6029

The newly restored New South Wales Government Railways Garratt 6029 came to Wagga Wagga on the long weekend. The 60 class Garratt's are the largest Garratt's built and they were built by Beyer Peacock in the UK and the first one arrived in 1952. They lasted until the end of steam in 1973. I am to young to have been able to see them working so when 6029 came to our part of the world  the family and I took the opportunity to both ride & chase it.

It was a fun day and we all enjoyed the impressive display of power.

 

 

Mucking around with lighting

April and May are very busy months on the farm with us planting our crops. It means long days sitting on tractors which isn't very conducive to getting any modelling done. It does mean that I have plenty of time to ponder about issues on the layout that are still annoying me.

Lighting is one issue that I have thought about for some time. I currently use fluorescent lights with daylight tubes which has both advantages and disadvantages. The light is bright and uniform with no shadows. They are also not that cheap to buy, they are heavy and when they are all on they do heat the room up. I still have about half the layout that still needs lights so I have been exploring options. I have tried the LED strip lighting but found the colours wrong and not enough light.

I recently found some LED downlights with a daylight colour (4000K) and I thought I would try a couple and see how they look. As you can see in the following photos the colour and level of light is good. What is different from the fluorescents is the shadows. Part of me thinks it looks more natural but because of having multiple light sources with more than one LED I am getting multiple shadows. They are reasonably subtle so I am not sure what to think. If any of you in reader land out there have thoughts or experience on using downlights,  I would like to hear from you.

Cheers Murray

Colac loco

I always try to build a model to take to narrow gauge conventions. I have a couple of reasons for this. One is that with a deadline I have a goal to getting a model finished. The other is that I think competing in competitions is a good way to help lift your modelling skills and standards. If you know a model is going to be judged by your peers, I find that I am willing to put more effort in. I am also less likely to put up with good enough.

 

This year I decided to build a model of the Victorian narrow gauge engine shed and sandhouse at Colac. It is an unusual building with its curved roof which added to its appeal to model. I started with a set of the original plans and gathered all the photos I could find, which wasn't as many as I would have liked.

 

 

 

These two photos from the collection of Weston Langford where taken two years after the narrow gauge had been abandoned. The sandhouse has been removed and the engine house and crew quarters are looking a bit worse for wear. I have built my model to look more like it appeared in the 1940's. My model is fully scratchbuilt using board on board construction with scale lumber from Mt Albert scale lumber available from The Railcar. The corrugated iron is from Model O kits

 

 

 

I am quite pleased how the finished model looks. I had hoped to add a full interior but time beat me and That is something that I will get to later. I was honoured to receive second place in the prototype scene section at the convention.

 

Cheers Murray

 

 

 

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