108 goes 2mm

Thought I would post this pic - doesn't show the evenings work but...

The ordered 2mm drop in wheels arrived from Mr Shop 3 today - thanks Ray - and so I spent the evening sorting the 108.  This involved me rushing in and putting all the wheel sets in, wiring the DCC controller to Swallow's End and... nothing much happening. CV's wouldn't read, all sorts of drama and so I put it all back to N and DC and put it on the kids Kato oval.  Worked - after I cleaned wheels and so forth.

So then I put the chips back in and programmed it all to work on DCC in N and then went on an axle by axle plan to see if everything would work.  It did.  Most usefully with all axles changed to 2mm ones it still worked on the Kato oval so I now have a test track/running in loop for when I do the Class 24 - hopefully tomorrow.  Then I guess I better get all the track sorted on Swallow's End and the traverser/fiddle yard built since I now will have locos/trains to run.

To make the night perfect, Essendon made it to the next round of the pre-season and won very big against Brisbane.  Footy is back too!

Footy is Back

Footy returned tonight for 2010 with the Bombers travelling to Perth to play the Eagles. Sadly, the Bombers while brilliant in the first term were not so flash after half time and faded to be shut out by 6 or 7 goals (I rarely remember the losing margin - and winning ones aren't relevent 'cause we won!).

What place has this on a Railway Blog? Not much other than I got the iron out and did some modelling in front of the footy. I finished the Prestwin - the valve gear between the tanks isn't that great but it looks the part from NVD so I am not worried. I also continued with the replacement chassis program for my Chivers and Parkside kits - this time building one of the Fencehouses designed Parkside replacements. Went together really well - the only down side being that there are no etched springs nor axleboxes on these kits. I presume - can't find destructions for them - they are designed with the glue one whitemetal axlebox and spring bits in mind. I had a set of four which I used and they look good and run very freely and true - much improved (although the wagons are all in Brisbane so it will be a while before they are fitted) but annoyingly I can only do the one - the 2mm FSA seems to be out of stock of the rest.

While this will set back the Parkside replacements, I still have 4 Tube wagons and 4 LMS kits to build chassis for - all of these etches seem to have all the bits I will need so another 8 games and I should have them all done. By that stage the wagons may have been gotten from Brisbane and then the fitting will commence. The next conundrum is what couplings to fit - these are all basically interchangeable between 2mm and N gauge so putting Rapidos on seems silly but I suspect they will spend more time on N gauge layouts than 2mm ones so... At least changing the couplings might be easy at a later date if I use the right adhesive.

Sorry about the lack of photos - still haven't taken any. Will try to in daylight tomorrow.