Well, here we are and it's been over a month since the last post. Some will ask where has he been the slack $%^& and others will say "oh dear, he's back to whinge again" Whatever, I'm going to tell you about the value having somebody else's eyes look over the layout and what you're planning. Elscotto has been great in this but even 2 sets of eyes can miss stuff. Enter Bob G, Es D and Ian T. The 3 amigo's dropped over last Thursday for a bit of a squizz and while they were very encouraging with their feedback, there was also some questions about why I'd done some things a certain way and what were my plans for Picton and gaining access to the top deck. One of the things they brought up was the height of the top deck and also the depth of certain parts of the top deck. So, the top deck is built for us normal height people (Elscotto and I are both over 6ft) but for shorter people, it makes it difficult to see. Also, I've built everything as a still agile middle aged bloke but as I age, I'll lose that dexterity and I won't be able to reach the places I can now. This can be catastrophic for the longevity of the layout and seeing this one will probably be the only one I build, (it'll take me years to complete it) I better get it right to be able to use it in my old age. These are things I didn't consider. Also, we talked about the access to the top deck from the bottom deck and operations. I was planning on running permanent sets of passenger cars to replicate the Mails and Expresses while there'd be shunting for goods trains at Picton as well as permanent goods trains sets like stock trains and fruit expresses. This meant that I'd need storage tracks which I'd thought about but not in great detail
It's important to keep an open mind and not be precious about your modelling as how else do you learn if you can't take any criticism or new ideas? Anyway, Ian T said he'd whip up a track plan developing my ideas which he sent me on Friday. Having seen his ideas, I can tell you it's lucky I hadn't built more bench work as I'll be doing some major alterations by the looks of it. The plan Ian came up with is heaps better than my current one so I'm very pleased and grateful that Ian and the guys are helping me out. I'll post the new track plan once Ian and I finalise it.
In the meantime, I had a bit over a week in Cairns on holidays since the last post so no train time during the break but I have been doing some weathering on the goods wagons which I've posted in a dedicated page. I'll do the same for passenger cars, loco's and scenery when I get around to finishing some.
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