A Bit of Modelling

Tuesday night last week we all gathered at Peter’s place for our scheduled fortnightly meeting.  We had a good number turn out and enjoyed seeing Peter’s army trains circulate through this very nice scenery on the layout.  However, there was an incident when a chain holding a vehicle on one of the flat wagons came loose and jammed in a set of points, bringing the train to a sudden stop and bringing every wagon off the track.  However, normal services soon resumed.

I had a busy early part of the week at work,  due to a tender response due on Tuesday.  because of this, I was able to take some time off on Friday.  After taking my son to see Despicable Me 3 at the cinema in the morning, I was able to venture to the shed in the afternoon.  I completed the gluing down of the ballast at The Risk, and decided to then lay some ballast through the Kyogle Stock Siding. 

That night, was the scheduled modelling night at Simon Says Hobbies and Games.  Darren and Geoff also attended along with one other model railway modeller.  He was assembling some card buildings.  Of course there were the usual guys there doing other types of plastic models etc.  I decided that I was to try scratch build some box trailers.  My first one was about 7’ 6” x 4’ 6” in size.  My next attempt was a more standard size of 6’ x 4’.  My inspiration for these was watching Peter’s army train on Tuesday night.  He had at least two box trailers behind some army vehicles on the back of some flat wagons being towed around the layout.  They certainly looked very nice.

Yesterday was our monthly Club day.  So on the way over I stopped off at a local hobby shop, to see if my 12mm points had arrived.  You guessed it - NO!  Bugger!  Another wait for a couple of weeks more.  This morning I travelled over to the All Gauge Club at Carina for their Buy and Sell.  I had a look around, and didn’t see anything of interest apart from lots of 12mm wagon kits.  They looked pretty expensive, but they did look good.  There were some very well assembled and priced card buildings in HO and O scale, but I did not need any of these either.

So this arvo I went down to the shed again and pottered around completing a few tasks.  I was finally able to replace the KD couplers on my two Auscision motorail car carriers.  I don't care about my other car carrier wagons, but these ones on my passenger wagons get shunted around during an operating session.  Due to this, I needed good operation of the KDs.  The old ones did not move when over the uncoupling magnets.  So these have now been tested and I’m happy with the operations of these new couplers.  I also took some photos for an upcoming article for AMRM.  James asked for a couple of shots, that I will check out later tonight and send the best few down to him.  I also decided to ballast the old goods shed road at Old Cassino.  Maybe this was where a couple of the shots might have been taken.

The Kyogle Stock Siding is not very long, but can load a 5 or 6 wagon rake of stock wagons.  It is located between the Upper Richmond River at Kyogle and Cougal Spiral.

An view of The Risk crossing loop. 

I then went up stairs and resumed my construction line assembly process for another seventeen (17) of the 6’ x 4’ box trailers that I built on Friday night.  These will take some time to complete.  I hope to have the box part of the trailer completed tonight.  I'm pretty certain that they will make a good load for some of my container flats.  Some will also be towed behind cars on the layout and others left in back yards or in junk piles around some farms.  I think onw will be positioned at a house out the back of Cassino station with a load of gravel in it, as the home owner will be mixing up some concrete for his new drive way.  If they turn out well, I might have a few to sell at an up coming Buy and Sell.  Who knows, there might even be another small AMRM article in it as well.