John has painted some figures for the model railway in Australia. I brought them back from Europe and have added eyes and mouths to the painting.
They look really good, I think, so here they are. There must have been a union meeting to get them all together.
I have spend this weekend doing gardening and playing with the computers. I’d like to think of it as working with the computers, but it isn’t really: I have been working out how to put video files on the website.
Actually putting the files on the website isn’t at all difficult. The one I put on “Australian Family pictures from the 2000s” (of Nick debating in Youth Parliament) was easy, partly because someone had already put it on YouTube.
I have been doing movie “clips” of my Scale Seven model locomotive, and it’s difficult to get the format, resolution, frames-per-second settings right to load onto the ‘net. The first two are relatively small files:
The picture quality is poor, I think. Beware, though, the two below (my first attempts) are very large files and “froze” my Windows PC when I tried to open them. Given time, patience, and a Mac, and they open nicely though, with much better detail in the pictures. The problem relates to file size, I think. LATER: sadly I have also discovered that as they are mp4 files (chosen because they are the most compact format), Microsoft doesn’t like them. Using the VLC player or the Real Player may help, also. *&%$#@ Microsoft ….
The second one is a little smaller ….
..
I have constructed a test/running-in track, with automatic switching at each end to send the locomotive back in the other direction. Here the track is seen in our kitchen. It has reverse curves built onto a 2.4m long piece of MDF, to test running around curves, etc.
This has meant that I have been able to finish “running in” my Garratt. I’ve now lubricated all the axles and gears, etc, and it now runs very well: very pleasing. It will even run “dead slow” without hesitating or stopping! It’s there in the picture, half-way up the track. Also visible in the L&Y 0-4-0 tank engine.
I have also been repainting some wagons made many years ago by my brother John. Made for Nick, I think. Anyway, I have been renovating them (changing from Finescale to Scale Seven gauge, apart from anything else). Also repainting them Midland Railway grey and adding transfers.
They have also been made more realistic by “weathering”:
I think they look quite realistic now.
Just a short entry this week.
This is a project that has been going for several years, with breaks in-between as I did other things on my model railway. However here is the end result – my Scale Seven model of a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway 6-wheel flat truck (Diagram 31). As you see, it’s carrying steel girders in my model. I like the appearance of the chains holding them down!
I’m pleased with the looks of the end result, although i still need to do some work to get it to run smoothly over my trackwork – the true-to-scale wheels have very small flanges and the trackwork is a little rough, so it’s difficult to get long-wheelbase wagons to run well enough. This wagon is a case in point!
Friday, Dec 28, 2012
Christmas and New Year.
It has been over three months since I entered a ‘blog. This is partly because the service provider we have been using has developed a fault with my being unable to put pictures into my entries and some other problems. So I am going to change service providers, once I have worked out just how to transfer the content. In the meantime I have been reluctant even to use the parts which DO work. A little silly, really.
So what have we been up to?
Well, Andrew and Nick have finished another year at school. Nick came top of his year.
The Victor Chang Award (best year 11 science student at the school)
Nick won the Victor Chang award for his school – the best science student in the penultimate year of each school in Sydney is awarded this prize, which includes a A$20,000 grant if they go on to study at the University of Western Sydney, and $500 cash!
I have been struggling with Admin., as ever. I warned a yearago about a potential breakdown in our whole testing/imaging system. We set about replacing it as a matter of urgency, and a year later it still needs to be done. I guess that I am grateful really that we haven’t had a total breakdown, but I genuinely believed what I told the administrators, and don’t like appearing a fool now that no Armageddon has actually occurred ….
My model railway has come on a treat.
I finished my model Garratt (as those who have followed this ‘blog will know). I’ve also built a coal “washery” or “screens” under which coal trucks are loaded via conveyor belts.
I realise that the model colliery is nearly complete (at least as I originally intended). Given that no model railway can ever really be completed, I guess that soon I will have to rip it all up and apart, and start on something new ….
I have been playing cricket again this year. For 7th Grade (up from 9th, purely by chance), and achieved a score of thriteen in my first match. Not much, but good under the circumstances (I went in when the side were 4/19, and was out at 76, so over a 50 run partnership (with a 16-year-old, who did most of the work for us, of course).
In the second match, however, I was fielding close in (too close, silly mid-on) and when the ball was hit at me, I neither caught it, not avoided it well enough. The result was a broken thumb, which meant that I lost about a third of our cricket season’s matches. I returned to play in the just-before-Christmas social match within Glenbrook-Blaxland Cricket Club. Poor Nick: I bowled 2 overs in the match, and nick was the first batsman. He clearly didn’t feel he should hit his father’s first ball out of sight, and changed his shot. This was a fatal error, as he then edged it and was caught behind! I ended with figures of 2 overs, 3 wickets, 9 runs! I don’t think that that is going to happen again in a hurry!
We are off to Japan again in a week’s time. Off to Niseko this year. The skiing should be really good, and this time we are going Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong partly to avoid flying QANTAS, and partly to avoid having to change airports in Tokyo (there are no direct Sydney-to-Hokkaido flights). So on the way home we can spend a few days in Hong Kong, also.
Monday, Mar 26, 2012
High Res. – click to enlarge
Garratt at work
My Garratt is working.
You can tell from its rusty and dirty appearance.
High Res. – click to enlarge
It has even got its own driver now.
Sunday, Mar 18, 2012
The Garratt, again
My 0-4-0+0+4-0 Garratt is nearly finished: look!
Factory finish – it looks beautiful, if not realistic!
It doesn’t have the cab roof in place, or a crew inside, but other than that it’s looking good ….
The “bow” pen arrived this week, (specially imported from Haff pens in Germany!) so I could at last do the lining – red and white lines, which “bring out” the shapes of the bunker and water tank, and certainly improves the overall appearance. Two pictures at High Resolution (Click on the picture to enlarge it):
However I will now be going to “weather” the locomotive. I haven’t yet seen a picture of the actual loco. that didn’t show it seriously dirty and covered in coal dust, etc. I’m going for realism (and it covers some of the mistakes that I have made!).All to be published in the Scale Seven magazine ….
Saturday, Mar 03, 2012
Cricket, etc
It has been amazingly wet here recently.
I’m sitting at home whilst I should be watching our Ninth Grade side in their Grand Final: the ground was almost flooded. We have had so much rain that the Nepean river is flooded. Nick and Andrew’s school was closed on Friday and will probably be closed on Monday. The school itself doesn’t get flooded, but access roads have standing water, and teachers or pupils living on the far side of the Nepean/Hawkesbury River simply cannot get to school.
Nick was due to be in two Grand Finals today, and neither will take place. It’s unlikely that even tomorrow conditions will be good enough to play.
The semi-finals were both great to watch. From a parents point of view the Under 16 Div1 final was perfect. Facing 138 to win, on a sodden field where runs were very hard to get, the opening pair made about 85 off 45 overs (out of 60). Then two wickets fell in quick succession, and the task was just looking as though it might prove to be quite tricky.
Nick goes in at Number 4, and announces his arrival by hitting their best bowler for three (no stroke had earned more than two runs in the first 45 overs!), and immediately increased the run-rate to about 5 per over. He hit the winning runs with plenty of overs to spare. Just the innings that his side needed, and wonderful to watch as he systematically demolished the opposition attack. The ninth Grade Semi-Final was exciting and very different. Played on a sodden pitch with long grass, scores were low. GBCC Ninth Grade were all out for 127 off 77 overs. At the end of the first day they had the opposition at 4/15 off ten overs. By a few overs into the second day, two more wickets had fallen, but after that no more for too long ….
At 6/115 we looked lost.
However Big Willie (centre of the front row in the picture) never gave up, rallied the troops, and they were all out for 122.
This was not a match for the Coulsheds to “write home” about (” ‘blog proudly”?). David was on the sidelines, and Nick scored a duck and bowled only one over because of his very sore shoulder. However it was a great match to watch.
We might reach the dizzy heights of Eighth Grade next year – or will we form another Ninth Grade side with some new hopeless recruits?