Long time between drinks!

Well where has the last 12 months gone? Unfortunately due to the Covid lockdowns my visits to the Man Cave have been few and far between, however Dad has been slowly working away on a number of projects. The biggest project on the semi-completed list is the start of the township at Rosella. This includes a servo, bakery, church, pub and a few houses, as well as an overhead bridge on one side and a level crossing on the other. The level crossing is setup with prototypical train detection thanks to an Azatrax level crossing kit, which is working quite well and easy to install. On to the photos!

Tait's taking up the passenger stabling...just pretend there's overhead!

Overview of the horseshoe curve, with the cement sidings on the right, Rosella township in the middle and yard/station to the left still under construction.

Couple of rollingstock projects on the go/complete. The first was repainting 27 VHQF hoppers from a fictional yellow livery into their proper wagon red colour scheme. This will then mean we have 2 rakes of Apex hoppers, an early 80's set and a FA/PN 2010's set. The other project is the IRA MZ. This started life as a Lima/Roco DSB MZ, and had to be heavily modified to represent the MZ's as running today in NSW. The mech was also ripped out and replaced with a custom chassis with an Auscision motor and bogies. Definitely looks the part now!

Back to some more scenery now. There are a few corners on the layout where there is not much room for scenery, but enough room to be noticeable if it was empty. The solution for one of these gaps is just a simple embankment with a highway running along side. On the other side of this horseshoe curve will be a Bunnings warehouse, with the roof flat so you can store your drink or phone somewhere that's not going to damage the scenery. 

2 extra roads added to the Apex quarry, to store locos and guards vans. 

Fuel depot starting to take shape at Rosella.

Another corner with not much room. Embankment, trees, wire fence and some cows do the trick of filling in the scene!

Rollingstock additions this year have been fairly significant considering the delays from China. New loco arrivals include the Auscision NR's, B's, 600's and Tait's, as well as Trainorama's 930's. I have fitted sound to the majority of the fleet now, with only some earlier Auscision and Austrains models not fitted. Looking forward to a few VR steamers to finish this year off for new arrivals. 

Till next time!