Our penultimate physical meet at St Osyth of 2023 went off with a few guests and later, a visit from Alan S! As a result, we were able to get up and running by 10:45 for a generally full day and a half or so day for N with the new bridging board not behaving itself for Paul E.
Paul H was very kind enough to bring his Pi 4 to do a trial run of operations (including WiFiThrottle) following the unconditional surrender of the old Pi the HO has been using for several years. Noted from the upgrade are more ports for displays, better processing and its’ own WiFi. Paul E was looking for some expenditure to avoid our balance getting too high, so perhaps getting a new Pi for the layout would be the answer? Watch this space…
Not long into running on the HO, Paul P started work on some of the ski jumps and misalignments across the layout. The other modellers also explored some of the other areas which could be partially adjusted by loosening the holding bolts and adjusting some of the legs. The fixes, much to my personal appreciation and hopefully others, allowed my El Capitan consist to run the loop perfectly (most of the time), with the odd exception at Peach Meadows where my powered F3B unit intermittently derailed at the first point.
The N Scale experienced a future resolution when Dennis (aka dad) brought his first module to the club to align with the boards. His plans are to bring it and potentially others up to support a larger footprint approved by the group, a U-shape as it were, where David A’s current turn around board sits at the moment. In terms of running however, it sounded like unfortunately Paul E struggled with continuing work on the bridging board and operations on the N was therefore limited, but the attendance for the N was and is seeing more interested parties.
We were also blessed with the presence of another David whom assisted us in setup and tear down, and from conversations he is primarily interested in O Scale but did show a lot of interest in both layouts. There has been discussions amongst the HO members regarding our own modules so we may be joining the N in the great module railway challenge soon. In the coming months I am hoping to continue work on my first board and hopefully get it to St Osyth at some point next year to line up with either Delta junction or another member’s boards.
Lunch was at the usual time and during the sit down period we went over our wish list for a potential exhibition in 2024 or 25, moving on to everyone except a few energised stragglers running on both layouts. I was over the moon continuing to run the passenger consist, but I did fit in some freight and loaned a loco to Kian (aka the nephew) so he could run his stock and not be left out following some faults happening with his own locos.
I did bring my newly-acquired fresh off the manufactory SD28-2, however after a couple of laps it started shorting the layout which was a disappointment. However, this was just before the El Cap was pulled out, which certainly made up for it.
Overall an excellent session, especially one to prove the benefits of spending just a little time going over track joints and testing right before the main event; because a fine running layout means fine running trains!
See you all one last time for 2023 at St Osyth in November.
Neal K
Santa Fe all the way!
Thamesiders MRG 