During the week there was no modelling due to the aforementioned busy evenings but the weekend was another story. After the usual Saturday morning running around between shops (not model shops mind you!) so that the missus could use my Mastercard, the afternoon arrived as did the wet weather. After a little nap with son #2 after lunch we adjourned to the Shed as the yard was too wet to do anything and the odd skudding shower making things even more wet. I glued up the remaining 3mm MDF retaining walls around the skyboard on the Kensington Hill side and added the rubble wall paper sheeting from Scalescenes. A quick spray of Dullcote finished the day's modelling. Sunday arrived and with it a phone call from a mate who we were going to catch up with over BBQ lunch. The lunch was off due to illness in his family. This freed up the afternoon to do something else. With windy showers scooting through there was only one thing for it and that was to take the boys to, you guessed it, The Shed!
I spent about an hour with Lachlan on his layout. He had scrounged some old buildings that were being thrown out at the Club. I had soaked these in a bucket of water a few weeks ago to separate them from the chipboard they had been glued on. One of the buildings was an old style American hardware store with a loading deck. We cleaned it up and looked around where it could be placed. Near the small siding would be perfect. So I scraped out the grass to add a road to the loading ramp which also went alongside the siding. I then glued the building into place. Doesn't look to bad! I then did some minor repairs about his layout.
I then spent the remaining time in the afternoon putting the capstones onto the retaining walls, spraying Dullcote, painting the wall end edge black, as well as painting the internal edges of the rail overpass black. Looking good! It certainly breaks the monotony of the sky blue backboard. If I get a chance this week I'll take a photo or two to show what's been going on.
I even had twenty minutes to take my Class 47 for spin to keep everything working.
Oops forgot to mention that although there was no modelling through the week, I have been researching NSWGR station buildings, collating the Club's modelling competition survey results, and getting ready to run another survey on the HO layout's suggested features.
So this week isn't looking that busy (except for Wednesday night), so I might be able to continue with the terrace houses which have been sidelined for the last two weeks.
As expected this week was busy with non-modelling evening work. Late Saturday morning I popped into Horizon Hobbies to see what was on sale, but couldn't see anything I could afford. Saturday arvo was Club Day so got down there to discuss the HO layout a bit further (I was a tad late in on this one), had the Monthly Meeting, took a visitor and his son on a tour of the club after the meeting, Lachlan took his N scale train for a spin, and I had a general chit chat. Late Sunday morning Son # 1 was invited over to his friends' place for a play date. Fortunately their Dad is also a train modeller, so we adjourned to his train room for a bit of a talk while the boys ran riot outside. Late Sunday arvo I was able to think a bit more about the retaining wall on the KH side of the layout. I've decided not to have a tunnel mouth but infer a road bridge above the track. So I cut down some strips of 3mm MDF to use as the backing for the retaining walls and will glue the Scalescenes rubble wall sheet to these in due course. Not sure again about this week as once again busy in the evenings with other things. Maybe later in the week or the weekend.
At the moment I am doing some research into the NSWGR layout (exhibition or permanent - not sure yet) that I am planning for in the future once Illavearf is finished and I know where we will be living for the next 20 years or more (possible move being considered at present). I've done a fair bit of lef work on the Molong to Dubbo and onto Narromine and Peak Hill lines but need to research station types in the area. Mr Mackie will be loaning his plan book to me (thanks!). If at the end the information is still not really there, I may have to undertake 'modellers licence' and decide on a particular type. As parts of this line are no longer active this might be the way forward, or I base the layout on the route and station location plans but modify the location name to get away from the purists! Keeps me busy.
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!
Busy week as expected but not with modelling. Finally got to the shed Saturday afternoon with the boys in tow. Time to slice those grass tufts off from the oven tray and use them somewhere. Couldn't identify an immediate need on Illavearf however Beaver Springs' village pond was beckoning. With PVA glue bottle in hand, blobs were put around the edge of the pond, then the tufts placed on the blobs. I've been contemplating what to do with the breaking the plain blue of the backscene with something against the backboard. I had some 3mm MDF so after doing some measurements it was over to the bandsaw to cut the angle for a retaining wall for a 'virtual road' behind the village. I will put some brick paper on this, and then affix into place. I also printed out the bases of the terrace houses and corner shops paper plans to see if these would fit in the space remaining once the retaining wall was in place. Seemed to work OK and maybe able to not only do some 'flats' but have some shops and a pub as well!
I might even enter this structure into the club modelling competition in December if it scrubs up OK.
Sunday arrived and after a busy morning out followed by mowing the jungle of grass in the yard, I was just about to go for a nap when my Dad rocked up unannounced. The boys were excited and Lachlan wanted to show him how his layout was going. So off to the shed we went after arvo tea. dad was impressed with the progress of Beaver Springs. After he left I thought I might investigate why 4494 wasn't responding last week. Connecting up the PowerCab to the programming track I did a few things which didn't work. I then looked at CV29 again. I reset the values in there and the thing worked. No idea why it was not registering '4494' as the long address in the first place, but it became alive again once this was sorted out. It then did some laps around Illavearf.
That's it for the week that was. As for this week, not sure. Might start looking at the terrace houses a bit closer.
Not much done this week but I was able to get to the shed late Sunday arvo, hookup the laptop to the USB which was connected to the PowerCab so as to get to the Programming Track supported feature (as the SB3a does not support this). Jumpers set to 9600 baud worked OK.
I updated the Roster with my remaining 44's and EL class engines. After I had finished I decided to let them go for a spin as it had been awhile since all had been operating. After swapping from PowerCab to SB3a mode, 4480 and EL51 OK, but 4494 didn't respond. I wasn't able to check what was in the DecoderPro roster configs for this loco as the missus was using the laptop last night. Need to make sure that the decoder number hadn't changed somehow between having the decoder's values written to DecoderPro and operating it afterwards.
Other than that, the only other thing I was able to get around to was purchasing a couple of Scalescenes plans for Small Terrace Houses and Small Corner Shops for the terrace ends. These will form the village seen opposite Kensington Hill station.
Until next time. Ciao.
Once again this week saw me mucking around with JMRI's Panel Pro's integration with the NCE SB3a system via the NCE USB interface. I had posted a question on the NCE-DCC Yahoo Forum and that guru of DCC, Mark Gurries, answered no less! He was convincing with his explanation as to why JMRI probably wouldn't accept NCE commands across the Cab Bus via the USB card. However to prove it to myself I set up an 'Internal Sensor' within Panel Pro and linked it to a hardware address. The test being to send a ACCY command to this address and see what happens. I associated this sensor on the Panel diagram of the layout as a sensor to indicate OFF/ON. Saturday arvo after Club I went to the shed with the laptop ready to test. Then Murphy got in the way and the laptop was getting connection problems with the USB. I had earlier set the USB jumpers to 9600 baud and the Panel Pro to 9600 as per all doco indicating this is what it is supposed to be. No idea. No joy investigating further as I had to head inside.
Sunday morning I went out again and reset the jumper to 19200 and the Panel Pro setting to 19200. Connected perfectly. WTF! Anyway now that I had it connected up I did my test and nothing happened. Oh Well, Mark G was right then. That answers that! So no more time wasting on this subject.
While I had the laptop out in the shed I thought "let's have a look at Decoder Pro". After a number of error messages I realised it was because it was connected to the SB3a. So after a small rearrangement of the connections to the piece of track that I use for 'programming' (either under programming or ops line depending on the setup requeried), I reconnected via the PowerCab setup. Still connection problems. So....I reset the jumper to 9600 and the preferences to the same, and bingo, it connected.
I have no idea why Decoder Pro connects at the documented 9600 and why Panel Pro prefers 19200. White Man's Magic! Once DecoderPro could 'see' a loco decoder I was able to upload the settings from a number of loco decoders into the program for later viewing and Roster setup.
On the subject of the Club Meeting on Saturday, we had an earlier gathering of the HO Clan to discuss a number of points holding up the construction. This was a productive meeting with all the main sticking points decided upon so the builders can continue through the week. I also picked up the first prize in the raffle - a 59 piece hobby knife set (Aldi) - when Lachlan picked out my ticket number out of the bucket. IT WASN'T RIGGED!!!
My experiment of the grass tufts from last week worked out pretty well straight from the oven tray. I just have to carefully slice them off the oven tray (might use one of the above hobby knives!) but definately better than off the Alfoil. Once off, I will glue these around the pond on Lachlan's layout to break up the edge.
Not sure what this week will bring but hopefully modelling rather than faffing around with the computer!
I have added a new site to 'My Links of Interest' list to the right - Mark Gurries' Home page.
A DCC Guru and a VERY helpful chap on the NCE Yahoo Forum.
