Progress

The Easter weekend came and went and I didn't quite get to finish the weighbridge fitter's van from my last post.

It is almost there as can be seen in this pic, only the steps below the door to be fitted and the hand brake gear. Then it will be ready for the paint shop. After this, I will fit Sergent couplers and it will be ready to help keep the weighbridges on my railway in good order!

For a small model, this one has been rather fiddly. The double roof with the batten spacers was the worst but with with a lot of care and patience, the end result was worth it being such a prominent and distinctive feature.

For the camera freaks, I took this pic with my Pentax K-x DSLR camera fitted with a macro lens. Aperture was set at f40 and a five second exposure.

I like to take close ups of my models before painting as any defects or stray flash etc. will show up and can be corrected. If I can make a model look presentable this close up then it should look good at normal viewing distances.

Getting Back Into It

It's been a long time since I last posted and since then I have gained a few more followers, so it's about time I posted more regularly now I have a bit of an audience.

I haven't been doing very much at all with my model railway Byron Creek for about the last year. This was mostly due to dismantling part of the layout to rearrange the furniture underneath but also a bit of a health problem during the first few months of the year.

With all that out of the way, the return of good health and lovely cooler weather, some planning to rebuild the missing parts of the layout is underway. Once I have the measurements needed and a cutting diagram drawn up, new plywood and pine framing can be bought so I can run trains again and get this layout closer to some state of completion. The layout has existed in some form for twenty years now so time to get on with it!

But before all that, I have this little project pictured above to keep me busy over the Easter long weekend. Those of you in the know will recognise this as a NSWGR (New South Wales Government Railways) weighbridge fitter's van. Weighbridges were installed at most goods yards so the railway could determine what to charge for goods sent by rail.

These devices needed repair and servicing from time to time and so the weighbridge fitter would visit with his little workshop on wheels. This would be parked on a nearby siding and this model will recreate that scene nicely on Byron Creek.

The kit is manufactured by Ian Lindsay Models

This model is the first kit I have worked on in a few years and I have noticed how I can no longer work on models with the naked eye. A strong magnifier with built in flourescent light and reading glasses are needed so my now forty-four year old eyes can actually see what I'm doing and not mess things up!

Well that's all for now, hopefully by the end of the weekend I can post a pic of a completed weighbridge fitters van.

Watch this space over the coming weeks as I get the layout operational again.