Going Forward, We Need to Take a Few Steps Back

Well, here we are and it's been over a month since the last post. Some will ask where has he been the slack $%^& and others will say "oh dear, he's back to whinge again" Whatever, I'm going to tell you about the value having somebody else's eyes look over the layout and what you're planning. Elscotto has been great in this but even 2 sets of eyes can miss stuff. Enter Bob G, Es D and Ian T. The 3 amigo's dropped over last Thursday for a bit of a squizz and while they were very encouraging with their feedback, there was also some questions about why I'd done some things a certain way and what were my plans for Picton and gaining access to the top deck. One of the things they brought up was the height of the top deck and also the depth of certain parts of the top deck. So, the top deck is built for us normal height people (Elscotto and I are both over 6ft) but for shorter people, it makes it difficult to see. Also, I've built everything as a still agile middle aged bloke but as I age, I'll lose that dexterity and I won't be able to reach the places I can now. This can be catastrophic for the longevity of the layout and seeing this one will probably be the only one I build, (it'll take me years to complete it) I better get it right to be able to use it in my old age. These are things I didn't consider. Also, we talked about the access to the top deck from the bottom deck and operations. I was planning on running permanent sets of passenger cars to replicate the Mails and Expresses while there'd be shunting for goods trains at Picton as well as permanent goods trains sets like stock trains and fruit expresses. This meant that I'd need storage tracks which I'd thought about but not in great detail

It's important to keep an open mind and not be precious about your modelling as how else do you learn if you can't take any criticism or new ideas? Anyway, Ian T said he'd whip up a track plan developing my ideas which he sent me on Friday. Having seen his ideas, I can tell you it's lucky I hadn't built more bench work as I'll be doing some major alterations by the looks of it. The plan Ian came up with is heaps better than my current one so I'm very pleased and grateful that Ian and the guys are helping me out. I'll post the new track plan once Ian and I finalise it.

In the meantime, I had a bit over a week in Cairns on holidays since the last post so no train time during the break but I have been doing some weathering on the goods wagons which I've posted in a dedicated page. I'll do the same for passenger cars, loco's and scenery when I get around to finishing some.

Busy Busy

I've just taken 2 weeks off from the Salt Mine for 2 main reasons. One, it was my birthday and I don't like to work with salt on my birthday. And secondly, I wanted to finish off the the top deck or 1919 mainline for my layout. I also decided to lay some carpet in the train cave and also make another 4 bookcases so I can move all my train porn into the cave. So it was a very busy 2 weeks in the cave plus a few other odd jobs around the house like fence repairs with my neighbour Gavin and cooking for the little get together I'm having next weekend with friends for my birthday. I don't normally have any celebrations but this year is a little different seeing as my age now has a 5 in it. The good thing about the birthday was the wonderful evening I had with my wife's family and the lovely speech she made for me....I'm sure she was talking about someone else because all of the nice things she said. Some train goodies came my way as well including a NCE ProCab. Woohoo!!!

So here's some pic's of the train cave

Watch your head Fred

New Top Deck

The Top Deck meets

So now, it's back to the Salt mine after all the fun of finishing off the Top Deck. I know where I'd rather be.

Night Time is the Right Time

Went down to the Loftus Tram Museum last night with the Kids and had some rides on trams in the dark. Met up with Elscotto as well as he's a confirmed tram geek as well!! Well Steam Tram that is but the electric type are also cool. The kids loved it as did Elscotto and I and it really showed what it was like to ride in a tram in winter and at night. Running were O 805, W2 249, Adelaide H Car 358, Nagasaki Car and Ballast Tram 42s. Riding in the O was great if a little chilly as the wind whipped in through all the open doors.....luckily it wasn't raining!! The thing that struck me was how bright it was inside the car. For some reason I expected the light to be a bit on the dull side but you'd have no problems reading in the O class.
Everything ran well except for 42s which decided to mount the concrete turning from the mainline between Railway Square and the workshops. No problem though, just back 'er up and she re-rails herself.....nice.
It's a pity the Museum can't run the trams down to the Royal National Park after dark but I'm sure there's some rule or regulation which prevents them from doing it.
I also took some photos of which 98% turned out  crap. I've posted the best of the bad bunch for you all to laugh at.



After last night I'm really kicking myself for not hanging around for the night trams during the 150th anniversary celebrations. Hopefully, they'll do it again at the next tram gala and I'll have my act together photographically.

Happy Days are Early Days

As the years go by they seem to get shorter as it feels like only a couple of months ago that I attended the 20th Modelling the Early Days of the NSWGR. This year, the 21st convention has come and gone again and apart from a new venue, the quality of presentations and information was the same as always....excellent.
Some of the standouts were Craig W's presentation on the preservation of a 1903 cattle wagon. This was excellent as I'd seen this particular wagon on the TRAK blog and since they'd disbanded, I'd wondered what had happened to it. I had heard it was going to Oberon but we all know now that the wagon is at Valley Heights and will be the subject of a static restoration / conservation led by Craig. Interestingly, it's the last wooden framed cattle wagon in existence as the preserved examples are all 1960's conversions using standard 18' steel underframes which, as Craig pointed out, are not really a true representation of the cattle wagon as the majority were wooden framed. It also seems that the 2 "Ned Kelly" cars that were conversions from wooden framed cattle wagons have disappeared from the RTM during all the moves and disposals of assets. Not good. Craig is looking for volunteers so get in contact with the RTM if you want to help out on this project.
We also learnt from Ian D about the tubular framed vehicles imported by the railways in the 19th century as well as Cowdery couplings and the experimental combination cars trialed by the railways to try and get more revenue from stock wagons by using them as covered vans as well.
But the standout for me of the day was Gary S and his research on the liveries of the NSW locomotives in the 19th Century. Liveries are such a controversial topic but Gary's well researched presentation left me a lot clearer on the colours used....except maybe below the footplate....green or indian red???

The other great thing is meeting new people so this year was no different. Spoke with Oscar D about his incredible engineering and the superb results he achieves in his true to scale modelling. I didn't know P87 wasn't "true scale" but I do now. Also met Nick who's been reading this blog....hope you get your house completed soon so you can get back into modelling again.

And lastly, it's the access to great Kits produced to suit the era we model and this year was a beauty. Spent a fair bit of money but what else should I spend it on? Booze, women, fast cars....nah, nerdy trains it is for me!! This year I picked up an 1885 and 1891 louvre van as well as some second hand Pioneer Models 2nd class Redfern cars (thanks Es D) as well as a T 14 class single spinner from John Sever of Ezi Kits.

Yeah!!

Yes, the 3 members were gone by 1893 and no, they never ran up the hill beyond Picton but I don't care. It looks so good and should look lovely hauling some 4 wheel passenger cars that Elscotto purchased from Eddie G.

Bring on next year and I won't leave it so late to get my models finished to take to the convention....didn't take any this year as I didn't get to finish them....oh well.

The Ants that Ate Earlwood

As usual, I had planned to spend an hour or so per night in the garage working on the railway. Monday went to plan and I spent some time repairing the horseboxes etc that needed some work after the paint stripping exercise. All is good. Tuesday night comes around so I wander out to the garage, lift the roller door and turn on the lights. And I see them. There's a trail of ants wending their way across the floor to the back of the garage where I've stacked some 3mm ply. I check to see if they've made a nest in the ply but no, they obviously prefer something more tasty (and more expensive). The ant trail continues on along the back wall of the garage to where I have a book case where the laptop and ALPS printer lives. You can see where this is going. I look at the bookcase and see that the ant trail leaves the garage floor and climbs up the back of the bookcase to disappear under the laptop........
I lift up the laptop and the little buggers scurry everywhere but this isn't their main objective. I lift up the printer and it's a seething mass of ants and eggs, hundreds of the little %^&$s. But it doesn't end there. There's still ants coming from the printer so I open the hood and there's an even larger mass of writhing insects. I won't bore you with every detail but there were literally thousands of them infesting every nook and cranny, the printer ribbons, the control board, the power supply, the print head even inside one of the paper rollers. So out with the vacuum cleaner and 3 nights later, after dismantling every component, I'd gotten rid of every ant. It then took me 2 nights to get it all back together again as one of the paper feed components fell out when I was dismantling it so I didn't see where it was attached. That took a couple of hours to work out. Fortunately, they didn't like the taste of laptop so I didn't have to pull that apart as well. The good thing is everything appears to work after the ants had been evicted which is a relief as ALPS printers haven't been made in years and I don't where you'd be able to source one. Aust-N-Rail was where I purchased mine but they haven't stocked them for years.
Next week, I'm off on training for the salt mine where I'll become a new and improved being but unfortunately I have to stay on site so no train time this week. Boo!!!!

Let's do Everything Twice

Modelling is so much fun I'm going to do everything twice.....or so it seems at the moment. During the week I sprayed 2 x BKG's, KKG, KB, BKD, GT and NIB set with some Craftsman Models Tuscan Red that had been laying around for a number of years. Well that was a mistake, at least for the BKG's, KKG, KB and BKD. For some reason, the paint finish was "furry" and reminded me of the texture of rough suede. Now the GT and NIB set seemed to be nowhere near as bad but I can't work out why this has happened to the others. So what this has meant is I've had to strip the paint off with Poly S paint Stripper and start again. It also means reattaching some of the details that have come loose in the stripping process. I'm going to give the NIB and GT a blast of gloss clear to see if that fixes them up otherwise they'll be getting the treatment as well. This has never happened to me using Floquil Paints so I suspect it's to do with the Craftsman paint...maybe not thinned enough or too thinned either way, I've  got to do it again this time with some newer Railey Paint. Oh, I'm all ears if anyone has got any ideas what went wrong.
I also attempted to print the decals I'd spent hours on doing the artwork. I created the artwork using PowerPoint 2010 on my Windows 7 computer in the living room. The ALPS printer is getting on in years and as the manufacturing ceased about 10 years ago, there's no drivers available for modern Operating Systems. This means I have to run the printer via an old P3 laptop running Windows ME and using PowerPoint 2000. So I saved the artwork to the earlier version of PowerPoint and transferred the file to the laptop. I opened the artwork to see if everything was OK and all the print registration was all out of whack. The red shading had moved all over the place and will take hours to get it right again.
Happy Days!!

Track, Paint and Decals

Since the last post, I've done a bit more on the layout. I've finally finished all the track for Hill Top and it seems to work OK so far. The proof will be when I finish off the wiring and install the DCC system and run some trains. The DCC system will be coming sometime in June according to the Capital Revue Board so I'll have to wait until then to really prove it. I have to install the point rodding but I think I'll wait until I've proven that the track doesn't derail anything otherwise I could be ripping up track and rodding. It'll be nice to have it done so that I can move onto new projects like the station, platform and scenery. This will be my first attempt at making buildings and scenery so it should be interesting to see how that works out. No doubt there will be some tears along the way. Here's the track for Hill Top.

Hill Top

Sydney End points for the Refuges

I've also painted the NIB set in Manilla and masked them in preparation for painting in Venetian Red. I'll also paint my 2 x BKG, KKG, KB and BKD in red as well

Here's one of the FN's

Lastly, I've been working on the decals I'll need to finish off the models. I've never been happy with any of the commercial decals available for NSWGR carriages (Goods and Passenger) so I long ago bought an ALPS printer to make my own. I used MS Word to create the goods decals and have used MS PowerPoint to create the shaded characters that I'll need to letter my passenger carriages. I've managed to fit all of the codes numbers and class designations onto one A4 sheet.....truly death by PowerPoint

The shading has moved in the conversion process to jpg format

I'm also going to attempt to create the artwork for the fine 1930's lining used on the passenger carriages and see if it's practical to print and apply the decals to the carriages. If that doesn't work I'll try a Rotring pen with some BR buff lining ink I bought from the UK many years ago. If that doesn't work I'll toss it all in and go modern.

Maybe not.