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| So it's Christmas again, and that can only
mean one thing… It's time for the annual departure of sanity in the Wuiske
household. |
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Once again, Jade has fitted out the house with
enough lights to ensure that 90% of Qantas pilots confuse us with
a major airport. I did my usual trick of going for a two day ride
whilst she was placing these around the house and trying to source
a 14KV generator to power them. |
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| Jade also picked up a couple of light-up reindeer
from Crazy Clarks in Dalby. As is normal, she phoned me from work
and said "what would you say if I wanted to get one of these?"…
And then arrived home with two of them. One was an animated reindeer
that looks as if it is eating, whilst the other was a static version
with antlers that didn't light up. |
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I asked Jade if I could mount the head of
this defective reindeer on a board sporting a red nose. I thought it would
look great and give the kids of Jandowae a sight they hadn't seen before.
Jade was less than impressed.
So with my short lived career as a light up reindeer hunter now at an
end, I thought I would focus on the layout once more. |
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Jade and I finally wired in the last switch on
the dispatch panel. This meant that the switches for Holman, Harlexton
and the hidden staging under Summiton could now be operated from
under the Western end of the layout. |
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| This year we had Ken stay with us for Christmas.
This ensured that there were minimal conversations about what the
fat bloke in the red pajamas was going to bring. So once Ken arrived
and got settled, we got the usual conversations regarding the concise
history of ancient Egypt out of the way whilst Jade busied herself
with a cross stitch she was making for my mother. |
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Once all of this was over and done with, Ken
and I proceeded down to the layout room to attempt the first proper
operating session on the layout. After reintroducing Ken to the
basics of using the Lenz controllers, he was soon running trains.
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With 2333 and 2312 leading an empty Westbound
coalie over the layout, 2214D and 2489H where able to work their
trains around the layout with stops to allow the coalie to pass.
Ken seemed to be very impressed with the way everything worked whilst
still giving the operator enough to do to avoid getting bored. |
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So all in all, my plans for the layout have come to fruition and everything
is working well.
I will have to spread the rest of the Christmas period over the next
chapter or so to avoid this one reaching biblical lengths.
We shall see how we go.
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