Post gala relaxation

The FR gala this past weekend was very busy and very cold and wet and on the whole unpleasant. I think I got some decent footage and the shop did very well but personally I had a tiring and shitty time... and I hurt my knee.

Any old how now its over I get a day off to recover and what better way to recover than to do a bit of relaxing modelling.

The first thing I did was to add wires to the pickups on the spare KATO bogie and solder them to the exposed contacts on the underside of the chassis. Giving the railcar a quick test showed that pick up was predictably better but the wiring, despite being very thin and flexible, had a tendency to stop the bogie swinging and to therefore derail it. I chucked some weight in it and all was fine so next I added some weight properly and now all seems great. Paint next.

The other vehicles getting attention were the new ABS TeeBee wagon which got a load of heavy weathering and looks the part. It runs very well and the texture on the sides and floor which I assume is the result of the printing, actually looks like the metal. I'll get some more of these I think.

I made a new wagon too, it's an explosives wagon in style of the ones which ran on the FR but a bit fatter. The body is the body which comes with the new Japanese chassis which arrived from Plaza the other day. I don't know what I'm going to do with the chassis yet but the body won't be any use so this was the obvious use for it. It has a trimmed PECO wagon chassis and styrene beading. Finished off with a Langley coach handle on the opening end. 

I also had a happy hour playing trains too.