Taking Stock

Current stock as at 30 Dec 2011

Last few days I have fine tuned the shunting process and hence made it some what more prototypical. Initially the yard tracks were left empty, now I have wagons on the yard tracks which could be left there for some time, just like the prototype.

Point Activation using Dowels and Eye Screws

The last two days time was spent working on activating the points which lead to the departure tracks using the dowel method shown to me by another VR modeler. The procedure requires 6mm dowel from Bunnings, piano wire about 1mm thick, some eye screws - get the bronze ones if your layout is outdoors like in a shed/garage, and your basic tools such as power drill, drill bits, wire cutter, and junior saw / hack saw. See attached photos on how I did this. The major benefits are that it is very cheap compared to a servo or tortoise machine and it works really well. Not shown in the photos are the steps where I drilled a 1mm hole into the dowel then aligned the point and threaded the piano wire through the point and dowel. This was the most difficult part.

Bye now.

Something for the NSWGR modeller

Here we see a former NSWGR 421 class demoted to shunting duties at Acacia Ridge, Brisbane. She definitely sounds like a Victorian Railways S Class diesel loco. Cheers