QR @ Pinkenba

A Flexible Approach It's late May 2025 and my days of playing AFL are catching up to me with my back playing up every so often usually from cold weather. This time I have a funny feeling I may have lifted a baseboard while in an awkward position and forgot to tell myself before lifting I wasn't 21 anymore so was a little limited on movement and decided to spend some time focusing on the layout planning. Learning from my planning in  Track Modelling  and mucking around with SCARM and testing possible opportunities I finally decided to select the area down Radio Street near the Pinkenba Wharf.  The target area in SCARM with the  baseboard layer hidden This would provide the opportunity to allow for the following: Move my locos out of a cupboard and onto a layout Start using all these points, joiners and flexi track I had purchased Obtain new skills in wiring and electronics Scratch build structures to add character to the layout Explore other ideas in machinery, vehicl...

And let the building begin! Now that I had obtained everything in  The shopping list  I was ready to begin. One of Mrs Shunter's friends who was into picture framing was kind enough to drop over and loan some framing jigs, so I gave Mrs Shunter notice I was going to turn her lovely patio into a Man Cave and make a mess that weekend as there was wood to be cut. Below is my process of some bushy style carpentry works I had a crack at to get my model rail layout up and running. Preparing the Frames Sorting out lengths for  optimal straight lines and cuts Loose fitting  and surprising myself with straight cuts with a circular saw. All snug in framing jigs and ready for final screwing Baseboard   Loose fitting Baseboard to confirm everything square before screwing with 10G x 75mm countersunk screws Baseboard screwed to frame with 8G x 40mm countersunk screws Baseboard screwed t...

Baseboard  Plywood  ✔ After confirming  A modular approach it is!  I decided I would source a good quality baseboard and go for a hardwood, found a local supplier close to home so I popped into the shop. The gentlemen who came to the counter was the owner and took me outside to the warehouse and showed me all the sheets he had available.  He asked what I needed the sheet for and he said most model railway people go for the 9mm or 12mm and suggested the 9mm was good if I wanted to keep cost down, but I felt the 9mm was a bit more flexible and when asking for a quote, there wasn't much difference in price. The shop had a cutting service so I gave my measurements and placed my order for 12mm and was told the order would be ready the following week as the sheets outside were already committed to existing jobs.  Tools   ✔ I did surprise myself as I had enough tools available to build. I used this site as a guide on what I may have needed  Building a ba...

How big can I go! As a kid we were very lucky as we had an old pool table and a big chipboard layout my Dad would lift out and set up at various times in our childhood, mainly after the footy season. This was in the shape of a big oval and was Direct Current and my brother and I would put our locos at separate ends and run them around for hours, eventually my loco would get caught by his, as it was new and tighter running gear. Thinking back to the old days and working through the ideas and plans with Pinkenba in my post  Picking the right site location  and  Track Modelling  I knew a large layout was not going to be able to be achieved.  I started to google around to understand how people who had limited space were able to enjoy the hobby of model rail. Initially I stumbled across a few posts with different views on the model rail forums. When looking at video content, I stumbled across this series of videos -  Building A Modular Model Railway - YouTube ...

Kicking the Tyres In order to learn SCARM, I thought I do my own adaption on Pinkenba and the software works as expected.  Pinkenba Version 1 The two things I found tripped me  up was the Points selector, always seemed to choose the wrong turn out type and the Flex Track positioning, I think it was mainly because I was using the trackpad on the laptop instead of mouse, later on this became a little more intuitive, practice makes perfect. The free version of SCARM does not provide a map layer capability, however does allow you to use an image as a base layer which I thought was very generous. Using a simple screen shot was not going to be effective as the quality of the image would be lost as I stretched the image to scale.  T here is a little hack in web browsers where you can take higher quality screenshots to get a better base quality image which I managed to obtain a 4K resolution of Pinkenba. Interestingly once I inserted the image and set it to the size of precinct i...

Setting up  the Linux Box Over the years, my house has become the computer graveyard and I generally try and stop things going to landfill where I can and reuse parts. Therefore, I have several laptops laying around that function but don't have current supported Windows operating systems but will run Linux and be faster to boot than my current work laptop when you choose the right Linux install for your device. I had an old MSI Laptop that was given to me as the LAN/Ethernet port was faulty, and the screen was flickering on Windows and I cho se it for my challenge. For the last 15 years I have used  Debian -- The Universal Operating System . Why? it just works. While the release cycle of new packages maybe slow it is stable and security patches are regularly provided with a committed support period. More Debian history can be found here  Debian - Wikipedia .  Debian supports a range of Desktop Environments within the installer and personally I find the LXQT and KDE t...

Modelling isn't a game for Summer At this point I had left the original intent of scratch building and declared myself a model rail hobbyist and wrapped up my  Getting Started  section. The amount of rain and humidity over the summer 2024 and 2025 period was crazy for Brisbane, but  Cyclone Alfred  made everything clear. I like the humidity, but there were days even I was tapping the air-conditioning button first in the house. The period was a mix of rain and humidity on repeat, waiting for a southerly change to come in and take off the edge never seemed to happen. Interestingly looking back at the data from the  Bureau of Meteorology  the rainfall was almost like someone had moved Brisbane towards the equator, so  I turned my focused to Layout Planning. How big is Pinkenba Pinkenba consisted of two aspects a single passenger line station and the main freight facilities, using the magic of google maps, the whole precinct estimation is  Total area:...

RMCQ Show 2024 I wasn't aware of the RCMQ annual event and by chance received a random email from the local club as I had visited a couple times and put my name down on the email list. Still being new to the hobby and the community, it was nice to get an inclusive and engaging email. The event was hosted at the below location: Sat-Sun 7-8 December 2024 – 9:00am – 4:00pm South Pine Sports Complex Cribb Rd, Brendale Qld 4500 It was extremely hot weekend this date, I visited in the later part of the day, but it was still very hot at the venue. The organisers did their best to keep the air flow going at the venue. I will admit I only stayed for about an hour, hopping from fan-to-fan location and did not take any pictures at the time, Westgate did a magnificent job capturing the event and I encourage you to check out the blog  Westgate - South Western Rail: 2024 Pine Rivers Model Train & Hobby Exhibition.   An Early Christmas Present My local model rail hobby shop was at RCMQ S...

Rain Rain Go Away! Annoyed by the rain, I decided to head down to my local model rail hobby shop to have a yarn with the owner about DCC controllers. Looking online there seems to be a gap in the market in what was available in Australia at the time, possibly a result of supply chain fallout from COVID.  In my searches, there was one interesting open-source project I stumbled across  DCC-EX Model Railroading — DCC-EX Model Railroading documentation  for those who are bit techie, there is a great presentation here  "DCC-EX Open Source Model Railroading" - Paul Antoine (Everything Open 2023) . I am keen to explore this solution later and even get involved but was not looking for a new project which would direct me away from my other goals and wanted a plug and play solution for the moment while I developed my hobby crafting skills. When I arrived at the hobby shop the owner was out the front clearing some boxes from the shop entrance. Excited he grabbed my attention an...

Another Modelling Lesson It's Late October / November 2024 and the humidity is kicking up here in Brisbane and I learnt Tamiya Cement and Super Glue behave a little different compared to the cooler months of the year and working with clammy hands is not fun and leaves a residue on your model, so will try and scratch build in the cooler months in the future or when the air conditioning is running. At the time I had purchased 1 tank wagon from Caintode Flats and 2 from PGC Scale Models. The instructions are well laid out for both kits and the parts provided were well presented and step the modeler along in the process. The old measure 3 times and cut once comes into play, however I still managed to make a couple of mistakes which I have learnt from. Both models come in casting form, but PGC Scale Models tank is 3D printed. Below are a couple pictures I took on the Caintode Flats and PGC Models OV tank wagons.  Caintode Flats Underframe with white metal buffers, piping and bra...

Order Sent! After having a go at scratch building with styrene I thought I would up my game and buy a kit from Caintode, so I jumped back on the website and placed an order for a 3 Dome Tanker kit and some more Bar Frame, 5Ft 2Ft 2In bogies for my own model builds. You got mail! My first call for assistance Where do i go now was with PGC Scale Models, after a couple months I received an email from the gentleman who advised he had been busy and been able to produce a range of tank wagon kits and wanted to know if he can organise for them to be delivered to my premises.  A few emails back and forth and the gentleman was kind enough to invite me to their property, so we schedule a time that was convenient and what I thought would be a small visit turned into a couple hours of conversation over a cuppa with some insightful advice and walk through into their processes to get items ready for keen customers. It was such an enjoyable visit that I almost forgot to pay and pick up my 3 and ...