Escape to the Man Cave!

Yesterday I did say I hoped to clean the cat sofa and then escape out into the man cave and do some model making activities. Well I was successful! I even managed to get a bike ride in to build on the 207 miles I did last month. I was hoping for 300 but the sub zero temperatures made the roads I venture onto ice rinks for about 10 days in January. I don't bounce very well these days so rather than risk injury I stayed in!

In the Man Cave I was going to do some more on the Tamiya Puma but got distracted (something that always happens to me) by my narrow gauge 009 layout. Since I reorganised and rebuilt my 00 gauge layout last October the 009 layout has remained stripped of loosed items and un run. I knew there was also an electrical issue on the wharf siding so whilst the layout was stripped of loose items it was opportune to deal with that issue. Tracked down to a loose wire feeding the track on the siding as shown by the red arrow in the picture below. I resoldered it to solve the problem.

 

The rear profile board also required trimming so whilst things were still accessible I did that. It needed to be level with the baseboard itself.

Cutting done and edge painted the profile is now the shape it needs to be.

All this took longer than I anticipated but I had time to clean the track, connect up a controller and have a loco running. Always great to see something running. I need to get the rest of the parts of the layout back on the baseboards but as I am probably heading to Rocks by Rail Museum tomorrow (first time this year to actually do some work) that may take a few days to happen.

Sofa wise I got my ancient but faithful VAX carpet and upholstery washer out of the cupboard. Nearly 30 years old now but it has been reliable. Monty the cat decided to hinder operations...

I am ashamed as to how dirty the sofa had got but you can see the difference a bit of claening makes.

The finished item after 3 hours of cleaning.

Shortly after it was approved as fit for use by part of the feline fleet - just hope they wiped their feet!