All the electronics will be in the body with just a 2 pin plug to the motor.
First off I glued some Al angle across the block ends to support the body.
The body baseplate came next - 2 thicknesses of 1.5mm styrene. The only place I can fit a speaker in is in the floor of the cab.
Then the sides and a boiler and it's almost looking like a loco.

But I think it looks better at Melaleuca as shown below. It fits where the goods shed used to be.


Another reason for putting it at Melaleuca is that I have power and an amplifier there (for the cow sounds) that I can use for the sawmill sounds. The saw blade does turn and the drive belt operates, if I get round to wiring it all up.
So the goods shed may go to Oleander.

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Project number 3 completed was the new railmotor dock siding at Melaleuca. I finished off the platform face and platform surface and ballasted the siding. The new siding means that's the Men's toilet has had to move off the platform.

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Project 4 completed was the four, 4-wheel wagons. Here they are with some loads.

The floors are paddle pop sticks, finished with black boot polish. Note that my wagon numbers now include a weight - see yellow circle. (Soon I'll be 'rating' all my locos to pull certain tonnages and each wagon will have a mass shown. More on this later.......)

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Also completed an infra red controller for Keith's points. He has double tracked part of his layout, but where it goes back to single track, he wanted a method of having the points normally set for the correct approach direction from the single track, but when a train arrives on the double track, the points automatically change. Very similar to my reverse loop points controller.

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A rainy day so I started building a gravel/coal loader to go over the track at Maple Jn. The feeder at the top MAY be a small cable hauled hopper on HO track. It's about 200mm long, 180 wide and 500mm high. Here's what it will look like:

I cut the hopper from corrugated plastic sign material, folded it and held with masking tape. Then I'll cover it with paddle pop sticks glued on with Fuller's Ultra Clear. The main framing will be timber strips.

Here’s the process for making bricks!......
Open PhotoEd
File|New
Select width 28cm, height 18cm for filling an A4 page.
Select Color and choose a colour for your bricks. OK OK
Select Effects|Texturiser and choose bricks from dropdown menu
Select Scaling of about 110% and Relief about 15-20%
Light Source top right and Apply.
There you have it. You can play with brightness and contrast under Image|Balance
To print it you need to rotate it - select Image|Rotate right File|print| and you’re away.

I splurged on some vinyl lettering from G Scale Graphics for a couple of locos. It's a bit expensive ($80 for 3 locos), but is easy to apply and looks good. (must get some more of that medication to stop these spending urges!)
And another Aristo motor block - that makes 3 sitting in the cupboard waiting for me to get to work.

We also carried 100' of plastic rail, in 5' lengths, in our suitcases. (We were staying only 1/2 hr drive from Train-Li-USA in Massachussets, so I couldn't miss the opportunity.)
Even though it had only been bent in the case for 30 hrs or so, it came out in a parabola shape. Needed a bit of rebending to straighten it out. But it's OK now. No firm plans on what to use it for yet, but some bridges will definately get check rails from it.

The back platform is just 400mm long.

The automatic reverse loop turnout controller at Lilyvale had failed (again - this time due to my overloading the LED current). So I decided to put the electronics in a small airtight, plastic food container. and then had to rebuild the 'shed' that covers to whole thing. Hopefully that will keep the moisture and ants out.

Back

Front

Took delivery of a Hartland Mack loco yesterday. Bryan got one too (his is green)

Geof's Queensland train runs through Sandstone, while SaTR's #14 labours uphill far above.

Lilyvale town is starting to develop nicely. A station, wide main street with a church, pub, emporium, butchers shop, hall and 2 houses so far.

I had an old 2' radius turnout, so I put in a siding using old aluminium bar rail. Maybe there will be a mine or something there later.

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All the new trackwork around Lilyvale and Maple Jn is finally finished

The parking area is a 'stepping' place for me to step across the tracks to the garden.

Here's the new tunnel under Melaleuca complete too.

I'll have to build a goods shed and maybe a service station.
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I've motorised the turnout over behind Melaleuca using a servo motor.

So I built some side girders from sheet styrene and some 12mm plastic angle from the hardware store. It's 1m long and 100mm deep and just hangs on the tomato stakes which still provide all the strength. Total cost about $10 including the can of spray paint.

It was a bit of a squeeze. Has 4 cells in each end. One end has all the RC stuff and the other, the sound board.
I added a changeover switch so it can still run from track power, as my test loco.

This is the track layout now.

To reverse, I used my now standard micro servo with a SPST switch superglued to the side. The switch just operates the existing reversing relay.
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As part of the work, I also converted the Transmitter, so it has TWO throttles. This is a simple operation. Now I can independently control the track power with the left stick and a battery loco with the right stick!
For full details see my webpage here

The left ones are just what I needed to make a palm tree (Pauline had made me the trunk from clay years ago). I really need a 2nd packet, but naturally they only had one in stock. The others will become shrubs on platforms.