Getting older I have found I can't do what I used to do physically. Luckily, I have some people that help me. Don and Rosslyn undertook some maintenance activities, Peter J worked on scenery and structures and during my ops sessions Barry runs the control panels which is allowing me to continue to do what I enjoy.

This month has seen things happening on trackwork, scenery, structures, Sounds for EVNGR, Ops Sessions, Tasks completed & scheduled.

Flintston Cold Stores

Peter J constructed a cardboard mock up for a trial fit and we decided it was a bit too long, so it was a well worthwhile exercise.

Flintston Warehouse

I have left the mock up in place during operating sessions and the reaction from operators has been positive.

Huntington Branch

Peter J has started the scenery up the grade on the Huntington Branch line behind Flintston and between Hornertown and Daveyston.

Sounds for EVNGR

Peter J informed me he demonstrated the Trial module to this month's NMRA meeting unfortunately I did not get to attend. He changed the speaker to one of a similar rating in a speaker box - a required improvement.

Following the Trails that I outlined last month, I have been working on changing Trial 2 based on what I achieved in Trial 3. I am simplifying the design doing away with the solid state relay.

I ordered the DC-DC Buck Converter's, Arduino nano's, nano mounting boards, 5W sound boards from Ali Express and they are now on hand to work with.

Nano Mounting Board Kit

Underside has 60 Solder points per board

Top view after assembly

4 boards with Nano's fitted ready to be used.

A side issue was Usb connections:

old Nano's have USB 1.0/2.0 Mini Type-A connection,
5W Sound modules USB 2.0 Micro-B
New Nano's USB 3.0 Type-C

so a mix of cables is required for configuration and programming.

Maintenance

Don and Rosslyn came over to carry out some track maintenance at Stanvac Junction and Iron Hill in the morning before we all meet my international visitors.

Stanvac Junction

The snowplow on a loco used on the Jimtown turn was "catching" on the spring steel wire used to move the throw bar of two turnouts. Don ground down the wires to ensure clearance. Rosslyn noticed the front of the loco looked a bit odd - this was the loco that had the "trapped" pickup wire that had been addressed previously. Turned out that the body was not fully clipped down on the chassis and once realised and fixed it gave additional clearance as well!

Iron Hill

Operators had reported that the clearance past the loaded ore train locos when stabled was too tight. Don & Rosslyn extended the track for me.

They fitted Hayes-built bumpers to both tracks.

Then Peter J started to reinstate the scenery.

International Visitors

On 9th April Jeffrey and Piotr from Poland came to visit as part of their four-week holiday in Australia. Jeffrey and I have been friends on Facebook for some time following a post on "Fans of A Modeler's Life" on 27 September 2024. We finally met face to face!

L>R Don, Poitr, Jeffrey & Rosslyn

We enjoyed drinking some Zinfandel from Sonoma County, the closest thing I have found to Zinfandel that we had in 2016 when Rosslyn and I enjoyed time in the restaurant observation car on the Nappa Valley Wine Train.

I cooked a sausages and onions which we enjoyed in bread with sauce.

After lunch we rain some trains before having a full BBQ tea before dropping them off at the local metro station,

Jeffrey unloading ore cars at Huntington Steelworks

Layout Planning

I have been spending some time helping Alex work through ideas of what he could do when building his new Marklin layout. I have been using AnyRail and the Marklin library to develop what might fit. Below are a few ideas being considered.

Things are at a very early stage so let's see how things will pan out over time.

Ops Sessions

I hosted two sessions, Session #79 & Session #80 and I attended Wayne's since my last update.

HCS 30th March - Session #79

Barry, Denis, Don, Graham, Rosslyn, Paul & Wayne joined me for the session. I was not feeling 100% so Barry led the session and I helped here and there especially where operators had not done a job before.

We had a few issues causing maintenance and the coal train steam locos has some unexplained derailments.

Not feeling the best, I did not take photos of operators in action.

Afterwards we enjoyed afternoon tea.

HCS 15th April - Session #80

Alex, Barry, Denis, Graham, Peter J & Wayne join me for the session.

We all had some fun even though there were a few issues along the way. The full operating program was achieved leaving me nothing to tidy up between sessions!