2015 Australian narrow gauge convention

 Last weekend I travelled to Bowral to attend the 2015 Australian narrow gauge convention. I really enjoy attending the narrow gauge conventions and this was the ninth one that I have attended. It is always great to catch up with friends, meet new friends, develop some new skills at the clinics and blow the budget at the retailers.

One of the highlights of the conventions is the contest room. This year was no exception, and the modelling was at a very high standard.


Peter Giblett's model of Walhalla fire station that won
 first place in the structures



Laurie Green's winning diorama

John Hunters diorama which came second in the diorama section
 and won the Geoff Nott memorial award



Laurie Greens winning entry in the new prototype scene competition

Peter MacDonald's won first place in the steam locomotives with this stunning
On30 model of G41
 



Grant McAdams cast building

I did take a model to the contest room which I will cover in my next post. The next convention will be held in 2017 at Geelong Victoria.

March update

Even though I haven't been posting to the blog lately there is still plenty happening on the railway.

I have installed a Soundtrax tsunami decoder in the Garratt. I know it's not the correct sound for the model but I wanted to get it running and I wanted sound. I used a D&RGW K class decoder because I like the K class whistles. If I am going to have the wrong whistle it may as well be one I like.

I have also done some more work to the mill at Mt Bogong. I have covered the walls with galvanised iron that I bought from Model O Kits It is a great product made from styrene and comes in an A4 sheet. I have found it a great product to use and good value.

I also built myself a storage rack for my strip wood. I have a lot of different sized strip wood that I used to store in a big box. Whenever I was working on a project I seemed to spend as much time looking for a particular size as I did building anything. I decided to fix that by building a rack from plywood and PVC pipe.

 

It has revolutionised my modelling time. I now can see quite quickly where a particular size of wood is and how much I have left. I added a couple of handles I can take it to wherever I am working.

 

Which leads me to my current project. I always try to build a model to take to the Australian Narrow Gauge convention. The convention is this Easter at Bowral in the southern highlands of NSW, just south of Sydney. In my usual form I chose to build something ambitious and started later than I should have. I still have lots to do and only 8 days to do it. I had better get off this computer and back to the workbench.

 

Cheers Murray

 

 

 

 

Geehi update

The Christmas break gave me an opportunity to make a decision on how I am going to proceed with the yard at Geehi. I thought long and hard about how I could improve the trackplan to give me better access and be able to reach all of the yard.

Overall view of the new narrow gauge yard at Geehi

In the end, the best outcome I decided was to start again. I don't enjoy ripping up what I have built, especially when I have so much to do on the rest of the layout. In the end the need to easily access all the track without destroying the models in the way, won out over the extra work.

The destruction took a few days and the new track has gone down very quickly. The new yard is slightly smaller than the old one but works much better. I can easily reach every track and except for one siding the broadgauge track is now behind the yard.

The narrow gauge station is now across the tracks from the much larger broad gauge station

Despite the extra work I am happy with the outcome. I now have a yard that is much easier to work and importantly one I can access.

Four years and counting

It is hard to believe that I have been writing this blog for over four years. The first post was in November 2010 and I have managed to write over 50 posts since. As I look back over the past four years I realise that some of my goals are going to take me longer than I planned. Having said that, I feel I have achieved quite a bit in that time.

When I started the blog I had less than 5 metres of mainline and the shed the layout lives in was less than half its current size. I had some detours along the way , but the release of the Haskell Na was a major turning point. I could now find & afford a realistic locomotive fleet to model the Victorian narrow gauge. Today I am well down the road of modelling a prototype railway and have completed the main line. I am getting close to having some large areas of scenery complete which I am finding very enjoyable.

In the coming year I hope to get that scenery finished in some more areas, build some bridges and keep adding rolling stock to the layout.

Thanks for everyone that follows the blog for your interest. I was a little surprised to see today that the blog has had nearly 41,000 visitors. I hope you enjoy what I am doing. Following the lead of several of the great blogs I follow I have added some pages with details of the layout and our farm. You can access them from the menu below the title photo. I hope to add some more as time allows.

Now on to what is currently happening on the layout....... which unfortunately is not much. Harvest started three weeks early which has meant since the last post work on the layout has been nonexistent.

What I have had time to do though, is contemplate what is working on the layout, and what's not. For me if I have stopped working on a project, it usually means there is an issue. The most glaring project that hasn't received much attention in the last six months has been the interchange town. I was really happy with it until I started operating and a couple of issues arose.

The first was I made the passing loop to long. It takes forever to run around the train which gets old pretty quick. I could easily shorten the loop but there is a second issue much harder to fix.

 

 

From the photo above you will notice I have put the broad gauge sidings against the aisle and the narrow gauge yard at the back. This looks good but even with my long arms I am having trouble reaching the track closest to the back scene. That is not making shunting very enjoyable and I am worried I will damage some of my broad gauge models reaching over them. In hindsight my mistake was very obvious but unfortunately that doesn't help me now.

 

I have spent a bit of time studying the four interchange yards of Colac, Wangaratta, Moe & Upper Ferntree Gully. None of them easily fit into the space I have and the  more compact yards have large broad gauge yards at the rear. I really didn't want to put a broad gauge yard behind the narrow gauge yard as I don't really have the space. There are also issues with blending the yard with the backdrop. If I was starting the whole layout from scratch I would consider putting  the broad gauge yard in and giving the larger trains somewhere to run in a hidden loop a bit like what Roger Hill has done but it is too late for that now.

 

Hours spent operating machinery have given me plenty of time to contemplate the issue, and the solution I have come up with is to put the broad gauge at an angle and have a siding serve the narrow gauge yard. I have based my narrow gauge yard on Moe but put the station where the engine house is.

 



 

I wasn't sure how this would look or if it would even fit. So today I got some cardboard and laid it over the existing yard to see if it would fit and work.

 

I am happy with how the changed yard looks and should work. Except for the location of the engine house it is very similar to the eastern half of Moe's narrow gauge yard. If I change the yard to this trackplan I can reduce the width of the bench work in several places to make access much easier. The broad gauge siding is now at the rear, and considering that it is non operating that is a better place for it to be.

I will leave the cardboard in place for a few weeks to consider, but at this stage I am expecting to change the yard over Christmas and New Year

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

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!

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.