Shelf life

Early in the month we visited the St. Peter's Anglican School for their annual fete. The Macarthur District MRC had their layout there, which featured some nice new SCTs.

Motivated by this, and with Alison & Kate at a church do in the evening, Brendan asked if we could work on putting the kadees onto my original Minimodels single deckers. Here he is doing his first kadee install.

 

The bulkheads & H bars were details added for me by Roy Howarth many years ago. He also opened some of the doors, and put ads on the bulkhead windows.

 

Alison & the kids are away again, visiting Italy, Greece & Turkey, so I'm taking advantage of the opportunities this presents.

First up was a slide night for a mixed group of modellers and grumpy gunzels. This saw 4101 and a BPV visit Rico on the Rio Grande Southern, on Brendan's layout. Another visitor was a blue round-top pig.

 

 

The slide night was followed by a return to the garage with a view to commencing bench work for Weddin Jct. However, I decided to improve the work facilities first, by re-purposing the remaining base boards from Yabbie Ck as work bench and shelves.

 Initial phase, adding legs to the old modules from the base of the U-shaped Yabbie Creek layout.

 I obtained a second 250x200x25 bracket to match one I had in the bits box:

 I propped everything up while I adjusted the position of the shelves and finalised the fixing points:

 Now I just need to bolt down the various key bits of machinery. There doesn't appear to be a good spot for my little bench grinder - might need to take over some more real estate in the garage!

 



Now looking forward to a bit of gunzelling at Streamliners on Saturday / Sunday, and the Great  (model) Railway Bazaar on Monday (apologies to Paul Theroux!). Seriously, check the floor plan on the AMRA web site ... it's 75% commercial stands!

Cheers,
Lindsay

Heave away, you ruler kings,

I'm bound for South Australia.
A couple of nights in Adelaide for an EL-001 meeting provided an opportunity to catch up with a few of the local gunzels for a feed, do a bit more work on the BHG & MBC, and visit that temple of fine gunzel dining, the Belair Hotel.
A few images of the prototype are on my flickr site (scroll left). After enjoying a nice scotch fillet at the Belair pub, I ventured out for a late running 3PM1 (6023/6028/X53), videoed at Glenalta, then moved a little further up the hill to Belair for NR2/8232/NR22 on 5AM5. Not really enough light on the standard gauge, but I thought I might as well record the passing parade. I'll have a crack at Sleeps Hill in the morning - haven't been there for 16 years. My last visit was with Steve Howard during our Bulldog Marathon, Sydney 2000 avoiding adventure.
After getting the coverage, I retired to the Rydges on South Terrace to work on the models.

 The MBC has had its body re-glued, with the corners reinforced with a bead of araldite.

The BHG sides & ends assembled. The Hawksmoor kit really is junk, nothing fits, everything is warped. The inconsistencies in moulding thickness, shrinkage etc are a real pain to deal with. I doubt that I'll invest in any of the others that have been "remastered" from the old Protype models. It would be far easier to draw them up in 3D and make new masters on a 3D printer.

 

 

 Underframe fitted. again, a lot of fettling required to get it anywhere near mating with the sides and ends.

 

The roof needed a little filing to get a snug fit between the ends.

 

I was thinking about putting in compartment walls and maybe even lighting this van, but the kit itself is so rough I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Temporarily placed on 2AE bogies. There will need to be some packing to get the sideframes clear of the floor, and probably some milling out of the solebars to get enough play.

 

That'll do for now. The family is off on a big trip next week, so hopefully I'll get to make good use of the evenings while they're away!