The running day photos as promised

Craig (at the back) sporting his headset as North Coast Control (the Bearded Controller!), Darryl and PK (at the front)

The Bearded Controller though the decks



View through Kyogle heading towards Fairy Hill (CPH railmotor in the siding)



Darryl sporting his 'radio' headset

When you gotta go, you gotta go!

Maintenance crew hard at it

I don't know why PK is sniffing his iPhone though? Must be one of those 'iSmell' apps ;-)
(Pardon the time stamp on the video, it should be 23/10/11 but obviously the date file is wrong!)

Trip to the southside for a running day on Cassino

The day I have been waiting for all week while I have been on leave finally arrived. Today. After a busy morning attending to a vet's appointment for the dog, I got in the car and drove the 50 minutes or so south to Mr Mackie's humble abode for the much anticipated running day (afternoon!) on his layout, Cassino (link in blog's on the right).

A good crew turned up and plenty of laughs eventuated due to the timetable going out the window and a best effort run occurring. The headsets for communicating with Control operated fairly well apart from a few hiccups easily fixed. After a few hours I had to leave the others to head back home and spend some time with the boys. I get home and the missus says "I wasn't expecting to see you until 5:30". Damn! I could have spent another 45 minutes at Craig's!

I have some photos of the afternoon that I have to convert to a lower resolution and hopefully a video off the spycam, but I will have to check these tomorrow and upload if OK.

Lachlan wanted me to do something on his layout, so off to the shed we went. I glued a lady figurine down onto the church footpath, coming out of the gate. I also cut down some styrene to glue the village shop onto so that it had some pavement out front. Then it was time to play with the boys in the yard for half an hour or so.

So thanks Craig for an entertaining afternoon, sans children!

Kensington Hills receives its first signals

Tuesday evening I was able to find some spare time in the shed. What to do, what to do? Signals!

So I started installing the Eckon signals I made back in July and August. First one in was KH4, the feathered two aspect signal at the ramp end of Kensington Hill station just before the tunnel mouth. The second one for the night was KH3 which is the two aspect signal guarding the point out of the engine stable siding. I initially installed it to close to the point curve and when I did a test run through with a couple of wagons, it bumped into them. So I had to position it further down the siding straight (about 5 cm). All good now. I didn't have a chance to wire up the extension cables to the MRC 4-way accessory decoder/s so this will be a job for another time. Two signals yet to be installed (KH1 and KH2).

I also took the opportunity in gluing down the red phone box and the street light near it.

The weekly phone call to Austral on Saturday morning came up empty. They are hoping for some stock to arrive through the week but couldn't say what would be in the delivery.

Saturday afternoon about 4pm a clanger of a hail storm came racing through. Golf ball sized stones were crashing into everything like gunfire! I can't remember when I last saw hail that size. The boys thought it was great. Mum and myself were worried about windows being broken though. It lasted about 5-10 minutes and no damage to either the house or the Shed (as far as I could tell). Nothing happened today as I was busy with yard chores.

Nothing going to happen through the week this week but maybe something special on Sunday. Stay tuned!

Some new photos and what happened this week

This week was fairly void of modelling on Illavearf. Saturday morning I was told to look after the boys as I wasn't going to be around in the arvo. So off to Hobbyrama we went. It was a quick visit but Matthew enjoyed it. He could name all the Thomas engines in the display case. As he has a fixation for Toby (for whatever reason) I decided to buy the one in the display case as his engine to run on the layouts. After the Club Monthly Meeting on Saturday, I raced home as the youngest was missing Dad and was inconsolable by his Mum. I spent some time with both boys, firstly running Toby around for Matthew on Lachlan's layout with a borrowed Annie in tow. Then I was also able to put the fence up around the church on Beaver Springs. Go on over to that blog to see some photos.

Sunday was busy with some Spring Cleaning about the house, namely carpet shampooing which is always a fun thing in my books! So no free time to do anything on Illavearf. I was able though last night to take some photos of the recent work (red phone booth, street light, and path fencing), so here they be. Excuse the mess I haven't had a chance to clean up.

Illavearf finally gets some attention

Saturday arvo was spent watching the AFL GF (go The Cats!) so no shed-time that afternoon. Late Sunday morning though found me in the shed contemplating which layout to work on, Beaver Springs or Illavearf. The latter was chosen. I spent the time wiring in the second MRC decoder to the bus and Point 5 to the second DS64, whilst 'supervising' the boys in the yard. I was surprised at my soldering skills on this occasion as it all went like clockwork! Fortunately the boys behaved themselves and spent more time in the shed looking at what I was doing than running around like blue-arsed flies in the yard. With Point 5 wired in, the Kensington Hill side is now completed. I tested the mimic board and some weird things were happening. Time for lunch!

After a post lunch nap, I ventured again into the shed on my lonesome to do some troubleshooting. The mimic board issue was a result of two issues. I hadn't programmed the mini-panel for Point 5's inputs (thought I had done this when I had done Point 4!) and the feedback LED power leads were reversed. Both easily fixed. While I had the controller connected into the mini-panel, I did some reprogramming of Point 4's commands as well, as both Point 4 and Point 5 need to be interlocked else derailments would occur. As for the feedback signal, a simple wire reversal was needed at the point mini-switch block.

As no children had yet come out to divert my attention elsewhere, I took the opportunity to fix the footpath fencing for the station in place. I then tried various locations for the red telephone booth and settled on one close to the road, station car park and the end of the footpath fencing. I scrapped away the grass and positioned it in place. I then found one of my street lights, drilled a 3mm hole close to the telephone booth and positioned it in place. Yet to glue both in though as I will give it a day or so and see if it still looks OK.

So finally some movement on Illavearf's modelling!

A couple of hours Shed-Time this week

Sunday morning just gone found me and the youngest Crew member home alone as the missus took the older Crew member to the flicks. In between keeping my little helper (hinderer?) out of mischief in the yard I was able to do some more work on Lachlan's layout. Didn't account for all the time in the shed but little bits here and there all add up! So the church was glued into place, the grass between the front steps and the road scrapped away and a gravel path made. I also cut the fencing off its sprue to get a feel for what needs to be done there. I also filled in the 'junk yard' behind the service station with the same reddish gravel.

Nothing done on Illavearf unfortunately. Maybe one night this week I might be able to get out to the shed and start wiring up the points to the second DS64.

I phoned Austral Modelcraft on Saturday morning to see if the NCE shipment from MRRC had arrived. Still coming in from the States. So I had Ray put one SB3a and a USB interface away for me when they arrive.

That's all folks!

Payment at last! Now to spend it ;-)

This week I finally received the payment from Peco Publications for the Continental Modeller article I wrote which appeared in the August edition of this magazine. By the time the various banks between the UK and Australia took their cut of the international funds transfer I was only slightly in front of the UK payment once converted into Aus dollars. Now I had the last piece in the finances to procure the NCE SB3a booster system. My esteemed mate and fellow club member PK was also going to fossick around for the USB interface he had somewhere at home. This would allow me to connect a laptop to the layout to use Decoder Pro, etc as well as try my new Android smartphone's Engine Driver app which allows the smartphone to function as a wireless hand controller when it uses the laptop's wi-fi capabilities.

Friday evening came and didn't look pretty. Both boys had come down with some sort of nasty virus. The younger son had reached 39 degrees plus, which was a concern. I had grave doubts as to having a reasonable sleep this night! As Saturday came, the previous night hadn't been too bad, could have been a lot worse! However I spent the morning looking after the boys and taking the youngest to the doctor as his fevers where still quite high. Throat infection. Just lovely, there goes Saturday! I was hoping to get to Austral Modelcraft to buy said SB3a but it wasn't looking good. After a snooze with the youngest son, I thought I might have a chance to duck across town. Time was possibly an issue, so I made a phone call. Closing time was rapidly approaching and I probably was just going to miss it unless they waited for me. It didn't matter as they had sold the last SB3a in the store Friday afternoon. A week or two before new stock arrives from down south.

Sunday was very busy out and about in the morning, then spraying the weeds in the arvo, as well as playing with the boys (kids just don't want to stay in bed when they are sick!!) in the yard. I did manage to get to the shed and do some quick work on Illavearf's electrics. I wired up the second MRC to the programming track, programmed its board ID which then set all the accessory decoders outputs automatically, and did some LED tests. All worked first go. I then mounted the board under the layout but didn't get to install the power to it from the track. Maybe throught the week.

Tonight I received an email from PK advising he couldn't find the USB interface and he vaguely remembers selling it.

So in the end I will have to wait a couple of weeks before I get a chance to make the trip to the other side of town to pick up a new SB3a AND USB interface. No rush as I am still sorting out the wiring under the layout when I get a chance. Now that the evening temperatures are getting warmer I might be able to spend time in the shed at night. Winter was very cold (as Brisbane winters go!) this year and the shed isn't heated!

Also this week I joined the social networking set and joined Twitter. A link (of sorts) is on my website but you can directly find me on @GBsShed. I have already sent three tweets into the Twitterverse, mainly to some guys in the UK involved with Model Rail Live.