this screenshot is from the meaford street cam, captured at dead on midnight between 31 dec and 1 jan. i think there were snowflakes on the lens, with the street lights giving them an awesome effect.
the club had our annual christmas show over the last two nights. all went well other than a few issues across several layouts on the first night.
my stuff proved popular again, which is good. i had to use an extra table as my standard one wasnt big enough by half. with huge thanks to geris, i have added 4 lovely trains to my collection. i have been wanting all four for a long time, but never bothered. then when geris offered, i had to say yes. the three thomas wrapping ones are fairly hard to find and usually go quite high. i have been after a tobu spacia for ages, so was especially pleased to get this gem. click the thomas photo to see more of those, and the lego photo to see the tobu spacia. my big lego order arrived as well. the dimensions sets were an absolute steal, which im glad for, and i love being able to add some classic characters to the layout, including gremlins and sonic, as well as new classics like adventure time and fantastic beasts. as if i hadnt spent enough already, i bought some more stuff on trademe. the remote for percy will be going to ucwepn as he needs one, and then i bought 80 of the "welcome" posters for $20. they will be sold at shows for $2 each. if they arrive in time, i may sell some at the christmas show next week.
right then, after the test post this morning, the site officially has a new name that means i can share on facebook again. i am expecting it to take a while for google to catch up, but thats ok. i am sharing as much as i can to help my friends and regular readers keep up. on to the big post... just over a week ago, my friend blair who drives for kiwirail, txt and asked if i wanted to and was able to go for a cab ride with him... my first in a diesel. i knew i would have to juggle it around work and took several days to work out a plan. i ran it by my boss, and she was happy to help by ringing a few customers and asking them to get their orders in before 9 on sunday morning. it ended up i was at work at 8pm on the saturday, and back again at 7am sunday. i got done, with basically minutes to spare, at 10. its a 35min drive to blairs, and i had to be there by 11. after getting stuck behind two tractors, i got to his with 5mins spare. we got to the palmy yard around 11.30. i took a few photos of the locos i could see, but none of ours as they were behind a few others and i wasnt able to stop once we were in the yard. we were taking locos DXB5051 as lead and DL9348, with 10 milk tankers behind us. once we were all hooked up to the tankers, we headed north to whareroa milk plant. the trip included 3 tunnels and several bridges and viaducts. we nearly ran down a hawk, several pidgeons and a few pheasants, one only escaped with a matter of inches to spare. if we did hit anything, i didnt see it and blair didnt say. he also saw a stag down in a gully and a few rabbits. we got up the westmere bank, the second steepest grade in the country and then the rain started. it rained all the rest of the way. during the latter half of the trip, there was another strong earthquake. had it been much stronger, we would have been ordered to stop where we were, and wait for the gangers to come and check the track. luckily, that didnt happen. we passed two trains on the way up, one with general freight and the other a works train.
at wanganui, blair had to get a track warrent to give him permission to continue north, so we had a chance to get out, take some photos and talk to friends and family who came along. the trip was uneventful, which was good. we left the locos at whareroa and brought a car back down. very weird to drive out a town heading south, and return from the north. click this last pic to see more photos of the day for the last 6 months or so, i havent been able to post updates to facebook. i contacted weebly, who were unable to find any issues behind the scenes.
i decided to change the website name after attempting to post a direct link on fb, which refused saying it was unsafe. this post is merely to check if changing the name has worked. much more exciting post to follow this afternoon. |
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October 2023
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