Friday saw the green Bety loco from QR doing some runs on the Ippy line (2-8-0 steamer - all on coal too). Some lucky normal commuters got to ride her in from Ipswich in the morning as well - lucky ducks. So when we heard she was making a stop at Central, Craig, Greg and I bolted down for a look see.
Nifty. Big green steam belching thing that she is - beautiful.
Friday night was of course a nice run over at John K's place. Always great to get an invite as it is a fun night and great layout to run on. My new little Walthers GP-15 with builtin Tsunami sound ran very well - just a bit shy on most of the points. But being she is new and a 4 axle jobbie and the points are insulfrogs, I reckon she did well. But I will look into adding a stay alive capacitor or two in her to help her across bad patches in future. There is plenty of spare room, so as many as possible will be installed I reckon.
So on Saturday I went down to the club to play with toy trains.. Not the same as seeing the big real thing, but damned nice in its own way. So onto the HO layout for some more scenery work. I did a number of dirt/grass areas. One being the outer top rim of the middle peninsula That will make it almost ready for ballasting. I reckon Doug and Bruce can get into some ballast when Bruce gets back. If they want and it suits, the N'ers will loan a few bags of suitable ballast for the job.
The next area to get some more grass and dirt was down at the silos. The only real area left to do there now is around the silos and building, so I suppose we will need to start looking for a suitable kit and get them built to see what needs finishing from the dirt/grass/concrete type layers.
While I was at it and in the mood I did around a bit into the wharf district and then towards the fiddle yard. I'll need to talk to Darryl D to see where to stop with the grass and dirt and where he will start with the bitumen and concrete cover.
While I was slapping glue and muck around the place, Peter A and Doug were at it down at Three Bridges Gorge - well' it might not be the real name as we don't have one, but it is descriptive, so I'll use it for now.
John B was busy making some backboards for the top deck around where it passes the windows along the long wall.
So after lunch I got my NSW 45 class loco out and put a half a dozen NSW box cars behind her and did a bit of shunting around the place. Nice runner by the way. She was nice and quiet and very responsive with the LokPilot decoder and hauled the wagons without a problem at all. She negotiated all the points without any hesitation at all. Now John B also brought his two 45's down and he got sound for his - the LokSound ones from DCC Sound down south. So he let me play for a bit - NICE, very nice. Looks like I have a new item for my wish list....
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