Bits and Bobs

 Things have been plodding along nicely on the layout doing bits here and there.

I changed a bit of furniture in the room to improve access under the layout.

I planned a goods train schedule for running sessions.

And then I had a better idea.

As part of the industrial area known as Junction Yard alterations, I changed some of my container wagons. A couple of posts ago I had a couple of OCY wagons with some blue bulk flour containers. I repainted the containers and put them on three ICX wagons instead as three wagons look a bit more impressive.

This meant less container wagons on one train. I found some old OCY decals to put on the old OCY wagons. The drawback was that they were too big for the space on the wagon. The result is from a Word document to represent the number panels. I had six OCY wagons that I has never put decals on. Now they are numbered up and back running on the layout. I fixed number panels to a couple of other scratch built wagons as well while I was at it.

Here are the OCYs.

Here's a bit of a formula: 2 x OCY = 3 x ICX

So the three ICX wagons lost were replaced by 2 OCYs. The train went from 9 wagons to 8. However, it fits nicely into the arrival and departure roads of Junction Yard. It also fits into the siding at Billabong Marina that has been holding a rake of 8 wheat hoppers.

I have 6 GME container wagons that I have kept as a fixed consist that travels from the container yard at Junction Yard to the dockside at Billabong Marina. I've added two OCYs to this consist.

But that is not all. I have 2 OCYs left. I have five Auscision container wagons that were sold unpainted years ago. I painted them different colours and put different wagon codes from NQIW and RQIW. These wagons had their numbers boosted by putting some containers into open wagons.

All up, I have 24 container wagons in three trains of 2 OCY wagons and the rest with 48 feet long wagons.

One train is in staging. One train is at the container depot in Junction Yard and the third is at the container siding at Billabong Marina.

One of the new jobs for the layout is to take a train from staging to Junction Yard, swap the wagons and go to Billabong Marina, swap the wagons here and travel to Boydtown Yard to swap the loco over before heading to staging, ready for the next run.

I've tested it out and it's a fun train to run.

Until next time.