Pleased with myself and other short stories

I had a whole day to myself today, something that I theoretically have each Sunday as Chris, my wife, works Sundays. But of course we all know that life often gets in the way.

Normally I visit my mum and dad on Sunday mornings and this can run into the early afternoon as I am building a layout with dad. I have done this once already for about 4 years then 18 months ago mum and dad moved and well, we start again.

The layout is coming along nicely this time as it has been planned carefully instead of just growing like the old one (usually between my visits ;-) ). I have been building the new one for the last 6 months or so. I will post some photos at a later date.

The point being though that they are away visiting my brother at Townsville.

Now this leads me to another story.

Last Sunday I joined a few hundred other people who were lucky enough to visit what may be known as the Main Western Line layout. The layout was opened to the public in aid of a charity and at $10, entry it was worth it.

The layout was on a property at Brewongle near Bathurst and was built for it's owner Paul Hennessay by John Brown a well known modeller. John told me he had taken 19 months at 40 -50 hours per week to get it to this stage. Well John, you can be proud of your achievement. John had some assistance from another modeller whose name unfortunately escapes me.

Some may have heard of it but you have to see it to believe it. It is housed in a 100' x 45' purpose built building, notice I didn't say shed. The layout is in a U shape with a large staging yard at the base of the U and two long peninsulars. It is a takes up a space about 80' x 30' leaving enough room for a few lounge chairs and wood burning fire.

The layout represents a section of mainline from Tarana to Bathurst and it includes a short Oberon branchline.

I took quite a few photos and also video but will only post these few photos below.

This photo was taken 2/3 of the way down one peninsular.

And this photo was taken when I turned around and took the last 1/3, long enough?

Some more photos can be found at:

http://www.nmra.org.au/Layout_Tours/Western%20Line/index.html

Now back to the original subject of this blog.

Having all day to myself I decided to build two points for Cassilis but I did have to mow the grass, not my most favourite past time but the lans are small and it only takes 20 minutes or so. I learnt from my first home where it would take about 2 hours!

Any way I went to the back lawn to removed the land mines and noticed that a tree was overhanging the path. OK, I can trim that, next I knew I was out the front trimming a very tall hedge and another tree as well.

After a shower and some lunch, yes, half the day gone, I headed for the layout room (not nearly so splendid as Paul's).

I side tracked myself with fixing a vibration in the sound from my dad's new Eureka C38. If you have the same problem then the fix is simplicity itself.

The tender body is held on with two screws underneath near the rear coupler and two tabs at the front. Unscrew and remove the body.

Now, you will notice that the inside surface of the tender sides have a very slight recess starting near the front and going about 3/4 of the way to the back. Why? I don't know but it allows the sides to vibrate against the tender floor.

Now for the fix, as per the photo, put some sticky tape (Cellotape) into the recess on each side. Allow the tape to extend out the bottom and trim with a sharp hobby knife.

I also taped down some of the wires that might have been touching the tender sides causing the vibration noise.

Re-assemble and it should be fixed, don't forget to turn down the volume to about half.

As with all QSI sound locos, if using DCC then you will need to put a zero into CV62 to turn off the talk back feature as it can interfere with programming by talking while the command station is sending the second of any two part CV adjustments such as the address.

OK, now to what I am happy about.

I only got one point built but it was my first curved point and it went together without any further adjustment, my test 4 wheel S truck just glides through without any discernable click or wheel drop at the frog.

I was over the moon and took it in to show off to Chris!

Now that was the fourth point built, only seven to go ;-(.

I say ;-( because I am a person who doesn't like repeating things, I love to work out how to do something and then do it, just don't ask me to repeat it. Yes, I have many unfinished kits but I do have one complete of each ;-)

That's it for now, a bit of a ramble, no pun intended.