Monday, January 23, 2012

The day that was

Well, here is the report from yesterdays open home.


After the cleanup we were ready to go. The drink making facilities were shifted to the garage to save the endless tramp of people through the house.

A grand total of 4 modelers braved the trip to Palmerston North yesterday. Thanks to mark, mike, Bruce and Quentin for turning up. An interesting day was had (I think) with a BBQ for lunch.

A few topics were discussed. Bruce enlightened me on the ins and outs of the JMRI DCC software, and I can see that I'll probably wind up downloading it onto the baby laptop for shows. Quentin brought along his NZ finescale Wb that he is working on, and I could only marvel at the wiggly bits underneath.
There was a fair bit of soldering done as well. mark had brought the mk 2 version of the 4 wheeled underframe and this was merrily attacked by both of us.

There are still a few bugs to iron out and tweaks to be made, but they are still sex on a stick quite honestly. However I am going to possibly have to have a rethink about my wheel choices. in the picture above on the left we have the NMRA standard wheels. On the right are the 2mm FS ones. These just look much better all round. My only concern if I go full noise with these is that I'm not sure if my track is good enough. It will also preclude anyone without NMRA compliant gear from running trains on my layout. Maybe I just shouldn't worry about it and go for it.

Its starting to look quite nice.

So, thanks to everyone who turned up, I really enjoyed myself. Its just a pity that there were not a few more local modelers around.

Oh, and by my count, its 73 days to the Convention. Hows your planning going?

2 comments:

Amateur Fettler said...

Top stuff!

Unfortunately the new underframe is starting to show up the J5 top a wee bit, it almost looks clunky....can we have a shot taken from 2' away to restore my confidence please??

Quentin said...

Got a close look at that nz120 etched underframe. Very impressive detail, and all folded construction. Wonder if it would scale up ok to a 1:64 etch?

What an excellent afternoon... interesting weather -a winters day in the middle of summer(!), good food, good company of modellers, well stocked modellers' table with interesting projects and very impressive Paekakariki layout. No whoopee cushion secreted under this visiting S scale modeller's chair. These miniaturists are very welcoming..
A great way to spend a Sunday.