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.
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.
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”:
