Leg work

I have now done the gluing and screwing of the 16-off 1200H legs, fabricated from 2 pieces of 38x19 plywood laminated together. I've also fitted the 5/16 BSW t-nuts, screws & wing lock nuts to the bottom of 6 legs, to serve as levelling aids.

 Here is a pair of half-legs clamped up ready for drilling, counter-sinking and screwing together with 8g x 30 screws.

Three legs glued & screwed on Thursday evening after pipe band practice.

Sixteen legs this evening, ready for fitting of the levelling arrangement

The t-nuts with 5/16 BSW x 1 1/2" hex head screw and wing nut to lock the screw.

I find it difficult to believe that the young blokes in Bunnings don't know the difference between a screw and a bolt - I seem to have to explain it every time. Perhaps they think a bolt is what you do after a screw.

Last Monday I had a few hours at Roy's place for a bit of fun with his Bradfield layout. I helped trace the cause of a couple of electrical issues with the layout and a pair of Lima 44s, then we did a bit more work trying to finish off the RUB set.

A Calson brass 47 getting a run at Bradfield

44216 with an AK car and container train at Bradfield, viewed from the tennis court.

The Jumbo in the platform at Bradfield.

After some minor re-wiring, "grey ghost" 4499 goes for a spin.

The light bulb for the #1 end headlight had been removed, but in the process, the motor had been shorted out. Easy fix. Another 44 had its motor reversed due to having had an underframe fracture / repair. Again, nothing too difficult to diagnose, as I've been dealing with Lima 44s since about 1980!

 

Hand rails applied to the three remaining RUB cars.

The OFS, kitbashed from an SFS following the AMRM article.

The ride height of the cars is all over the place, due to a mix of standard  underframes, IFM underframes, and various bogies. The plan is to work out which is closest to correct (probably the PHS), then make up a go / no-go gauge based on it, and adjust the other cars as needed.

Off to Liverpool on Saturday ... oh, wait, it IS Saturday already! Must be having too much fun in the garage.

Cheers for now.

How to make sawdust from scratch

A big day today for Weddin Jct, well, yesterday as I type this. With a lot of assistance from a work colleague, Jason, all the flanges & webs for the L girders, plus the legs and horizontal braces, were cut from four 1800x954x19 sheets of plywood flooring. This material was salvaged from the construction of my employer's new factory in 1998, and carefully stored against the day when it would be needed for a layout. Six sheets were saved originally. One became the baseboard for Brendan's layout (after serving a term as a camera platform mounted on the roof of my VK Commodore). A second was docked short to become a third bed in the caravan. The last four were introduced to the circular saw yesterday afternoon. Here is the result:

 Jason making the first cut for an 1800x90 girder web.

 Me docking a 90mm girder web to length.

 A cup of tea was needed about 5 hours into the job.

 The sawdust beginning to take shape.

The piles of finished components just before midnight.

Now I can begin assembling the girders and pairs of half-thickness legs, before completing the braces & gussets.

That'll do for tonight, I can feel the fatigue beginning to kick in.

Cheers.



Have layout, will travel

Today Brendan's layout was available for operation at my office, supporting Eaton's employees participating in the Steptember fund-raising event for cerebral palsy sufferers.
This was its first outing since being fitted with legs about twelve months ago. When I first built the layout in 2008, it fitted in the back of my Ford Territory without a problem. It wasn't so easy to get it into the Craptiva, but thankfully, once the new curtain rails were removed, it did go into the Outlander OK!
The layout was set up in the training room, but with most of the activity (food stalls, Ping-Pong challenge, aerobics etc) happening next door in the canteen, passing trade was slow. No problem - we just unplugged the controllers, then four of us picked it up - with the trains & structures etc in situ - and carried it bodily into the canteen.
Thanks to Tom, Emily, Ahmed, Patrick, Jason & Lukas for their assistance with the set-up, move & supervision of operators, things went smoothly. Nothing went "in the dirt" or took a dive to the floor. The only challenge now is to work out how to get it back out of the car, since the family is away & I'm batching!
Anyway, here's a few images from the day.

Negotiating a path around the food stalls / eating area,

past the Ping-Pong,

and into position for operation.

You can donate here to help support the work of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.
Cheers for now.

Changing prototype?

No, thanks, I'll stick to NSWGR transition era, but recently Brendan & I were the recipients of a collection from the estate of a friend of my parents. The collection was predominantly UK 00 scale, with a smattering of US HO, a few bits of pieces of NSW H0, and some tools etc. I'll hang on to the US items, and Brendan gets the Pommy stuff. Here are a couple posed on his layout.

A BR 0-6-0 # 2213 with a rake of private-owner four-wheelers. The Pommy stuff included Bachmann, Lima, Hornby, Wren, Triang, Airfix, & Ratio RTR & kits (built & unbuilt). Some of the Triang items are quite old, including those with the really deep flanges and split plastic wheel sets on steel stub-end axles. Of course, the back-to-back on these is a problem with the Peco Streamline points, and the flanges are so deep the run on the sleepers even on the Code 100 sections, never mind the odd bits of Code 75!

One of the "keepers" for me. Bachmann Spectrum GE 44 Tonner, decorated for New Haven. This one is a great low-speed runner. The other loco I'll keep is a Pemco B&O 0-4-0 saddle tank. It's a but of a rough runner, but hopefully it'll run in over time.

Brendan's layout will go on tour in a week or so. My employer is supporting the "Steptember" fund raiser for kids with cerebral palsy. While I'm not doing the 10,000 steps per day this year (did it in 2015), the layout will feature at a work "fun day" where everyone can donate a gold coin for a drive.

Cheers for now.