With Paul H’s return from what sounded like a most excellent holiday, the keys were handed back over, but not without opening up a little early just to get things moving ahead of time. With Paul P potentially still recovering and Tom F now out for a few weeks, numbers were thin on the ground for the HO, and as is the case for the past few physical meets, the N had another sizable contingent. But that doesn’t mean to say things all went as planned for them; there was it seemed some difficulties in the land of membership prosperity… But not that much really!
When setting up, and miraculously by 11:30, our priority on the HO was fixing some track issues felt for some time, even before the Open Day. One particular area of note was Essex Ethanol; with every board join potentially out of alignment with numerous ski jumps and a derail. To everyone’s appeasement, these were sorted in short order with a bonus fix on the siding at Ethanol where hopefully at some point in the future, we could utilise it without much problems again.
After these numerous fixes, I pulled out my new camera. Getting to grips with the focus, I was able to capture some ok footage while on the move, especially as evidenced by some of the screenshots littered around this post. I haven’t quite mastered it yet but the footage itself was still usable, especially the portions mounted on the tripod. It looks like I will have to play around with shutter speed and aperture to get the scene balance I want next time, but overall with everything on auto, I was able to capture some decent footage.
The planned roster today was passenger running and if there was time, freight running. Freight was left behind but the passenger trains ran with my Hi-Level El Capitan, plus I was able to get out one of my doodlebugs to shuttle around an old heavyweight baggage car. I didn’t really have the full opportunity this time around to make use of all the time, simply because I was fixing the trackwork. We also had a few visitors, one of which was very impressed with both layouts and we gave him a throttle and a locomotive to run and it seems he had a lot fun. Fingers crossed we’ll see him again.
The passenger express ran beautifully and I got it up to a decent speed flying past as the prototype used to do in its’ heyday. There were very few incidents with it, with the occasional derail and decouple; it definitely helped having everything lined up and most of the dodgy track fixed. The list isn’t fully complete yet, but with such a train able to fly past multiple times without any problems, it surely means things aren’t as bad as they seem for the layout. In time we’ll be back to proper reliability, and with Chris C’s new trollies, this might just be a reality in the not so distant future.
The trollies were built for staging, Ethanol and the Dan boards, leaving only the corners, Peach Meadows and the junctions as stragglers. There was a worry everything wouldn’t fit, but those worries were settled as Chris and I played a little Tetris with the trollies and the junction boards. It may mean we might have to rethink our approach for the next trollies, however one thing is for certain; they were so good the N Scalers wanted one too!
After getting an hour or two in, we all started breaking layouts down, and thanks to those trollies, we were out by 16:30 even with the reduced numbers! We slotted in the boards, put the legs on top and ferried them all back to storage with very little effort. We even got all the details glued down for Ethanol, and the measurements accounted for it. Here’s hoping with such a radical improvement, those that feel daunted in not coming because of the work involved, will hopefully soon realise with these trollies, it makes setup just that easier.
Following Dean’s suggestion, it sounds like our priority for next time is to get the NMRA convention setup tested and prepared again. Therefore, a bit of freight will hopefully get some representation. If that feeling carries over to the convention itself is an unknown at this point, but it will be good knowing the layout will get to stretch (some) of its’ legs again out on the circuit. It felt wonderful to do it at Ilford & West Essex, and hopefully we’ll see some more invites come our way at some point.
Even if we don’t get many other invites, change is hopefully on the horizon. With the wife and I getting to the next official stage of the house hunt after the disappointing flop in February, we’re that much closer to hopefully securing a home and more importantly, a space for hobbies. If things work out, it means I can finally and properly participate, and hopefully (or eventually) bring along my own modules. The dream of a passenger terminus still stands, and I do like the sound of a bridge section, operable with humans in mind, attached to the other side of the APT junction and curving onto the stage.
We shall see. Nothing is promised, and as far as we’re concerned, it isn’t happening until the contracts are signed and exchanged. It’s just nice, as always to dream.
Neal K
Santa Fe all the way
Thamesiders MRG 