Light Engine Movements at Gunnedah

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.