I Heard it Through the Grapevine

For some time, I've been trying to get hold of one of the Railscale Ashbury (CB, LCB) cars. These carriages would have to be my favourite carriage and 3 of them survived up to June 1938 so they fit my time period perfectly. Anyway, there was an etched kit produced by Railscale in the late 1980's I believe, well before I became interested in Early 20th Century NSWGR so I missed out on getting a kit. Unfortunately, it was a small run and of course, all kits were sold. I spoke with Eddie at the 2009 Liverpool exhibition and he said he only had 1 side left over so I was going to have to scratch build one if I was going to replicate No13 Cootamundra Day train. My 1924 train composition book shows a mouth watering collection of cars that formed the 9:45am departing train.

HFX    Picton, Saturdays
CX      Picton, Saturdays
LCB    Picton, Saturday excluded
EHO
CX
BC
LFX
BX     Goulburn, Monday
LFX    Goulburn, Monday
LFX    Goulburn
CX     Goulburn
BK     Camden, Tuesdays and Fridays

By 1937, No13 had become the Goulburn Day Train and was composed of EHO, LFX, 2 x CX and a CUB set, nowhere near as exciting but light years away from today's Explorers.
So while I don't have an exact date as to when the 1924 composition stopped running, it will be running like this for my layout. The BK unfortunately didn't make it through to Picton but you never know your luck in my Picton. The last BK in service I believe was BK 497 which was converted into a Far West Children's Car in February, 1934 which means it just scrapes in time wise.
Anyway, back to the grapevine, Elscotto was talking to Eddie about some other kits he was interested in and Eddie mentioned that a friend of his had a spare Ashbury kit that he was willing to part with. So Elscotto got the gent's contact details and passed them on to me. A few phone calls later and a trip to Peakhurst and I'm now the proud owner of 1 Railscale Ashbury Kit.....truly superb.

Here's a shot of one of the Etches

Thanks to Doug for parting with his kit and to Eddie and Elscotto for telling me about it. I also had a good chat with Doug and saw some of his very impressive models including 37 class Pacific, 39 class Northern, 58 Class 2-6-8-0 Mallet with Southern Valve gear and the T/P clase 4-8-0 Fantastic!!! I also learnt a lot from him regarding standard goods tapered boilers and DJH kits so it was a very productive afternoon.

I didn't do any painting last week as it was a bit too humid but I did do some more track laying and installed some Kadee uncouplers.....boring