So Maitland Steamfest 2012 was a great celebration of locomotives 3265, 3526 & 3642. The race felt more like a parallel run for 3265 & 3526 than an out and out race, add to that the steam locomotive led trains where seemingly blitzed by the two tiger moths. It is good to have tried it though. Maybe it will be better when the two 38s are out of the shop, though 3830 has less to do than 3801 as far as I can tell. The fillum SLR was handy though I was not helped by the film I had being ISO 400. Given I was shooting outdoors, I would have preferred something less grainy but I will have to plan further ahead and shop elsewhere next time.
In other news, I managed to cut a hole in the baseboard for the turntable pit. Step 1 was marking out, step 2 was drill a hole for the jigsaw blade, step 3 was use the jigsaw to cut close to the edge of the marked out circle, step 4 was to then file away the material until the pit fitted. Sadly as a result of not taking the jigsaw up the marked circle a lot of filing was required AND the resultant hole did not end up centred where I wished and the roundhouse now hangs over the edge of the current baseboard :-(
So that great debate of model railroading comes up: do I throw it away and start again or keep it and work around the problem? Starting again means I would learn whether my caution with the jigsaw was misplaced and whether a better result would be achieved if I cut with the jigsaw closer to the marked edge. On the other hand, the overhang is less than 10mm. I could put a piece of pine that I am using as the support for the ply baseboard as a brace along the end where the roundhouse overhangs that would nicely disguise many things, and add strength and bracing. The other advantages of extending/covering/bracing the end are that I would not need to redo any of the above steps, also it means the lead in track on the opposite side to the roundhouse has a little more spare room (~10mm extra track length in N-scale is not to be ignored, ~10 mm of pine is not of so much consequence) Stay tuned for the outcome and further work
As the year reaches its middle, it becomes time to start scheduling some work on the Christmas layout. A few things would be advantageous:
- Better fastening/clamping of the two halves, something similar to the latches used on audio equipment like so to draw the two sides together with some mechanical advantage.
- Light the interiors of the "Overton" coaches. This requires the hooking up of the pickups from the coach axles to the input side of the lighting module, affixing the lights to the clerestory roof of the coaches after soldering the lighting wires to the output side of the lighting module.
- Outfit the interior of the coaches so that the lighting does not show them to be empty. I have many satisfactorily painted passengers and benches, it is now a matter of making a suitable base to glue everything to, painting that and doing the gluing.
- Fit proper electrical connectors between the baseboard wires and the controller. I like bananas, because they have no bones
The catch with the soldering is the weather outside right now so the other things may get done first :-)
And on that note it's picture time.
