We recently went to Rashmi’s wedding.  Rashmi is Andrew’s oldest friend apart from Nick.  She joined Andrew at St Paul’s Grammar school at about age 16/15 respectively and they have gone through the IB exams together, medical entrance exams, medical school and being interns and residents together.  Their academic rivalry was probably why both achieved 45s in the IB (the top mark) and both were well into the top percentile of the application to UNSW Medicine.

An old joke has been that whoever married Rashmi got Andrew as part of the contract …

This was (another) spectacular Indian Wedding, and most of the guests wore suitable clothing.  Here is a picture of Andrew and his friends at the wedding.  What a truly. multicultural event!  Backgrounds are Indian, Chinese, European, Phillipines, but all are Australian.

I’ve started to build another railway engine.  This time in Gauge 3 (the same size as my Dyak live steam locomotive) and so twice the size of my previous builds in Scale Seven.  This will be very different – battery powered and radio-controlled.  Gauge three is the scale of the wagons which I have built (see the Baddesley wagons blog and other previous entries) and this is for a long-awaited garden railway in Glenbrook.

I’m having to learn new skills, including silver soldering.  The frames are steel and the silver solder is much stronger than “soft solder”.  THe operator usually has to use a (small) blowtorch as the source of heat

So Far, So Good.  There’s a 20c coin (about the size on an old penny) to give an idea of size – this 0-6-0 tank engine will be over 40cm long.  The scorch marks on the wood are because the advice is to use a “jig” of wood constructed to be at exact right angles to clamp the frames and footplate to before blow-torching them up to temperature.

I’ve also been exploring the eastern end of the old Glenbrook Tunnel again as the local council prepare it for use as a cycleway!  They have done a lot of clearing up, as you can see here.

Finally, this is a view of a pair of kookaburras in Euroka Clearing when we walked down there recently.

The are wonderful birds.