Better be home soon

Well, the second coat of paint went on last night. After I got home from pipes this evening, I re-hung the curtains, then marshalled a train using most of Brendan's rollingstock. A few trips around the loop, and pose for a few photos, then back inside to attend to the housework before the family returns tomorrow.

The station, goods shed and hardware shop are Tyco kits that my sister & I received for Christmas many years ago, which Dad then helped us assemble. Most of the other buildings were recently donated by Roy H, left over from his late father's Christmas layout building sideline. The stockyard is a Sentinel kit (if I recall), that once graced Yabbie Creek. The tunnel portals are from a Lima double-track tunnel. I had to widen them by cutting out the key stones and spacing the sides a little further apart to get adequate clearance, as the track centres are were too wide.
Time for bed as I have to be on call in the morning for when they disembark Pacific Jewel. The kids are actually wanting to go to school!

I see a layout and I want it painted black

First coat of black was applied on Tuesday evening, before heading around to the Miranda Car & Waggon Works for an evening with Roy, working on the final three cars for my RUB set.

The parts for a Silvermaz SFS laid out. This one will be converted to an OFS following Allan Brown's article in the October 1990 AMRM.

Two SFS kits and one SBS de-flashed, the roofs scribed, hand rail holes drilled and also holes for a/c hatch cover lift rings. Vents fitted.

A close-up of a roof showing scribing, vents, and holes for lifting rings drilled.

 

Off now to have my dinner, then head out to the garage to finish "painting it black".



Hooray, and up she rises!

By Wednesday evening, I had finished the manufacture of one of the end diagonal braces, and trial fitted it to the layout. I must have mucked up the angle of the cut with the mitre saw. One end had to be 41 degrees, the other 49, but I think I transposed them. Not ideal, but not too big a drama as they won't be visible once the curtains are fitted.

After returning from piping practice (well, drumming practice, for me) on Thursday, I finished off the second brace, fitted both and finally returned the layout to its upright position.

I didn't have any lengths of salvaged timber long enough for the 4' diagonals, so had to splice 2 x 2' lengths as shown above.

The end diagonal braces fitted...

... tip her up the right way ...

... and you'd have to be pretty happy with a nominally flat section (through the station) coming in at 0.4 degrees right away, without even adjusting the legs!

Thus ended another late night in the garage.

Friday was a night off, as I had a group of mates over for an old-style slide night. All 35mm stuff, with a real projector and screen - none of this fancy digital, view-on-TV business. It was a great evening. Dennis brought shots from a trip to the narrow-gauge Weihe logging railway in northern China from 2003. Hoges had Mallets & ancient 2-4-0s from Java in 1983, and Scotsman trips from 1988-89 (including the record breaking Parkes - Broken Hill non-stop run). Derek & I had "run-of-the-mill" NSW stuff from the 80s and 90s, plus a bit more Scotty, and Silver City Comet. Unfortunately, Steve the Master Photographer wasn't able to bring anything, but it was great to catch up with him. Roy was there as an observer, never having shot slides, and also to inspect progress on the layout.

No progress was made on Saturday, as I went up to visit my parents overnight. On Sunday morning, Dad suggested a trip to Richmond Vale, which proved rather eventful. Clyde 0-4-0 saddle tank "Marjorie" was in steam, working a single car (HLF460) between Richie Main & Pelaw Main. This was the first time I had seen her in steam. However, some local idiots had dumped a car on the track just short of the latter since the last running day, and then torched it. The first couple of trips only ran to within a safe distance of the burned-out wreck. Eventually, X.217 was dispatched, propelling a rail-mounted crane to remove the offending article. Thereafter, normal service was resumed. I hadn't taken my Nikon, because ARTC controllers were on strike, and I wasn't planning to do much gunzelling, so I had to make do with the dumbphone, and also borrowed Dad's Fuji for a couple of shots where a zoom was needed.

 

"Marjorie" propelling the second train of the day back to Richie Main.

The offending article, about half a km short of Pelaw Main.

 

 X.217 near the level crossing, en route to the work site.

 

 Short work is made of the remains of the Commodore.

 

After picking Alison's mum up from the station and spending a couple of hours with her over dinner, I ventured back into the garage in search of the curtains, tracking etc. Half an hour was wasted looking for my glasses, before I managed to determine how best to utilise the tracking and brackets. There were five sections of curtain, which was enough to go along the front and both ends, with one spare section, but not enough to go around all four sides. No matter, it was a big improvement.

Tonight, I decided I would paint the fascia after all, there being just sufficient evenings left to do so before the family returns home on Friday, so I applied an undercoat and called it quits.

The pink blanket is protecting my uncle's N scale layout-in-a-coffee-table while I'm storing it for him.

 

Cheers for now.

 



"She got legs"

as the boys from ZZ Top would say.
A productive, if slow, evening in a rather cold & damp garage. T-nuts fitted to the bottom of the legs, and the height adjusting screws fitted, along with wing nuts to function as lock nuts without the use of a spanner, an idea from a Model Railroader special issue I was perusing recently.

 

Once these were complete, I manhandled the layout off the saw horses where it has resided for nearly eight years, and clamped on the first pair of legs, preparatory to drilling for the 1/4" carriage bolts. Once these were on, the whole lot was flipped over to attach the other pair.

 

I then moved on to the front diagonal braces & gussets, at which point I struck the first unanticipated problem. The hand-holds cut into the original baseboard frame work were smack bang where the braces were supposed to attach.

Two options - make longer braces to move them away from the hand holds, or live with it. I chose the latter, as there is plenty of room to lift anywhere along the edges, and I didn't feel like dis-assembling another of the Yabbie Creek trestles tonight.
After clamping the gussets in place, it took a long time to mark them out, pilot drill and countersink. I could probably have made do with only five screws on each, but there will be a fair bit of torque on them during moves, so I stuck with nine.

After a couple of late nights, I called it quits once the first pair was on. Finish the others tomorrow, then tackle the end braces.
If you're wondering what the large black circle on the underside of the baseboard is ... it's the mark left by the second spare tyre I carried on the roof of the VK when Steve Howard & I travelled to Port Augusta via Murwillumbah to avoid the Sydney 2000 broo-ha-ha. The sheet of 3/4" yellow tongue ply also provided a handy platform to assist in the railway photographer's endless quest for altitude. Refer to the December 2000 instalment of "Operation Bulldog - Bulldog Marathon" in RD, and my shot of Steve atop the car at Yorkey's Crossing, accompanying the "Through the Lens" article by Ken Date in the same issue.
Cheers for now.

"Bank Johnny"

While I won't pretend that I miss the hard yakka and filthy conditions of volunteering in "Loco" at Thirlmere twenty-odd years ago, I do regret that my hands are no longer conditioned to manual labour! All those hours of shovelling out the pit, or shovelling forward, and cleaning motion, washing engines with BP truck wash or degreaser etc. certainly built up a level of hardness to the skin. Last night's toil with the screw drivers and hammer took a toll on this "Bank Johnny's" lily-white mitts...

This evening I cracked on with the rest of the leg sub-assemblies, including the blocks for the t-nuts at the bottom end. Everything was glued, clamped, then nailed, before removing the clamps and moving on to the next one. The blocks for the t-nuts were made up from the piece of timber sacrificed to the recalcitrant wood screws last night, in another show of austerity in the name of layout construction.

 

 

 

 

Once the leg sub-assemblies were sorted, I moved on to the front & rear diagonal braces. Two of the horizontal members of the old Yabbie Creek trestles yielded the correct length for four of these. Then on to the gussets that will attach these to the legs. By sheer chance, there were three squares of 1/4" plywood in the bits box. I think these were left over from the fascia of Brendan's layout, made from a packing crate salvaged from work in 2008. I only needed two of them, cut on the diagonal. They came out 30mm under size compared with my design, but that will just mean a slightly larger gap between the tops and the underside of the baseboard. This will be hidden, as I think I have just enough tracking and curtain (made by my late paternal grandma) salvaged from Yabbie Creek to at least cover the ends and one long side.

 

The drop saw didn't quite have the reach to cut the gussets in one hit, even flipping them over, so they had to be finished off with the tenon saw. Ouch - damn blister on my thumb just where I grip the handle...

Anyway, another productive evening. Tomorrow I hope to fit the t-nuts and adjusting screws to the bottom of the legs, then clamp them to the baseboard, drill & bolt up. I should then be able to check the measurements for the end braces and hopefully cut these ... but will have to dis-assemble another of the "brick dunny" trestles. Might wear gloves next time!

The design drawings (completed in Autodesk Mechanical Desktop 3D modelling software) appear below.

 

Cheers for now.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, adieu...

...and on more than one front.

I wished Alison & the kids "bon voyage" this morning as they set off for 12 nights aboard Pacific Jewel, bound for Cairns (and return).

The afternoon was occupied dutifully taking mother-in-law for an outing (Rivercat to Olympic Park Wharf, bus to Oly Park Station, shuttle to Lidcombe and then home via Granville). A few 81s were sighted along the way on ballast trains, with track work on the Local. Once home, I headed straight for the garage to begin work on proper framing for Brendan's layout.

Currently, it sits on my saw horses, which is rather too low for me, and increasingly so for the young bloke, who is now 11 and taller than grandma. So the decision on the manner in which I should occupy myself while the family is away was made a few weeks ago.

To ensure approval from the Finance Ministry for these new works, the budget was prepared on the basis of economic re-use of existing material. Thus the Yabbie Creek Railway (Closure) Bill was passed unanimously, and this evening, work commenced on removal of the right-of-way, including the base boards and associated trestles, which Dad & I built over 27 years ago in the garage at Oatley. So long, farewell, indeed.

A slow start was made due to the need to shift 8 years' worth of accumulated stuff from the top of the erstwhile layout.

 

 

Boxes of models and other accumulated junk removed, the three roads of Yabbie Creek terminus are revealed, along with the loco depot road heading towards the former turntable pit.

Yabbie Ck yard has been lifted, along with the main line back as far as the creek crossing.

 

Thereafter, work progressed quickly with the de-spiking and salvaging of Peco Code 75 flex track and points. All of these will be cleaned and serviced for eventual re-use on Weddin Jct, once a "certificate of practical completion" for the current project is agreed with SWMBO. A few other items of interest turned up, including some nice terminal strips and five Peco point motors mounted under the boards, along with a couple of capacitor discharge units I had cobbled together on bits of plywood, during my post-HSC holiday to an uncle & aunt at Scotts Head, to learn to drive

 

.Staging yard before & after.

 

Dismantling the trestles was somewhat slower. As built, they were solid. Really solid. Every joint had two countersunk wood screws. I remember now slaving away with a brace and bit putting it together, and cursing every time the bit slipped out of the slotted head. It was not a lot easier to take apart! In the end I only sacrificed one length of timber to damaged screws that could not be removed, but I will certainly NOT be using the same type of screw to build the new legs! I will also ensure the outer piece is clearance drilled before assembly.

 

Anyway, I managed to get the first pair of leg components glued & clamped before midnight, so I guess I'm on track.

Cheers for now.