mick Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 I often wonder how you lot 'down under' dare go out through the door when there are so many insects and spiders about but I imagine they can be just as much a nuisance indoors as out? If I had the choice between cold and frosty or the threat of insects and spiders I'd be needing my coat, scarf and gloves for sure. The gazebo sounds like a good idea to provide shade. Is any part of your layout undercover? What do you do with your stock during running sessions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 Hi Mick, the spiders I mentioned can be controlled to a certain extent. King brown snakes are very bad tempered and will if provoked bite you with lethal consequences such as standing on them or as some silly people do jabbing them with a stick. We have plenty of nasty creatures down under but you just take sensible precautions. You don't leave your footwear in the laundry for long periods without before putting it on banging your boots or shoes on the floor to see if anything falls out. If you've got a spider in your boots you can see his web and you just give the opening where you put your foot in a quick blast of multi purpose fly spray. I now have a marquee to work under on hot days. Before I wore white overalls with the collar turned up and a large brimmed straw hat. That gave good protection from the sun but in 40 degree + temperatures it was still uncomfortable. At the present time I don't have unlike you a place to run my trains into for storage, but I intend to have a large room built and the outdoor railway will pass through it. Here's a photo of the marquee I use when it's hot. Roy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 Ive done a bit more construction to the layout. Today I completed the relaying of Springbridge loops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 mick said: I often wonder how you lot 'down under' dare go out through the door when there are so many insects and spiders about but I imagine they can be just as much a nuisance indoors as out? If I had the choice between cold and frosty or the threat of insects and spiders I'd be needing my coat, scarf and gloves for sure. The gazebo sounds like a good idea to provide shade. Is any part of your layout undercover? What do you do with your stock during running sessions? Unlike you Mick I have not kept the boxes that my coaches or wagons came in I have made boxes for them out of mounting card. I can fit 12 coaches in one box. My loco boxes have been kept but I keep my locos in purpose built boxes I made myself. May I upload photos of my locos and give a description of how I find them say on looks and performance. Also when I bought the marquee what it didn't say on the box was that it takes 3-4 people to erect it. Yet I managed to get it up no problems.(try not to read that the wrong way). Perhaps I'm becoming the master of the unfortunate phrase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 This is how the railway looks when "closed for business". Roy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanR Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Quote We have plenty of nasty creatures down under but you just take sensible precautions. We have plenty of those sort of creatures over here but most of them are in government! Great work so far Roy, really enjoying following the progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) G'day Ian, I'm glad your enjoying my progress. I had a look at the weather forecast tonight, rain for the next 7 days. So unfortunately progress won't start again until the rain stops. But every cloud has a silver lining. I've got some 16 ton mineral wagons to weather by hand and coal to put in them. I'm guessing that in the UK you go to a preserved railway and ask for a lump of coal for your wagon loads. Here I went to an old coal mine that stopped working in 1932, but there's still lumps of coal albeit small ones on the ground. I brought two lumps home and broke them up by hitting them with the flat top of the head of a sledge hammer in an empty 15 litre plastic bucket which once held urinal crystals. The now very small bits of coal are in an old jam jar. If I upload photos of my progress they'll probably be in the workbench section. Roy. Edited January 15, 2012 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mick Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 cleanerg6e said: ...May I upload photos of my locos and give a description of how I find them say on looks and performance. Yes of course you can! To make things easier and so that your own layout thread doesn't become clogged, I've added another forum category in this members layout section specifically for any locomotives or other items of rolling stock that you wish to tell us about. Hope this is okay? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 (edited) The LGB track rubber leaves very little rubber waste on the track unlike Fleishmann track rubber which almost seems to disintegrate leaving large amounts of debris to clean up. Also with my big clumpy fingers the LGB is easier to get my hands around. Edited April 26, 2011 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 In an effort to show you all what I'm trying to achieve with the canted rails here's a photo of Hornby's Mallard on Teak coaches and also a box I constructed out of mounting card to put coaches in. They take up far less space than having individual coaches or wagons in their original boxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mick Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Mallard's looking good leaning into that curve Roy. Don't think I've seen that one before - is it sound-fitted too? The earlier photos are beginning to show the scale of your project - it's gonna take you some time ballasting all that lot! The stock boxes are a nice idea. With me it's not the space that the boxes take up but the amount of time it takes to get them out and put them away again. I have built a couple of wooden trays which hold loose sets of wagons and it's a doddle using them. My MGR collection is now in excess of 70 wagons so you can imagine how long it would take to get them out - not to mention putting them away again into those fiddly boxes. Stackable boxes (at reasonable cost) that hold stock securely and safely are what I need but all the ones I have seen so far have been over expensive by a good bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Anyone else think that they should Roy over to help out in their garden? It looks like he has made more progress in the last week that I have in the last year. I'm very impressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 20, 2011 Author Share Posted January 20, 2011 G'day Mick, Yes Mallard is one of my now many locos that's fitted with sound by Howes. As for ballasting I'm not sure as I have a long length of run it would take more than a "month of Sundays" to do it all and it may make the sound of the locos traveling along the track so loud as to drown out the decoder sounds. I took that photo of Mallard in between showers yesterday and all the coaches only took two minutes to take out, rail, unrail, and put back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mick Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Where have Howes located the speaker in 'Mallard'? The model of Tornado I have is the only steam loco among my few that has the speaker in the loco itself and it does make a difference, especially at close quarters. From a distance it's not easy to determine either way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted January 20, 2011 Author Share Posted January 20, 2011 G'day Mick, the speaker for Mallard is located in the tender. The only tender loco I have with the speaker in the loco is Bullied unrebuilt Battle of Britain 92 Squadron. Roy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 In case anyone in the UK may think I'm over dramatising the heat factor here's a photo taken today at 1.00pm and the heat of the day will reach it's maximum at 4.00pm Roy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mick Posted February 1, 2011 Share Posted February 1, 2011 Blimey Roy, that's a warm 'un. Think I'd sooner have the cooler days and frosty nights. Just as a matter of interest, if you lived in the UK you might need to consider getting a more suitable thermometer because it almost wouldn't record the kind of temperatures we were experiencing during the snow covered evenings just over a couple of months or so ago. You'd certainly only occasionally be using the right hand side of the one you've got there if you were in this country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted February 1, 2011 Author Share Posted February 1, 2011 I Checked the railway at about 5pm and no buckling of the track had occurred because although out in that awful heat it was not in direct sunlight. The rails were warm but the white painted hinged top covers had repelled most of the heat. This awful hot weather is set to go on until at least Sunday. In 2005 my niece had her boyfriend come over from Scotland and on New Years Day 2006 it got to 47 degrees in Sydney. I had lent them a portable air conditioner for their one bedroom flat and my niece told me that Stewart had spent the whole day in his 'birthday suit' motionless in front of that air conditioner which was on it's coldest setting, and apparently any thoughts of hers towards sex were STRONGLY REBUFFED!!!!!., so Stewart told me later. His blood has now thinned to cope with our hotter summers. The reason he suffered so much being that his blood was thick in order to cope with the colder Scottish climate. Our blood is thin to cope with our hotter climate, so over there I would find your winters very hard to take and would probably spend most of my time in front of a radiator tightly wrapped up in a doona. Many people in the UK asked me on my two trips there if I had the traditional hot Christmas dinner in Australia. They were very surprised when I said "NO WAY it's just too hot. Many English people who emigrate to Australia have the traditional hot English Christmas dinner the first time and then sit around with sweat pouring out of them and next time have a BBQ with salad or cold cuts of ham, chicken or turkey washed down with ice cold beer. Roy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cleanerg6e Posted February 4, 2011 Author Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) Hi Mick I don't think I'd be able to live in the UK. For one thing I can't stand the EU and have been surprised that the English people haven't told them to 'sod' off. The other reason is that I'd be unable to by a Ford Falcon (my favourite car by a country mile). I know a bloke in the UK who had a holiday in Australia in 2005 and he's a Ford fan and would dearly love a Falcon XR6 or F6, but can't have one because Ford Australia doesn't export them. I also would and have found your beer very hard to drink (it's warm) and on my last trip in 2007 I had a sample of a local brew and it played havoc with my digestive system, as no doubt our ice cold beer would play havoc with yours. Even cans of Coca Cola come off the shelf instead of out of the fridge. I also mentioned in a previous post about leaving your foot wear in the laundry for extended periods. Only later did I remember in the UK you don't have laundries as we know them over here as your washing machines are usually in the kitchen. I have never seen one house or a even one bedroom flat with a washing machine in the kitchen. We all have a separate laundry and although incorporated as part of the house ( not an outbuilding like a garden shed) it's usually has two doors one which allows entry to the house and the other is the back door to the back garden. Roy. Edited January 27, 2012 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 Our washing machine is in the conservatory, and at this time of year it's far more like a laundry than a summer room. I'm currently thinking of ways of being able to control my railway from the conservatory, it's far more pleasant than the shed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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