SRman

What about Bachmann's N class 2-6-0? That had a loco to tender coupling that opened out on curves and closed up on straights. I think that counts as kinematic. That model dates from the late '90s, from memory.

I agree. The EFE model had a better shape, especially over the cab roof. Dare I mention that Bachmann now have the ownership of that model.

To be fair, they have the jump on Rapido on that score, because they already have the OOC Bedford OB in their ranges.

More likely a class 104 vehicle. There is a photo of such a combination in the book "British Railways DMUs in Colour for the modeller".

I used some relatively cheap SoundTraxx Econami decoders with UK diesel sounds for both 10000 and 10001 (I also used one in my Heljan D0260 'Lion'). These decoders have a choice of engine sounds and horns, selectable by changing certain CV values. After experimenting a bit, I settled on the class 37 engine sounds, as the idle is rougher and the throttle-up is less controlled than the class 31 sounds also in there. These are both EE Co 12 cylinder sounds, but the Brush type 2 had a much more refined control system, whereas my observational experience with early EE locomotives is that the control was very coarse, with the engines revving up rapidly (even violently - thrashing in the truest sense of the word) then dying back while trying to start off, then repeating the process until they could take up full power. That was with some early Queensland railways locomotives from the early to mid 1950s with the 12 cyl. engines, so appropriate for the period we want. The class 37 sounds just seemed a little more appropriate to my mind. I can't remember which horns I chose, off-hand.

Ditto here. D5017 started off as D5016 - 5016 spent only a few months on the Southern Region, whereas 5017 spent around three years, hence my choice to renumber. SLW later released another model as D5017 anyway!

I can't speak for the railway kits, but the bus kit range went to ABS Streetscene and are now with the Model Bus Federation (MBF). However, many of the bus kits just disappeared, so some of the rarer ones command silly prices on online auction sites.

Interesting. You may have met my wife and her family at some point. Her parents' house was where the Toyota dealership was built. We have had a few good meals at the Colmslie in the past.

True. Horses first, cows second and dogs third. I believe camels are a menace in the Northern Territory but I don't have any statistics to hand for those.

Yes. When we lived in Bulimba (Brisbane), there was an orb spider that would build its web across between the house and the fence every single morning. To get to our cars, we would have to walk down that side of the house: my wife would walk straight under the web, but I always got the lot wrapped around my face. Being half asleep didn't help my memory!

You forgot to mention the jellyfish, irukanji and other related marine stingers, the bluebottle (Portuguese man o' war, which is not a jellyfish), and blue-ringed octopuses. Oh, and don't forget the drop bears (). Also, even the so-called harmless animals such as kangaroos and wallabies can wreak a lot of damage if they jump in front of your car. Kangaroos, emus and cassowaries can kill with their claws. The huntsman spider looks fearsome, but it is quite harmless.

Changing subject: As I got out of bed this morning, I felt a tickling on the back of my leg. I lightly brushed off whatever it was, to see, and hear, a small huntsman land with a plop on the carpet, right in front of Hattie. She pursued it and lost it behind our bedroom door. I had my shower and came back, to see her still trying to find the spider around the door, while the spider itself had popped up at ceiling level. Hattie hopped up on the TV unit for a few nose kisses with me, unaware that her prey was right above her!

There were quite a few low bridges along that line in days past. Remember the low timber bridge along Wynnum Road in Morningside? Or the similar bridges over Deshon Street, The 'Gabba, and Ipswich Road, Buranda? Those were all replaced with higher bridges but the one in Ipswich Road still claimed a few victims because the warning signs were wrong - the road had been resurfaced several times after the signs went up! There was another very low timber bridge on the Beenleigh Line (now the Gold Coast Line), over Compton Road in Woodridge. Anything taller than a normal family car had to use a dirt side track and ford a creek to pass under the bridge with more clearance.

We have to wait until after dark to see the Christmas lights ... it isn't getting dark until around 9:00pm here, at present.

I read somewhere that they went through around 30 of them.

That works well for most such cases, especially where you don't need to read the actual values in the unpowered vehicle's decoder. However, recently I had to do a bit more in a dummy driving car, to allow me to set individual marker lights separately in both the dummy car and the powered car, using separate functions for each. To do that, I had to put the trailing car's decoder into the powered car to be able to read it properly, without getting the other decoder's values in error, and changing them to the wrong settings. I have used the shared programming track process with DMUs in the past, remembering to set CV29 to an odd number to reverse the trailer (actually reversing the setup for both coaches initially), then later on reprogramming the powered car back to what it should be. The car at this end in the photo is the dummy. The three individual markers above the cab were route indicators for the signal men, and can now be lit in any combination, in the forward direction only. The two outer markers also contain the red tail lights.

Your own neck of the woods is not too bad. You have the ever-present Mt. Hood in the background, and some lovely Autumn colours at that time of year. Here are a couple of photos from not too far away, in Vancouver WA, and one from OMSI, Portland itself in Autumn 2018.

I just plug the decoder into a powered locomotive temporarily, put that on the programming track, set everything I want to, then put the decoder back into the intended model. There are certain locomotives that have bodies that just clip off easily, so those are the ones to use for reprogramming the difficult cases. For 8-pin decoders, any one of my Lima/Hornby class 73s work nicely, for 21-pin decoders it is a little bit more messing around, but I pick something that needs only one screw removed to get at the socket. or a Hornby sound-fitted class 60 (an earlier one with ESU decoder).

This is a bit of a bummer: the UHU Stic must be using a different formula, because all the new labels just curled up as the glue dried and dropped off. All the old labels stuck on with earlier examples of the UHU Stic glue are still firmly attached to the boxes. So firmly attached that they would have to be scraped off to remove them.

And now for something completely different: a short video of the Santa Special train running around Newton Broadway today.

A task I have been putting off for ages was to print some new labels for the storage boxes. Some of the older ones already had labels I did many years ago, but I am finally catching up. I also rearranged a few so that their contents were a bit more consistent. There are still a few to do, mostly now for the road vehicle side of things. Most of these boxes have fixed compartments inside, a few have removable dividers, which can be useful, but can allow smaller parts to slip beneath them. Every one of them has come from bargain shops, occasionally with contents such as rubber bands inside, but mostly empty.

Hi Marc, I have glued the body shells together and filled the joints where needed, and primed them, but that's about it for the present. I still have several other projects to complete before commencing serious work on the 508.

That's interesting. Glad you have figured out the cause. I have been re-chassising (is that a real word?) all of my Lima 73s with Hornby chassis and motors, and haven't struck that problem. Although I don't have any concrete sleepered track, I do have some code 75 wooden sleepered track and some of the Peco bullhead track, and have not encountered the problem with any of the Hornby chassis - there are currently 11 of them. Among the spares available, there are wheelsets from Hornby that don't have the traction tyres. If you could get hold of them, you would most likely need to add more weight, but it would probably be a better long-term solution than having double traction tyres. Another possibility would be to file down the offending flanges. they do not have to be perfectly concentric because the loco is not running on the flanges (except, apparently on concrete track!! ).

My second Rapido Fleetline arrived, and I decided to experiment a little further with the power supply voltages. I thought that the lights are very bright at 9V DC, using a wall wart supply that can be switched from 3V to 12V. I stepped the voltage down, trying 7.5V, 6V, 5V and 3V, and the lights worked on all of those settings, but only got noticeably dimmer at 3V and 5V. The photo shows the two wired together in parallel at the 5V setting. Unfortunately, the camera compensates for the dimmer lighting, so you cannot see the full effect, but it still shows it to some degree. The buses are just posed on a convenient shelf which the power lead could reach. I have "anonymised" the first model, with a view to further painting to represent a second-hand bus a little tired and past its prime. 3V made the interior lights look good, but it left the headlights a little dim, but with 5V, the interior lights look a little too bright, but the headlights are good. Having said that, the 5V setting seems the best compromise, to me.

OK, you are completely ... RIGHT! My friend did have a Silver Fox 18000 as well for comparison, but yes, 18000 in the photos is the Rails/Heljan model, 18100 is a Silver Fox model (but he has pre-ordered the Rails model to come), and GT3 is the KR Models version. The power was turned off for the photo because only 18000 was DCC-fitted (with sound). We ran 18000 but had to reduce the volume a bit as the piercing scream of the turbines really hurt. It had a little difficulty with curves in one direction, but when turned 180 degrees coped much better, so obviously something is catching slightly somewhere. My curves are of slightly greater radius than 3rd and 4th radius set track. As my friend is a watchmaker by trade, he shouldn't have too much difficulty tracing the sticking bit and freeing it up.