Sunday

Well, the weather was sufficiently inclement to allow me to spend some time in the shed. after a bit of aimless pottering around I decided to make a start on the module join that I had not sorted out due to a lack of track joiners. With the track saw the offending bits were quickly removed and its now ready to properly sort out the track across the joins.

Further progress was held up by the lack of a charged power drill to fix the hinges to the boards.

Filling

Another short job in the Man-sion tonight. I was cleaning up the road crossing that I had filled at the start of the week, when I cast my eye wider to see if there was anything else that I could fill. I noticed the platform that has been sitting there for quite a while with no work done on it. It was planned to be temporary until I could replace it with something more solid, but given that its now been there for year, it seems to have won the battle. So, it was out with the filler to tidy up the ends and also fill the holes in the sides.

 I then did some alterations at the north end. I have not really been happy about the height of the hills, so it was out with the craft knife. Taking 2 inches off the top (Its been a while since a barber could do that to me) has opened up the loco depot nicely.

Must get something done about that empty turntable pit.....

Back to the shed

I finally made it out to the man-sion tonight, the first time in a week or so. I must sit down at some point and make a list of potential projects to work on the get some momentum on this project. I did a bit of pottering on the road crossing filling in some of the gaps where the DAS had shrunk. I'm not sure how to use this stuff. Theres plenty of people on RMweb that seem to make it work, maybe it needs PVA mixed with it.

While I was working on this, I noticed a purchase from Railex that I have neglected to mention. Found in a box under a table was a collection of TT scale cars. Sifting out the convertibles, I found these 2 models which fit for my 1960's time frame.

 These look like 1960's vintage European cars, possibly of an eastern bloc persuasion. The one on the right is fortunately too long to be a Trabant, but does bear a passing similarity to British cars of the period as well. The one on the left has more of an American look. It reminds me of this shot from the Western Langford collection.

This however looks like a Fiat of some sort (I have no idea, I just make things up as I go. Both a good thing and a bad thing in my profession). It does give me some ideas for a group of photographers on the layout, though the hairstyles will be hard to model

I brought 4 at $5 a pop (which is OK I thought). I'll paint the tires black, and give them a wash of Tamiya smoke and a matt varnish, which will tone them down nicely.

A question

Pondering time today. There has been a rush of work on the 3D CAD printing lately, with quite a few models produced. The quality of the print is not easy to make out at the moment, but for those of us wanting a 'close enough' model, the future does look bright. I must admit to being unconvinced but far be it from me to stop anyone making models, as long as they are in the right scale. It even has me wondering if I really need to put wires on the insides of my J sheep wagons (they are a pain in the ass to do and there are quite a few of them to finish). The inner finescaler seems to be rather quiet on this one as I'm keeping him occupied with dreams of 6 and 8 coupled loco mechs. I'll have to find a coin to toss.

This also raises the question about the state of S scale at the moment. Is there anyone actively modeling in the scale? Is there any progress? Is there a forum that we don't know about or has the scale fragmented into small groups isolated from each other? Likewise for the 'other' 9mm scale.
Enquiring minds do wonder....

RailEx - Day 2

 RailEx, I'm back at RailEx. Back in the horticultural hall where 19 years before Darryl and I built our first NZ120 layout together, the night before the show.

Since I don't do religion, getting out of bed on Sunday any time before 10 is a struggle. 7:30 was a bit of a stretch. Especially when you get to the hall and get asked  'what took you so long?' and 'why do you live in a hick town?'.

Arriving at the hall, I was type cast as a forward thinking adhesive user by soldering iron wielding Luddites and so held up the front end of the demo tables with Michael. My detailed explanation of why one uses adhesives and that heat will not melt 2 pieces of wood together were completely lost on Mish, but she did bring lunch for all, so it sort of balances out. Sitting down,  I followed the instructions I had been left, which was reach into the bag and start whatever came out.

'A lightbulb moment, Just as well I wasn't bending over...'

Fortunately the options were UGA or J.
Anyway off I dived and grabbed a couple of UGA laser cuttings (as I wanted a couple more for the layout). These merrily went together with pauses only to play 'hunt the piece I want' in the bag of bit. Oh and interacting with the public....
This seemed to go well. I didn't scare any small children that I could tell.

I knocked together 2 Uga's and then cast round for something else to do. A J seemed out of the question (I only had an hour left) so I went for the only think left. An enquiry received the reply 'You mad rash fool!' which is technically not a 'No', so I assembled a G scale Uga as well. If there is another one cut, I think I could do it blindfolded.

Also on the table was a 5" radius cirle of track where the Cb and rail truck put in a good day in their first real test run. I started off with running them singularly, but since I had the DCC box I discovered I could run both of them at the same time without too many collisions. The railtruck ran a bit hot, but the Cb was fine after running in circles all afternoon.

All in all not a bad show, I had a quick wander round the layouts but nothing overly grabbed me again. had an interesting chat with a fellow RMweb member about operating show layouts. He had not brought his British OO layout as operating it for 2 days was quite exhausting. A roundy roundy was far easier to deal with. Maybe my grand plan to run Paekakariki is a layout too far after all?

RailEx - Day 1

Am_Fet writes:

Well, obviously a full weekend leave pass was never going to be a goer, but when MD stated he could only make it for Sunday, I quickly volunteered for Saturday.....so its a family tag team, as it were.

I rocked in Saturday afternoon and found Michael, Mish and Cabbage already setup around their "Kai Iwi" layout and hard at work, although I do think there was a severe case of discrimination involved; Obviously those will soldering irons and panel beating tools wanted nothing to do with those using adhesives, and so we sat back to back all afternoon......snobs....

Luckily Mr Laser had called through earlier in the day and dropped of a bag that, after what looked like a trip across a narrow rutted road at speed, contained several loose J and Ug jigsaws.  After taking 15 minutes to sort out and set up, I got on with it.

Or to be more precise, I didnt.  A lot of interest was shown in what I was doing by the paying punters, so in the first 2½ hours I had succeeded in finish a side and an end....and was beginning to lose my voice in the process.  I had printed out a screenshot of MD's award winning J5, and most people were astonished that the bits I was squinting at actually made up into the model pictured.  Cabbage also folded up one of his brass underframes in a spare 30 seconds and, along with his Nz120 container wagons, created a lot of interest.  More screenshots of Peters burgeoning Shapeways creations featured regularly in discussions on how our scale was being helped by technology (Here is his shapeways shop).

A few highlights:

- "So, what are you doing?"  (My answer was "Going Blind!")  (I got away with using that joke all afternoon...)

- A women and her two teenage daughters (Hello, girls!) spent a good 10 minutes talking to us before admitting her husband had his trainset in a box and in 28 years of marriage it had never made an appearance....and she dispaired if it ever would.  5 minutes after she left, said husband appeared and sheepishly admitted he'd been sent over by his wife....and then stayed for 10 minutes himself!

- Michael nearly getting into fisticuffs with one of those "special people" who inhabit exhibitions (although, apparently, not as many as follow steam excursions which seem to double as Asbergers Conventions) over what scale we were modelling in...."So, its 3mm?" "No, its 1/120"....apparently its all the Poms fault (of which this gentlemen was one) and their inability to do scale conversions properly when it came to make model trains.

- Giving away my meagre collection of business cards (okay, I only had 3!) to serious punters who I hope to hear back from.

- Mish producing (as if from nowhere) a 44 gallon drum of V (or similar sized can) just when it was required.

Lowlights?

-Can people please stop using sound???????????  PLEASE???????  Sure, it looks great when you stop and look at it for 20 seconds, but hearing a f***ing CHUFF CHUFF CHUFF noise for 4 hours would have St Francis of Assisi kicking babies....I think it was the monotony more than anything else.

-Realising that I couldnt remember how to put together my own kit (Doh!).  Only had to backtrack twice.....

- Getting a sore back from a bad chair....plus I think I've picked up some communicable disaease, probably from the aforementioned strange punters.

Well, no doubt MD will provide a writeup of todays experiences....and regrettably I have no photos to show you, as no one thought to capture on film the rare sight of me actually doing some modelling (what were they thinking!).  So I'll leave you with a shot of Cabbage providing a creche service to some children of a stall owner....although whether youd get creche registered that involved soldering irons is a bit doubtful....although we only had 1 minor burn from a soldering iron (something you only do once!).

Fooled me...

Saturday afternoons modeling session started with the forced eviction of an interloper who obviously couldn't tell the difference between the New Zealand bush and my highly detailed (though incomplete) replica.

'Looks like it might be a bit harder to shift than Hone'

'Seems to have the right number of legs left'

 I'm happy to say that it is now enjoying the exotic delights of an old woodpile behind the garage in the company of its mate who I found trying to bum a lift to work in the back of the car on Friday morning.
This incident has now added 'Weta creek' to a list of possible names for this scene.

With that out of the way, I decided to have a crack at highlighting the Cliff faces. This was done by dry brushing shades of grey starting with a mid grey and working up to a light grey. I will still have to to a wash of dilute black to add the shadows to it, and then glue on some foliage.

The only problem is that it now screams 'bad wargaming terrain!' at me when I look at it. I may as well be playing warhammer.