-linked them on my Blog site. Having them on Dropbox allows me to maintain them in the one location. Then I deleted the website.

The second big decision was, after many years of baulking at the idea, I have joined the Facebook community, but only for modelling, prototype railway articles, and things that interest me (electronics, etc) purposes. No family posts or joins on this account. It might also be an easier medium for sharing progress photos of the modelling. So if you are on Facebook, look me up if I haven't already requested being a "Friend" of you. The link is on the "My Facebook site - Greg's Shed" link in the side bar. Hopefully I have set it up correctly, but please feel free to provide any guidance to this FB newbie.

So the rate I am going, the next blog update may be over the Xmas holidays, so maybe best to keep track of what I am doing via Facebook ;-)

Some photos from the road trip for your visual edification.