Update

Been a bit of a while between posts so I figured it was time for an update.

Milktainers

First up, here's the last thing I've done recently that falls into the 'modelling' category. My granddad's hands are getting a little shaky for modelling these days, so I finished the milktainers last year in time to hand over to him to put on an OSF and start running before Christmas. As I've mentioned in other posts, the Road and Rail Resin milktainers are great little kits to put together. However, there are some elements that take more time and patience than others. I've got another two to go for myself, so I used the opportunity while my soldering gear had dominion over the kitchen table to build all of the ladder frames. Hopefully this will make building those two a little quicker when I get around to them.

New arrivals

The next few arrivals reflects what my modelling had consisted of for the last few months: plonking. In around February I received a pack of BDYs. I'm a bit light-on for open wagons in my freight wagon roster, so it was nice to receive these to provide some colour and shape variance to the traffic in the yard. Once I've collected some white EZ line, I'll add tarpaulins to this one and weather the other as an empty wagon.

Next I received two MBY motorail wagons in the livery used when run behind the Southern Aurora. Most of the wagon is die-cast, so it's already sufficiently weighted and doesn't need eight road rager model vehicles to achieve smooth running. I'm waiting on Auscision's cars to add to finish the wagon off. Getting the wagon out of the packing cradle (and back again) without breaking anything should be a category of scale modelling in itself. Needless to say, they're both staying in there until I can get them out to weather and put on the track for good.

Other news

I got married earlier this month, so most of my time since Christmas has been occupied with trips interstate to buy stuff, meet suppliers, and just generally plan and prepare everything. With the big day now passed, I'm looking forward to using the extra time for some more modelling.

I've applied to exhibit Rozelle Street again later this year and I'm waiting to hear back whether that will go ahead. As with the Hobsons Bay exhibition, I'm using it as a bit of a deadline to complete a number of detailing jobs. Looking at the list so far they all seem like 15-minute jobs, and having seen the success of Billabong Marina using a similar concept, it could be quite a useful strategy to get back into it again. We'll see.

For now though, back to shunting.