Progress and Sound Decoders

Over the Christmas break, I started ballasting the layout.  Quiet happy with it now.  I did add an extra Road, Road number 5 - makes shunting the main industries much easier and also most VR yards had five roads.
I am now using the Yard as “Staging” - trains arrive and depart from here - run a few loops in the inner loop which represents the country and then comes back in.
I also airbrushed the side of the rails a rusty colour.  Took about 1.5 hours.  Still have a small section to do.
Also borrowed Craig’s 48 Class which has the Full Throttle (FT) Sound Decoder from Loksound - quite impressive motor control and performance although the horn is little weak.
I have a Tsunami 2 Sound decoder in my B Class - the thing I like about the Tsunami 2 is the auto-notching feature.  The Full Throttle sound decoder does not have this feature. 
It feels like if you want to be track-side, the Tsunami 2 is the one, if you want to be in the cab, the LokSound FT is the one.

B60 - Tsunami2 Auto notching:

Nice Lights on the LokSound:

Horn - sound little weak:

More sounds:

Now I am tempted to get sound for my Y Class!

Busy doing some more scenery work

I have been busy doing some more scenery work.  You can see in the following pictures some of the work done.  I tried to make a scene interesting and this was the main thinking in my mind as I set out.  The hardest challenge was trying to make the scenes flow together.
I ended up with the concept of a dry river running parallel to the railway.  I think this came out very well and it some how makes the layout look longer.  I wanted a river somewhere on the layout and always thought of running it through the tracks but on further thought, the river running parallel seems to be better.

I basically used soil which I found nearby and really like the different colours and hues.

Some footage

It's been a while since I posted any footage of the layout on this blog.  For those who are interested in seeing some movements, here are some videos:

Scenery Work

I have been playing God lately - in the form of Terra forming and scenery work.  For ground cover I used some soil which I scooped up on my way home from work one day and sifted this through one of those small tea-strainers. 

I also found a pretty good static grass applicator.  You can buy this in a kit and it goes together without any soldering required.  One uses a 12 V DC transformer and the output is in the range of 40KV. 

Being my first attempt, I am pretty pleased on how it turned out and enjoy watching trains pass in this open scene.

The photos show the progress so far.

The following photos with the morning sunlight:

Building a VR Signal Box from Plans

Here is my first attempt at making a building from styrene.  The plans are from Australian Model Railway Magazine and the building is of a two story Victorian Railways Signal Box.
The windows are from Ratio.  It is still far from complete obviously. I need to get some corrugated iron sheets, and the steps to complete the model.
I am quite pleased on how it has turned out.  It has been a joy to build and to see it come together.  The author of the article has done a very good job of explaining the steps to put together and build this signal box.

Making Trees Quickly

I needed a quick way to make many trees quickly as I have parallel tracks which make up my main line run and these tracks are supposed to be miles apart.  Now, I could use 3mm MDF or ply and divide the scene with a blue background, however too many of these partitions seems to ruin the look and feel so I set about thinking of a way to build many trees more as a scenic divider than anything else.

Anyway, the concept I came up with involves a 3mm drill bit and some wire. Simply drill a number of holes into some ply and then cut some stiff wire to different heights.  Then add some of this material - the name escapes me - but I found it in a fabric sofa between the lining of the cushion and the covering.  Unfortunately I thought I'd taken a photo of this material but didn't.

The material is white, so grab some paint, either black or brown and apply the paint.  Then apply leaves when still wet.  After the leaves are sprinkled on, I simple spray some 3M Super 77 glue.  Within an hour I had a bunch of trees which produce a pretty good scenic divider.

Some photos to show the steps.

Track Cleaning Car

One major issue I have is dirty track and stalling locomotives.  No matter what I do, I cannot overcome the issue of locomotives stalling or lights flickering.   Even after I clean the track, a few day later, the locos are playing up again.  I think this is due to the layout being out-doors and the variation in temperatures and humidity.

I decided to build my own track cleaning wagon this morning.  Using an old Bachmann Oil Taker as the wagon, I build the following vehicle which can be seen on the video.

Hopefully this will help with keeping at least the rails clean.  I used masonite as the wood for the cleaner.  Gave it a few laps on the layout and it seemed to do the job as the Walker didn't have any issues once I ran it on the cleaned track.

 I am tempted to build another one and use both on a works train.  It's pretty crude but it seems to work.