I'm back! - So what have I been doing since the last post?

Since the BMTS post I have been on leave. Rather than retype the rather large article I have written for the club newsletter, in summary the family and I went on a road trip south to Dubbo in NSW. Along the way I did some rail spotting and took a stack of photos. I was looking for inspiration for a NSWGR based exhibition layout. Narromine, west of Dubbo, looks promising.

We also did some poking around Werris Creek,

and Narrabri.

Whilst in Dubbo we visited Traintasia, the local hobby shop which also has a German inspired layout.

On the modelling front, I finally tacked and glued down Lachlan's track so he can start pottering around. I took receipt of two Loksound Selects for my Auscision EL class and Trainorama NSW Class 44. I tried to install the EL's chip on Wednesday down at the club but ran into space problems inside the loco. I put a post out onto the Loksound Yahoo group, so hopefully some suggestions might come back. Now I also have to turn my attention back to Illavearf and get a bit further on this layout as I have been neglecting it for some time now.

Brisbane Model Train Show

I went to the BMTS this morning. Some great layouts or layouts with some great ideas. I took quite a few photos and have yet to go through them to identify the standouts. Die Bahn, Hagley, Princetown, Thornhill, and the London Metro based layout were all very good. I might be biased but I must congratulate my club's N scalers with our fantastic N scale exhibition layout "Pine Rivers". The HO layout "Brendale" was also commendable.

Lachlan's baseboard constructed

Over the ANZAC Day long weekend I was able to snatch a couple of hours to complete the baseboard for Lachlan's layout. I will show a photo once I have secured the track and painted ground brown on the plywood. Hopefully this will be sometime over the Qld Labour Day long weekend (this weekend) but the Brisbane Model Train Show is also on, so that might distract me! It will then be handed over to Lachlan to scenic as he wants to.

Lachlan's layout baseboard construction begins

The only thing I did this weekend was yesterday afternoon. On Saturday I had been thinking about the most convenient way to build the support legs for Lachlan's layout, which would be collapsible and at his height, but not too low for me to help him when required. Then a Eureka moment occurred. I was looking at nothing in particular in the shed when my eyes stumbled on my pair of saw horses. These are the cheap metal leg, wood top ones that the hardware stores sell for $40-$50 a pair. The legs are collapsible and they were the right height for Lachlan and me. So Saturday arvo I went off to Bunnings for a recce. All sold out. Sunday afternoon I went down to Brendale Building Supplies and they had a stash. The sold them to me at the catalogue price of $45 for the pair, even though the catalogue doesn't come out until the end of the month. What a great shop! Also four 1/4" bolts, nuts and washers were purchased. By late Sunday afternoon I had bolted the under-baseboard (a MDF sheet) to the saw horses and hopefully next weekend I will be able to affix the top ply baseboards to the MDF sheet and have the layout ready for tracklaying as Lachlan is eager to get into the scenery!

One day I might get back to Illavearf! Maybe if I have a free evening this week I might get out to it, time will tell.

Lachlan's new train

Well not much happened this weekend other than going to the club on Saturday arvo as I had to work Sunday! Lachlan had his birthday earlier in the week and scored a Walthers Alaska Railroad Coal Wagon 6 pack from his Pa (my Dad). So we took it down to the club to see if we could get onto the big layout for a spin. We were fortunate to be able to get onto the layout under DC mode for most of the afternoon. This was great and it rarely happens on a meeting day! So we coupled up the wagons to his ARR GP40 and put the caboose at the end. It looked great. I accidentally dropped one of the wagons onto the concrete floor. Fortunately it landed coupler first. The Club Prez soon had the broken one off and a replacement Kadee # 5 installed in quick time (thanks Bruce!). One of the wagons had a bounce happening. So this was removed as it was affecting the running of the train. So closer inspection required of this wagon to see what the problem is. Could be a dodgy bogie, warped axle or possibly a flat spot on one of the wheels.

No modelling from me this week, so here are a couple of pics and vids.

The Thin Controller!

ARR train through the sidings.

ARR train across the bridge.

ARR train through the sidings - 2.

Until next time, happy modelling.

New blog being followed - Rushby's Railways

I followed this blog from Eastmoor. Not to bad.

A productive long weekend!

Well what a very productive long weekend. Good Friday had some shed time with designing Lachlan's layout. After looking through copius tomes of layout design books (thanks Mr Mackie) I decided that he only really needed a simple layout to play on and do his own thing with the scenery. So nothing elaborate. The end result was the usual single oval with two inside sidings. We were able to use the circular track from his Hornby Thomas the Tank Engine starter set, along with some spare curves, straights and a point from my stockpile. We needed a new right hand point so this was added to the shopping list. The dimensions of the baseboard were measured, 1600 x 1200mm would suffice. So this was added to the shopping list. Easter Saturday morning I made a dash across to Hobbyrama to pick up the required point. Then later in the arvo, I ducked up to Bunnings (after the morning madness had subsided!) to get the plywood. A sheet of 2400x1200x12mm CD grade plywood was cut down into 800mm sheets so as to fit into the car. The end result was put together loosely for perspective on Easter Sunday. The photo below shows the layout.







My accomplishment for the weekend was, wait for it..........., I finished the tunnel mouth! HURRAY!! Sunday night I cut down my Scalescenes rock wall paper to fit the balsa wood frame. Monday I did some soot weathering and then sealed the paper. I loosely fitted this into Kensington Hill as can be seen in the photos below. Not bad I think!








Now for the sceniking of the Hill.