Mount Blue models

I recently became aware that Mount Blue model company have released their first Victorian Railways O scale kit, which is the ubiquitous lamp room. I ordered one to try from their website and a couple of weeks later a very well designed kit arrived.

The kit features a full interior with the framing all laser cut. The tin walls are paper and are also laser cut. This kit looks far more complex than it really is. I was able to put it together over a couple of evenings and it makes a very high quality building. There is an opportunity to detail the interior and I added some small drums on the oil shelf to provide some colour inside.

Mount Blue model company make a variety of VR kits in HO and I am hoping they increase their range in 1/48th. I will be adding at least a couple more of their lamp room kits to my layout.

Puffing Billy

Na's 7 & 14 getting ready for the day ahead at Belgrave

 

I was in Melbourne last week for my work and so I decided to head down a couple of days earlier so I could visit Puffing Billy . For those who don't know, Puffing Billy is a tourist railway that operates one of the four Victorian Railways 2'6" narrow gauge lines. The railway operates from Belgrave to Gembrook in the Dandenong ranges east of Melbourne.

 

I have been wanting to visit for awhile to get some photos and general inspiration. I have lots of books & plans about the VR, but nothing beats visiting and the aroma of coal smoke to get motivated to do some modelling.

Emerald station

 

I rode the train from Belgrave to Emerald and back. I mentioned to my friend Bob Prewett who models the VR narrow gauge in On30 and is a conductor on Puffing Billy that I was visiting. He wasn't working the day I visited but he mentioned to his friends that I was visiting. I would especially like to thank Bob, Alan and Mel for making a great day even better.

7a crossing the Monbulk creek trestle bridge on the way back to Belgrave

 

 

The hills are alive

Just a quick update to show what a difference adding some vegetation can make. I spent a few enjoyable hours on Sunday adding trees to the layout. I am really happy with how this scene is coming together.

The trees are sedum flowers that have been soaked in a white glue/water mix and then given a dusting of ground foam. I then give them a light spray of green paint to add some variety to the colour. I am planning to continue the "forest" to cover the hill on the right of the photo.

I still have lots of other things to do to finish the scene, such as adding some understory beneath the trees and grassing the foreground. I am keenly waiting for a shipment of static grass to arrive. All that then will remain to do is build the stockyards and add some details.

Video tour

In June last year I made a video tour of the layout that you can watch here. It is sometimes easy to feel like that I am not getting much done on the layout. When I watch last years video I realise that in the past twelve months I have gotten quite a bit of work done on the layout.

To give you an idea of what I have achieved this last year I have made another video tour.

 

 

Please forgive the shaky video as I shot it with my iPad. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for watching

July update

While I haven't been updating the blog I have been working on the layout. After my last post about simplifying the railway I have been making a few small changes.

I have moved the dairy coop building to the interchange town as I think it looks better there and was probably too substantial a building for the small town it was serving. I haven't bedded it in yet so the move may not be permanent. You may notice I am not using town names. The coop has a Geehi sign mounted on it that I don't want to remove so the town names are now also undecided.

In the spirit of making things simpler the town formally known as Geehi has been made smaller.

the shortened yard. The yard used to end in front of the loco.

 

It originally had a very long yard, longer than the run to the next station down the line. I was also not that happy with track between it and the next town as it came out of the yard and almost instantly went into a curve that only ended at the next town. I shortened the yard by about 6 feet and moved the whole town by the same amount to the left. It doesn't sound much but it gives me an extra train length between the two towns which looks a lot better. It also gave me the opportunity to add some winding curves that add to the look of a small narrow gauge railway.

 

 

It was a simple change as the yard was laid on a single board. All I had to do was remove the track at one end cut a couple of wires and shorten the board. I had to remove a couple of point throw machines and all in all it only took a day to do. I spent last weekend relaying the track & repairing the wiring and everything was going great until I went to reinstall the point throws. I have managed to put a point over a non moveable piece of the frame! Doh! It is only in the wrong spot by 10 mm but its still the wrong spot. I have been scratching my head since pondering what I will do. I am still undecided but it does reinforce the adage check at least twice before you lock yourself in.

Less is more?

IT has been awhile since I last posted a report on the Bogong & Geehi. I would love to say that I have been madly working on the layout and I have lots of new things to show you.... but I would be lying if I did. Unfortunately life has been ridiculously busy over the last few months. Autumn is a very busy time on the farm with us sowing our crops. My wife has been travelling a lot for work and I have had a couple business trips as well. Add to this weekend sport for the kids and something has to give and that means the hobby has to take a back seat. It is right that family and business come before my hobby but the recent lack of time has meant that progress has been very slow.

This lack of action isn't all bad though. It has given me an opportunity to think about what I am trying to achieve and to review where I am at with the layout. When I started building this layout in February 2011 I had some very grand plans and some expectations that I now realise were unrealistic. I thought I would have all the track laid in 12 months and not the three years it actually took. I know I took some detours along the way but the reality of the workload of building a large layout by myself is really hitting home.

The recent inactivity has me thinking that some times less is more. It is a message that has been promoted by several blogs I read. Modellers like Trevor Marshall, Lance Mindheim & Mike Cougill have realised that time is often a limiting factor in our ability to build a layout and that a simple layout can be very satisfying.

 

This little station (yet to be named) was always going to be a simple passing track with a simple station, water tank and yet to be built set of stockyards. It is on a peninsula that is about 25 feet long and the only other structures is a farmyard and yet to be built farmhouse.

 

 

The scene above has come together reasonably quickly and I expect to finish it this winter. It won't take long to put a layer of static grass down and cover the hills with trees. The most time consuming task will be building the farmhouse. I have always planned for this scene to be reasonably empty and I am happy with how it looks. I wanted a spectator be able to stand at the end of the peninsula and feel like they are standing on the hill looking down a country valley. I had some guests this past weekend and it was a popular spot to watch the trains go by. It reinforced what I have been thinking lately that "less can be more".

 

Let me explain further what I mean. When I designed my layout there was lots of scenes and structures I wanted to include. With a reasonably large space it was easy to find room for lots of buildings and stuff that fills up the room. The irony is that most narrow gauge lines ran through country that was sparsely settled. Part of the attraction of modelling narrow gauge is little trains running through countryside that was reasonably empty - just like the scene above. When planning I had designed my towns to have lots of interesting buildings, in fact I need to scratch build another 60 to 70 structures to complete the layout. At the rate I am currently building there is a fair chance I will never finish the layout and that is a bit disheartening. 

 

So what does this mean for the rest of the layout? I could make the layout smaller or reduce the number of towns but most of the heavy work of bench work and track laying is done. Rebuilding the layout would only add to my workload.

 

Well what if I made my towns a lot simpler? They don't need to have lots of buildings to be attractive scenes. Would it matter if the stations were surrounded by grassy paddocks? Compared to building structures scenery is a quicker and lower cost alternative. Looking through my library it more common to see emptiness than lots of buildings. 

 

I have looked at each town on the layout to see what I need to have a satisfying layout and I have reduced the number of structures I NEED to build, to just 20. That is a number that I can achieve in a realistic time period. I can easily surround my towns with paddocks of static grass so that the layout will have a completed look a lot sooner. There is no reason that if in the future I want to add some more buildings I can't scrape away some grass and find a place for them.

 

So if you are still with me after this long ramble, by making the layout simpler I hope to have a satisfying layout that looks completed sooner. I want to take some self imposed pressure away so that I can enjoy myself which after all is what hobbies are supposed to be about.

 

 

Roger Hill's Moe

I recently visited Melbourne and I took the opportunity to visit Roger Hill and his O scale Victorian railway. Roger is a very skilled modeller of both the broad & narrow gauges of the VR.  Roger has based his layout on the town of Moe which had a dual gauge yard. It was the town from which the 30" gauge branch to Walhalla departed.

The track is all hand laid on ties milled by Roger from cedar lining boards. He is also an excellent scratch builder of locomotives and rolling stock and won a best in show at a narrow gauge convention with his G class garratt.

 

It was fun to watch an O scale passenger train pulled by a R class literally rumble down the rails. It is easy to forget how large O scale can be but how impressive it is.

 

 

 Roger also showed me some Australian timber bogies  that he scratch built.

 

I came away from my visit very inspired and keen to go home to do some work on my layout. It is always great to catch up with friends and to see what they are up to. Thanks Roger for your excellent hospitality and I am looking forward to seeing your layout progress.