I would like to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Regards, Ray ..read more

Back in 2012 I posted about a small sand blasting tool that I found at Super Cheap Auto. Here is the link. That earlier sand blaster died a while back and I looked around for a suitable replacement and found the Badger Mini Sandblaster. Please note that this link was good at the time of  posting but may disappear of course. This not a review as such, just a look at what it can do. I was working today on the build of the last 13 signals of what grew to be 50 signals from February 2023, up from 12 on my order book. At the time I decided that I would stop the signal builds and it has taken t ..read more

I have now read all my BYLONG blog posts up to the present day and I am a bit ashamed by the number of times I said that I was going to do something on the layout, and then failed to do so. I have a bad habit of making/building something, and stopping when I hit a small hurdle like needing to get some more parts, paint, etc. I am also prone to having an idea and running off in pursuit of the new thing at the expense of what I was working on. Now that I am officially a 'gunna do', I have decided that there a few projects that must be finished. Here are a couple of projects, in no particular ord ..read more

Well, so much for posting more often, "the best laid plans of mice and men". Life intruded yet again when my wife Christine dislocated a 2 year old hip replacement at 2:30am on 26 January, just by rolling over in bed. The first time was on 15 August last year followed by a couple of months of rehab physio. Christine had hip revision surgery on 31 July to correct the implants. Apparently, the implants have socket and ball parts that can be replaced. We have been assured that it will not happen again. It was a different surgeon this time, however I won't blame the first surgeon as Christine had ..read more

I would like to wish you all the best of the season, have a safe , enjoyable and relaxing time. Ray ..read more

 As the title says, I like to find useful tools and use them, although this last part sometimes takes quite a while. Here is my latest find, a small vertical drill. I had been drilling holes through the brass signal posts for various detail parts, handrails, ladder supports, etc. by eye using a cordless Dremel motor tool and a 0.45mm drill bit. I knew I needed something better and I saw someone post on the Aus7 Modellers Group on Facebook about a small vertical drill he had bought but without a link to it. An ebay search found three that were of similar size with what looked like the same ..read more

 Well, my last post was my Christmas one in which I said that I would try to post more often, but that didn't work. I am now seven months further down the track and thought I had better explain myself. By Christmas last year I had finished putting together 22 HO NSWGR signal kits for the North Shore Model Railway Association for their Blue Mountains club and exhibition layout. These signals were about equally divided between those for Katoomba and those for Valley Heights. A number of the signals were very specific and required modification to the posts with extra signal mountings, lamps ..read more

Christine and I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. May all that you hope for come about. This would have to be the longest break between posts for the blog. I have almost sat down to type several times, but life has become a bit complicated in the last six months. I have managed to do a couple of things on the layout as well as make some signals for others but the main situation is around a now eight-month-old puppy. The last pup we had was in 2003 and it is amazing how you forget how much work a new pup is. We have just about got it toilet-trained and it ..read more

 As we now know the past two years have disturbed the normal supply of many things. Among those have been my goto servo control boards from Tam Valley Depot. I have used Tam Valley Depot Singlet IIs, Tam Valley Depot Quad-Pics and a Tam Valley Depot Dual 3-Way board. Tam Valley Depot's owner Duncan McCrae stopped production due to ill health and at about the same time, COVID-19 hit the supply of electronic parts. Tam Valley Depot has since recommenced production but only a small part of its range. All of the above servo control boards are no longer being made. As a result, I began a searc ..read more

Way back in June 2011 and July 2011, I did several posts on my build of an Anton's Roundhouse kit (click on the links above or see the old posts list to the right and down). Well, I finally decided that I needed to finish it, only 10 years late. The problem that stopped me originally was the large rear windows that were wrong, or at least based on a plan and some photos I have of the type. I measured the existing window frames of the model and worked out that I needed to modify them to get the windows anywhere near correct. The problem is that the roundhouse is designed to go with the Anton 75 ..read more