Sunday, October 19, 2014

G42


G42 simmering away in the yard at Geehi
G42 has arrived on the Bogong & Geehi, and the management is delighted. Bernard Snoodyk from The Model Works Australia who built the loco for me, has done a brilliant job of painting and weathering it.

I need to add couplers and I am hoping that Mike Waters from DCC Sound will have a sound decoder with sounds recorded from the real G42 available soon.
 
The addition of this loco to my roster is an important milestone for both the layout and myself. When I decided that I wanted to model the Victorian Railways narrow gauge lines I really wanted a model of their Garratt. They only owned two, G41 & G42. They were purchased new from Beyer Peacock in 1926. G41 spent its entire life working on the Colac - Beech Forrest - Crowes line, while G42 worked the Moe - Walhalla line until that line closed in 1954. It was then transferred to Colac were it eventually hauled the last VR narrow gauge train on June 30 1962. Thankfully G42 was saved and restored to run on Puffing Billy in 2004.
G42 at Belgrave station in 2006
 
The two Garratt's made a big difference to the VR's operations. They had 27,630 pounds of tractive effort compared to the Na's 12,515 pounds. This made the railway more efficient (even though the narrow gauge lines still lost lots of money) and the two locos dominated traffic on their respective lines.
 
As I model the VR sometime between 1940 & 1954 (yet to nail down a specific date) and because I really like Garratt's, I have wanted a model of G42 for many years. As my layout draws inspiration from all four of the VR lines a G class Garratt was a crucial to achieve what I want to model.  I also have 3 Na's thanks to Haskell's which means in theory my locomotive roster is now complete. I am looking forward to my model of G42 hauling many trains between Geehi & Bogong for many years to come.

Climbing the hill to Coolamine

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Testing a new toy

 
There is a new locomotive coming to the Bogong & Geehi...
 
 


This is a model of G42 almost completely scratchbuilt by my friend Bernard Snoodyk. He brought it over for a test run last week and after a couple of tweaks it ran beautifully. He is now painting & weathering it to look as it did in the late 1940's for me. I can't wait!