2015_01_22 Its Hot!

The kids arrived home from Bemm River on Saturday and I headed down to Kilmore East, where my caravan has been stored. Visited Mum and Dad via Suburban train and Thursday hitched up the van and headed for Bendigo. Parked it in full sun, and am slowly being cooked :(
Tomorrow is a rest day (Hope it rains....please :)

Then early Saturday I have a few dollars to spend at Corio Model Railway Exhibition.

Tony and I should get there for opening :)  I guess I will see some of you there ?

Trains?  absolutely nothing happening, but will see what Saturday brings :)
Cheers
Rod Young

Advertisement?

I am looking to buy a NSW Rub set up to 8 cars (the one Silvermaz sells?)  It has to be built and suitable to run as a Daylight (Sydney to Melbourne) set  Either second hand or built new by a good modeller
:)

2015_01_13 David asks?

This is the stuff. added water and it becomes a smooth paste and takes about 15 minutes to go off
Cheers

2015_01_12 ??

2015_01_12
Opened the studio door, turned on the air conditioner, and went and started to clean the swimming pool, hang out my washing and wash the car, at about 8.00pm remembered the studio, went and turned off the air and locked it up and went and watched TV :)

Now you know why I don't post all the time ;)
Cheers
Rod

2015_01_11 Bridge is in!

2015_01_11

Just fitted in place for now to allow trains to run. I know I have concrete coloured paint and a special red for the girders, but where did I hide them?

So now I can finish of the trestle. I needed to stand on a chair to cut the bridge in and reconnect track and wiring.  Will have to do the same for the scenery, but I will wait for my mate to come back as he will want to experiment with me on this too.

Ok found a short today. Well not exactly, i discovered I have a short in an unprotected section. Trains run for 3 or 4 minutes then Digitrax short protection fires up and resets. Have not made any changes in the unprotected sections so what could it be?

I have four reverse loops protected with electronic devices. Has one failed?
The weather is hot, has a rail expanded enough to touch where it is not meant to?
Has a wire pulled away and shorted another bus?

These things can take up a lot of time. I ran through every section with a LED track tester. All frogs are live and operate correctly. All track circuits have power.
But the LED tester only tells you the rails are connected to power, and so I am now testing with a meter, across rail joints If I get a circuit on the same side protected with an insulated joiner, I have found my problem. So far one reversing device has been found disconected. But it did not solve this problem...  keep looking....

Cheers
Rod

2015_01_10 It Rains? The bridge isn't in!

2015_01_10

Not doing a lot, just fiddling with the bridge and the stock yard.
The stock yard needs to be smaller. The pencil line marks max width available.

Need to have two yards with access to each loading ramp and a race at the rear linking the yards to the side loading / unloading motor transports. Still a ways to go. Cant find a glue that holds it firmly, apart from supa glue.

So here is the more modern beam bridge behind the trestle.
The photo shows that I need to release the trackbed to left of picture because of the sharp incline meeting the bridge. The abutment on the right is a whisker low and requires packing.

After packing the abutments I will cut away the track bed to locate wing walls on both sides of bridge. Paint the abutments and the wings with concrete and all I need to do is blend in the scenery.

should look ok when finished?  The non-prototypical aspects will be hidden by the track.

Not as much as I wanted to get finished, but every little bit does count.... Now where is that paint?

Cheers
Rod

2014_01_04 Bridge building for dummies?

2014_01_04 The trouble with scenery?

It just leads from one thing to another ;)

I really wanted to design and build a stock race for Wodonga, using a Walther's kit to save time.
Yeah well ??  I have no idea what the instructions are showing and the written translation has no effect on me at all :(.
Fortunately I was able to get pictures of a finished model, and already I have a good idea how it went together, but first....

The scenery on the branch.. as usual let the pictures tell the story.

 click to enlarge
The bench was cleaned up only a week ago :(
I have some metal bridge abutments left over from a previous bridge building session. These ADAIR kits are metal and need to be glued together and filled and then painted.

The last time I used them was to build 4 bridges at House Creek Wodonga. Now where did I tidy up the paint to?

I did not have any girders, and these Plastruct beams were too large for the cut outs in the abutments.
I have cheated and cut out slots (Easier to cut out styrene slots than file down metal)
I think that when I fill and paint them, you will not be able to see what I have done.

Next job is to cut out the existing road bed and secure the track either side of the bridge with new uprights. I slightly extended the top of the L Girder to sit the bridge on top. I had to shorten the abutment by 15mm. fortunately as it was glued together, I simply removed one layer of metal and reassembled the abutment.
I wanted to lay a timber deck on top, as per the prototype VR bridges. However I ran out of height.

Now which box has the paint gun and paint hidden away inside?
Cheers
Rod

2015_01-02 Another beginning?

2015_01-02  Scenery bases

Supporting the paper mache plaster mix  on pink towels.

Blending in the new bridge and the old one.

Dry, strong and ready to fix the track down Its 36 Radius and will have code 70 instead of the old code 100.
Pretty happy with the way it all turned out too.
The paper mache and plaster mix is grey in colour and fluffy out of the box.
I bought it from an Art Supply House in Albury, in a 10 kg box. I mixed 4 cups of  dry material with a cup and half of water, add burnt sienna and yellow ochre water based paint with some cement colour to form the base.
After 24 hours I had a very hard shell, it was difficult to spread on the toweling though.So I might try dipping the towel in it and forming it into terrain shapes then let it dry. When it dries it should be stiff enough to hold a second thick coat of  paper mache which can be formed much easier.
Cheers
Rod