2016_04_28 Grr Painting walls....

2016_04_28 Roll roll the paint.....  (all over the place?)

Need something to finish off the points so had no choice, but to revisit the wall.....

Wipe everything down and start moving garbage already accumulating on new benches :(
And roll it on. Hope it dries less patchy than it looks now. Might need a second coat.
Hate painting. It takes longer to clean up after than it does to apply it, doesn't it? :(

Ok its done, now some wall paper :D
Yesterday I received a heap of trackrite underlay, as well as another GM Loco This one will be renumbered 31 if I can find the decals
Cheers
Rod

2016_04_26 Point? Paint? or SAR Tarps?

2016_04_26
Still cannot find that screw driver ;)
But noticed the Branch goods waiting restoration of the points, and saw these wagons and remembered that I had a heap of GY tarps left over, so got distracted once again :(

The picture without tarp did not focus, so this will have to do. These were built by our n scale mate Rob Carpenter, and fortunately I have a lot left over. They are a little thick and too small to fit these SAR open wagons. But you can easily thin them down with a sharp modelling knife. About 10 minutes work, I think.

Carefully scrape the blade back and forwards and remove swaff  in large amounts as you go. Be careful and stop before you get too thin.

Do the same for the ends and carefully remove a little for the handbrake mechanism (behind the wheel)

You can see the improvement already

Ok that's done :)  Soldering iron should be nice and hot! Back to the points.....

Cheers
Rod

2016_04_25 Anzac Day Lest we Forget

2016_04_25  Anzac Day.
Remember Ray and Jethro and  others who died in our mine field. and many more infantry soldiers and engineers who found our mines in later years after the Viet Cong moved them

First Field Squadron RAE

my troop had the job of laying the minefield. I was relieved from arming mines, and sat down with the radio. I was making routine tests when an explosion right in front of me made me look up, and watch in horror as Jethro came apart in the air above me. Jethro survived, however others up to 20 m away didn't.. I was just 6 m away and did not receive a wound, even though my webbing was cut and my greens were holed. My ears took 30 minutes to recover. I am one lucky bastard.

Today is an emotional day. So much so, that as always on this day, I remain inside. I cant bring myself to attend the Services, i just weep there and I do it for the stupidity of the war and the stinking Politicians who cause these things without having to foot the bill, rather they take their filthy profits and leave the people they are supposed to serve, in agony and despair.


Model Railways saved me, I think :D

Up bright and early, so lets do some more painting :)

Damn paint has been sitting there for 4 days! Won't paint itself, I guess. Now where is a screw driver?

Hold on a minute. Diver of  L252 is on the radio. Almost derailed on a broken point blade!

The fireman raced up the single line and placed detonators, and stood ready to stop any trains, because J515 was only 15 minutes away off the branch.
The train was stopped in time. But an emergency call out is bringing everyone available in to fix the points.

The throw rod was found to be in a bad way when examined, and the blade was unable to be reattached.
Damn! Its a major rebuild, and the point needs to be removed. Oh well at least its not painting  :D

Cheers
Rod Young

2016_04_20 Running Session, should be painting :(

2016_04_22 Contrans in the 70's

The driver releases the brakes, pops the whistle and starts to drag the heavy load up the 1.5% grade. The train is barely moving, and the engine is already in notch 8.  The WAGR L Class just keeps slugging on till it relaxes at the top.

Soon after X32 comes out of the loop and starts its long train of wheat hoppers down the same grade.
Was busy enough today to get a few shots.
Hope you enjoy the dynamic brake screaming down the grade.

Cheers
Rod

2016_04_20 Table top training

 Check out some history 7 years ago....

2016_04_20  Two old farts trying to out cough each other :)

But despite all that we did an awesome amount of work today. And it is all square all level and firmly attached.  Which is a bit of a change for me. Usually Al is here helping me fix stuff :D

Thanks Al. we make a good team.

Some pictures are in order

Some glue and screws and form the L girders.

Add the cross pieces and screw it all together

Check the levels both ways and screw it to the wall when both edges are level.

Cut the two 5 ply sheets in half, trim a  2.4m offcut making 5 lengths, and we have a 12m by 0.6m table top!
Now this was going to be a SG storage loop. But I decided that we could put a large station in here. It should have been Albury, but Albury would require a huge space. So it will look a bit like Albury and will be sceniced more than originally planned. Albury is almost dead flat anyway :D

And I get my large SG storage sidings as well as a few BG ones to meet its dual gauge heritage.

This is a big plus, especially as we had to give up on South Grafton.  The layout just will not fit in the space we have left. The layout is much too old to modify, and is built on a huge slab of chipboard, that is so heavy.    I am hoping to build something narrower in the space left, perhaps even recover the track from S Grafton and use that if at all possible.
Cheers
Rod

2016_04_19 Influenza!

2016_04_19    not right to go :(

Got hit hard this week with the flu. Graeme turned up Saturday and applied the finishing coat of plaster to the wall.  Had no breath, and asthma type symptoms , barely had the energy to sit outside the infection zone and watch him do it. Went back to bed as soon as Graeme left.
Got up this morning feeling better and sanded down the joins, so will attempt to get the undercoat on, and prepare for Wednesday, when Al and I will finish the 12 m of bench's, and hopefully secure it all to the wall.
Might get some blue background colour on before we do that.
Wish us luck  :D

Extra finishing plaster applied, and just a light sand. All smooth to the hand anyway ;)


SEDUM

In October I was visiting Col Hussey in Sydney and  was given three Sedum cuttings which I placed in this pot.
I am wondering how large these "flowers" will grow, but they look much nicer in this size than the ones I saw at the Florist.
Of course their are thousands of varieties, and fortunately they are very hardy, attested by their growth here after being left in the boot for a week ;)

 

Cheers

Rod

EDIT

Two hours on. Managed to get undercoat on, but heavy congestion is still affecting my breathing. That's all for today 

2016_04_14 Benchwork starts!

2016_04_14  Al and I started the new benches.

We had a couple of L girders from elsewhere, and built these up into a solid bench. Cut out three more benches and assembled one of them. Not a bad days work :)

When we finish the wall, on Saturday, I will remove the legs against the wall and fix the L Girder to the noggins behind the plaster.
The out rigger supports will be cut shorter after the top level roadbed is fixed. This will not happen till the 5 ply tops are fixed on the bottom, and the track is installed, wired in and sceniced.

Cheers
Rod

2016_04_13 A new model arrives

2016_04_13  My mate from Dynon sold me some nicely detailed weathered goofeys!

Thanks Steve Bucton. All I need to do is weather up another 36 to match them :D

Some friends have recently been robbed.

This shot shows two high definition cameras installed in my shed. They are wiFi connected to the modem in the shed which all runs off a  battery backed up power supply. If you activate the cameras a message goes to my i-phone asking me if I would like to cycle through the 8 cameras. only fitting 5 at this time to watch trains out of sight and make this layout operable by one person. But a nice security feature was found when I started to look into it. 1080 HD is recorded to an 8 track video recorder fitted with a terabyte HD to store images.

Cheers
Rod

2016_04_09 SDS 80 foot flats

 2016_04_09
NSWPTC  JCW  80' Container Wagon

Heard at recent exhibition some were complaining about constant derailments, so I spent some time checking these out.
As they are very long wagons, and because the bogies sit a long way behind the couplings, I decided to run some experiments with the Kadee coupler gauge.

When I first got these wagons, I noticed that the uncoupling bar hung low scraping the top of the height gauge, but left them alone, as the coupler did not appear to be fouling, just touching.

So I spent an hour running the train around the layout , through crossovers and slips to see what would happen. In fact I had constant derailments as the wagons started tipping over as the couplers hit the side stops.

On further examination, I noticed the coupler bars were hitting the tops of the rails. So I again checked the wagons, and found them to be ok..

The Auscision X Class loco was another story. The short coupler was not allowing the JCW to move aside, and again the problem appeared to be the kadee uncoupling bar. I had another Kadee with this bar cut off, so I installed that coupler and the X was able to get the JCW through the crossover without derailing it.

So I then adjusted all the uncoupling bars much higher than the gauge required and tested the train again. Problem fixed and the wagons now perform flawlessly.

All I can think is the overhanging coupler must move up and down depending on how level the track is, and that caused the bars to catch on the points. Problem solved!!

Here you can see the pin is higher than the plate and should not be able to foul points and crossings

Here I am bending the bar horizontally, which  is higher than recommended (but I don't use magnetic un-couplers anyway)
Check out the distance between the mounting point of the bogie and the working face of the coupling. I think that when the opposite end of the wagon starts to climb, the coupling moves towards the fouling point, and eh? fouls :D

The wall
Another 6m, ready to sand and apply finishing plaster and paint. Graeme Schultz was a welcome visitor today supplying his labor and expertise. Thanks again ,mate :D

Cheers
Rod

2016_04_03

2016_04_03  One little job today.

My Son and Son in law combined to get the plaster in place ready for cutting down during the week.
Cheers
Rod

2016_04_01 First Train enters Albury

2016_04_01  Shut up Mr T.  Fools day ends at midday!

Ok truth is the panels are all up and all I need to do now is attach the plaster.
Not sure what I will do in the last section. I might just insulate the wall and use the extra space for the helix. Maybe not.....

 Now next job is to haul the two 6m sheets of plaster in ;)
I think I just might have that covered. My son is visiting :D


Cheers
Rod

2016_03_31 Marches on.....

2016_03_31
Another few days , another hours work. Got my Son and Grand son visiting from Townsville. Think that's where they are now, recently Sydney, heading closer to real home Port Douglas, I think ;)

Just continuing on with the wall. But have also been playing around with Decoder pro, and spent many hours trying to clear up some sound decoder problems. Plenty of places to go see experts do this, so I will not try to say much about it
If you are on Face Book, an Australian DCC site can be found here:-     DCC Downunder
 search title if not connecting
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So one wall panel fixed in place, and one to go :) Before another 6m of plaster can be installed.

 This one temporarily fixed. Will go out and drop it to clad it with insulation board after lunch. The cooler weather is really nice ;)

Had to pre install the sign before fixing panel into wall. Should have drilled new holes and lifted it. Too late now.
Cheers
Rod

2016_03_28 just a little bit today

2016_03_28
 Had to secure frame to floor and wall, them mount support struts in place, and block them to wall for strength.

 The struts are in place and leveled . Had to mount them 100mm lower as the SG is dropping  that much and will enter the helix at about 1015mm.

 So that's 12 m of framing (only 3m to go :)  )

The blocks screwed to the wall will help strengthen the supports.

Now I have to remove both frames and cut out the insulation panels to be liquid nailed to the back
Then fix them back into position to fit another two sheets of plaster on the front.

Thank goodness the weather is much nicer now.
Cheers
Rod Young

2016_03_21-Climate Change :)

2016_03_21  So the weather changed Rain, high strength winds which weeded out trees with small roots, then went from 36C on Tuesday to 24C on Wednesday and 8C to 18C on Thursday.

So that means I have to catch up on the last three months at least!

The Wall !! Wished I had some East Germans to help ;)

But I do hate pulling out whatever I did last week.
So the two spacers installed a month ago had to be removed. I had placed them in position flat because I half remembered a reason to do this from the first section of wall Al and I built and Graeme helped us fit a few months back

Whilst waiting for it to cool down I remembered we set the cross pieces (noggins) in place to account for the benches that would be screwed to them later on. We forgot that the plaster had to be joined and decided to place one noggin at the join height and lay it flat to give plenty of purchase to the plaster cement and screws.   I then removed those already installed and replaced them in their correct position.

This photo also shows how I keep the frame flush with the brick pillar, with two flat boards first screwed to the bricks and then screwed to the frame.
When I get some more green spaghetti I can screw the frame into the inside of the piers.

So the bottom noggin will support the SG Yard (Albury) table top. and the join between two sheets of plaster. These have to be flush and flush with the wall to support the join.

I decided (because I am naturally sloppy) to set everything out neatly, and see what happened. So far so good ;)
The right angle clamp holds the noggin in position at the right height and flush with frame.
the block of wood on left holds the noggin level and at the right height. It also allows me to use a nail gun to fix the noggin in place. I need to hold it flush though (Really dont like my hand being so close to the gun though!

Cheap Bunnings Gun $70 on EBay helps my arthritus a little and secures everything nicely.
Again the wood screwed under the left end holds the level in the noggin when the gun blasts a nail into place.  Might patent that one. Just need to remember to keep the end flush with the upright

Blurred bugger! but again keep the frame flush and drive nails from other side.
 (How does it blur on auto and on a  timer, on a tripod, but it did not flash either)
Ok back to the shed friends. 4 noggins in place 12 to go!

Cheers
Rod

2016_03_17 (continues)

2016_03_17     Sandown

 All pictures can be clicked on to enlarge!
Sorry about quality :(