Another two Oz blogs added

In reply to them being Followers of my blog, I have added 'Laker's Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Workshops' and 'Gundagai Model Rail Layout' to my list of blogs. Thanks guys for taking an interest in my musings. I will join your blogs as a Follower.

Two new links added

I came across two new sites that I have now included on my blogpage.

Eastmoor (an extensive UK blogsite) and a link to Wikipedia's UK Railways Portal.

Both worth a visit.

Kensington Hill tunnel mouth under construction

Saturday night was spent making a start on the tunnel mouth for Kensington Hill. This is a dual curving track as it enters the 'Hill' so I have to make sure the clearances are OK. I have decided to proceed with a modified Scalescenes plan. I will use a piece of 2mm balsa sheet for the tunnel front instead of 2mm cardboard just to give it a bit of strength. unsure whether this will work but I guess that is what this hobby is about - trying things new. An hour on Sunday afternoon was spent with Lachlan helping me with the tunnel lining. He was getting cabin fever with all the rain that we had so some quality time with Dad was in order (or by order from Mum!). I will hopefully finish the lining and front brickwork this week and start on the buttresses. If all goes to plan possibly placing it into position next weekend sometime. Time will tell if the plan comes off this week or next! Photos will follow once in position.

On a side note, I mentioned a few entries back that one of the club members had suggested using ant nest 'grit' (for want of an official term). Well last weekend and Saturday just gone, I collected a few bags from the back yard before the rain drenched everything. It is worth pointing out an observation that not all soils are the same from the one location! Soil from one part of the yard is darker than soil from another. The granularity is fortunately the same as the same species of ant seems to be doing the work in both locations. ONE THING THOUGH - some of the little fellas were caught in the big scoop up, so I have three mini ant farms in plastic sandwich bags! Lord knows how long it will take for them to die before I can use the soil! If someone has a humane way of killing them off I would like to hear it.

New Year's resolution finally underway

Sorry I haven't posted anything recently. I thought I might have some interesting musings about a planned visit to Mr Mackie's last Tuesday night but the plans fell through. The kiddlywinks were being feral throughout the day and both the missus and I were mentally exhausted by the time the kids were finally put down - I mean put to bed, not what I was thinking at various times during the day! So no observations first hand of the recent developments on the Cassino layout. I was able to get to the club Wednesday morning for a couple of hours and PK mentioned that I hadn't missed much as it was a gab fest rather than a running night! Now the truth is coming out ;-)

As per this posting's title, I was able to finally get around to starting my New Year's resolution, namely spending more time on my layout. Yesterday arvo I started with the tunnel mouth on Kensington Hill. I am thinking of using a combination of balsa sheet and Scalescenes' Tunnel Portal to provide a little more rigidity than card as the tunnel mouth is a tad large as it is two tracks curving within the 'hill' with a curved point just inside the tunnel mouth. I know it isn't probably prototypical but hey it is my layout! So hopefully this week I can spend some time getting the Scalescenes' design onto the balsa sheet and customising as required before siting it at the base of Kensington Hill prior to finalising the scenicking of the Hill. Next step after this is probably the station platform. My son Lachlan is eager to get some trees on the Hill as it is looking very barren, so possibly some quality time with him making trees! However it won't be anywhere near the 647 trees that Mr Mackie needs to make for just the Border Loop area of his layout!

Cataloging done

This week I spent some time cataloging the magazine collection as it was getting rather untidy, and with the much appreciated donation by Mr Mackie of a large number of older editions of AMRM, I needed to get some order into the collection.

I also was able late Saturday afternoon to start the undercoating of two of the five stock drawers. I will finish these two off sometime this week so that I can put the foam liners in prior to adding the stock that I have recently purchased, etc so that I can finally make some room on the craft table to get on with some of the Illavearf and container modelling that I want to get stuck into.

Just this morning Craig donated a few more AMRM's for the magazine collection. Lucky I bought a few more plastic storage boxes on the weekend!

Only one visit to the Club this week!

My devious water leak previously mentioned curtailed my mid-week visit to the Club this week whilst on holidays as I was busy waiting on plumbers, digging trenches, waiting for plumbers (again!), and finally getting a whole new water main line laid. Not what I had planned at the start of my holidays. NOT HAPPY JAN! I did get to the Club for the monthly meeting on Saturday but go no closer to getting my CFCLA CQBY wagons out of their packaging and running behind EL51! One day!!! Mr Mackie showed some of us the finer points of using dirt on a layout for scenicing purposes. One member, Bob, suggested the dirt from ant mounds. What a great idea as the little fellas do a fine job of breaking down soil. Now I just have to wait for the next bout of steady rain for the little mounds to appear in the backyard!

Well the holidays are now over for me for two weeks. I have another week off in the last week of January to hopefully a mid-week visit to the Club on Wednesday of that week.

Now to plan out some work on the Kensington Hill side of Illavearf. Also the researching continues on what to model for the NSW/Australian fleet?

Belated New Year's Resolution

I don't usually make New Year resolutions, but for 2010 I think I have decided to set one that hopefully I will be able to achieve. Namely, to spend more time on Illavearf as it was neglected a tad in '09 as a result of time spent on other modelling projects (decoders mostly!) So first thing on the To Do list will be to construct the platform and station building for Kensington Hill.

Unfortunately I have not been as productive as my good friend Mr Mackie as family commitments and a devious underground water leak has prevented me from spending time in the shed or at the craft table. I did get one thing in last Thursday when the missus and kids were at a playgroup function, I was able to put together five drawers for keeping the new rollingstock safe. I now just have to find the time to paint the things!

I got another step closer in running my new CQBY container wagons when I took off the outer plastic wrapping of the box, but the wagons are still firmly in the box. All in good time!