My Hopes Were Dashed!

All week, I had been planning to pick up two 12mm RH Peco points from a local hobby shop on Saturday morning and then in the afternoon install these in Clapham Yard.  Well wouldn’t you know it.  The best laid plans of mice and men were obliterated when the hobby shop could not get the points from the distributor over the last two weeks.  Bugger!

Well that certainly brought about a bit of a change of plans for Saturday’s activities.  So I did not do much on Saturday afternoon.  In the morning I visited a couple of hobby shops and caught up with a couple of my running crew – Anatol and Keith at Ray’s.  I also picked up quite a few decoders for the Club.  We are also waiting for the new NCE 21 pin decoders to come in next month, as I will be stocking a few of these at the Club as well.

Anyway, with my enthusiasm kyboshed, I did wander down to the shed early today for a look around.  I decided to complete the running diagram for all the trains that do shunting at Clapham Yard, Park Road Transhipment Siding, and South Brisbane Interstate.  I started this quite a few weeks ago and the trains were just left around the track where I was up to in this solo re-enactment of these related trains from the timetable.  I did have to do some special moves, as my railset train was sitting in the middle of Clapham Yard, so I had to choose other tracks for the other trains that were either running through or dropping off wagons.  I completed this whole shunting diagram today.  I must have run about 15 trains according to the timetable today.  I did have a couple of issues.  I replaced some couplings with real KDs.  I also added a washer under one end of one of my Brisbane Limited sleeping cars.  It was derailing in Cougal Spiral heading towards Kyogle without it for some reason.  But was all good with the washer added.  I also added weight to my recently purchased buffet car.  Brendan did a very nice job building this car.  This was the first run of my new Brisbane Limited consist.  It has had some upgrades since the last timetable run.  But there are still more carriages to come for this from Auscision. 

The Brisbane Limited also has one Auscision motorail wagon on it.  The couplings that these motorail wagons have, do not uncouple or couple up.  Once connected they are good.  But they do not operate.  My Brisbane Limited needs to have these wagons shunted around and it is very annoying.  I was then going to replace the couplers with standard KDs, but the screw under the wagon, does not fit any of my phillips head screwdrivers.  When I use a very small bladed screw driver, the screw just spins and does not back out the hole.  Not Happy Jan!  Grrrrr!

I identified about 5 improvements to various timetable cards, which I will get to one night this week.  I found a check rail on one of my scratch built diverging tracks in Clapham Yard and it started to lift.  So I will need to fix that next weekend.  There is also a wire off one of the narrow gauge tracks in Clapham Yard.  I also identified that the wire actuator on one of the recently connected – hand operated points in Clapham Yard, has the wire protruding too far out of the point.  That will require a dremmel to fix next weekend.

I also identified that power does not get to track 7 in South Brisbane Interstate Yard.  There must be a cold solder joint somewhere.  Also power does not get to a point between track 7 and 8 in that same yard.  But track 8 has power.  I will investigate next weekend.

Over the last two days I have been watching the many videos on Facebook about the NSWR Diesel Era Modelling get together in Sydney yesterday.  I must admit I saw some very nice detail on the layouts so that inspired me to paint up my white metal water stand pipes.  I could only find one.  I know I have another couple around somewhere.  I must look for them.  So the one I found got a spray of etch primer, followed by a mask up and spray of white and then another mask and a spray of black.  We will see how it turned out during the week, when it is dry and I remove the masking.

I have not got around to continuing work on my Old Cassino goods shed.  That will get seen to possibly next week.  Ah, but I have an Operating Session next Sunday at Darren’s.