Last weekend I had a surprise visit from some old
friends, some of which I have known
since my first year of high school in 1984, our common interest has always been
the old Rotary powered Mazda’s. Back in the day these were plentiful and cheap,
and with some simple modifications went very very well indeed, now they are not
so plentiful, and commanding some very very big dollars. But what does this
have to do with model railways?
One of my mates brought along his son who is very
much into model railways, and while his main interest has been in steam era
British railways, he also has a keen interest in the New South Wales railways,
especially the electric passenger trains and the early diesel rail cars like
the 620-720 sets.
So after a couple of hours standing around ogling
our old Mazda’s and talking all things car related, everybody headed off except
my mate and his son, so it was time to adjourn to the train shed and start
talking all things model railways.
It was also a chance to turn on the layout lights
and fire up the DCC system, and give some trains a run through the mostly
completed Gunnedah yard track work.
I only had 4875 sitting on the operating track
work, but after running it back and forth a few times, it was soon joined by 42201,
6041, and my 624-724 set that I don’t think has been out of the box since
getting it in August 2008, apart from once when I first bought my NCE Power Cab
in 2009 and sat it on a single length of flex track to change it from the short
to the long address.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours
chatting about trains, and for me watching trains actually being run back and
forth through Gunnedah yard, which is probably about an eight meter run or
thereabouts with what track is down at the moment.
It's great to get trains running to test out the track work, to make sure that everything is running smoothly before any ballasting or scenery begins, so I was very thankful to have somebody keen and interested to do this for me.
A few videos were taken on the iPad of the light
engine movements, a couple I have uploaded.
As an aside, I definitely need to get to the Haskel back scene
behind Gunnedah, as it has started to lift, so will need some glueing back down
at some point.
