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.

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

Bored

I'm going to leave the track work for a while because frankly, I'm over it for the moment. I might do 1 night a week just to keep it moving along but after today's efforts, I need a change. So I'm going to finish the weathering on the goods wagons and I thought that it's time to dust off the cobwebs from some of my passenger cars that I've got sitting in the storage cabinet. I've got a 7 car NIB set that I'd started years ago and it's in undercoat and ready for the spray gun's coat of Venetian Red and Manilla. Now, before you ask what's a NIB set doing at Picton in the '30's, there's a shot of a NIB set on its trial run after delivery from Waddingtons sitting in Picton with a green P class on the front in 1939. So it makes it into my time period....just.

Just as Mr Berg intended but with a little extra detail

I've added a basic interior

The other thing I've done is remove the end diaphragms which I'll be replacing with working ones as I want to have the set coupled with the diaphragms touching. I also dug out a GT parcels trailer that I'd finished a while back. This started off as an Iain Lindsay Kit which I modified by discarding the underframe as the original looked nothing like the prototype. There's a quite noticeable gap between the car body and the sole bar which I thought just had to be modeled or it wouldn't look right.

Scratchbuilt underframe in brass and nickel silver

Here's how it looks. It has sprung buffers and screw couplers as well

Yes, yes, I know the CPH's in Picton didn't run with a GT but I couldn't resist. Last of all is an AR Kits wooden frame BKG. This needed a bit of work also as the wooden frame version only had 1 door per grooms compartment and the planking was horizontal which meant I had to fill everything in and re-scribe the planks. I also added some underframe detail including the gas tank. I also built another one as a steel frame version which meant the groom's compartments could remain as they were but meant scratch-building a new underframe after removing  the wooden one. Here's how the wooden frame version turned out.

BKG Underframe

Groom's Compartments modified

The BKG's also have sprung buffers and screw couplers. I intend to run most of my passenger trains as permanent sets as there was only a couple of trains that dropped off or picked passenger cars at Picton so the screw couplers won't be a problem and will look much better then Kadee's. That's it for this week.

Summer, what a Bummer

I've said before how much I hate summer, well this summer has been particularly bad and on so many levels. All the floods and cyclones makes my little gripes pretty insignificant so I shouldn't whinge about not being able to play with my trains. But I will. The weather has made the garage uninhabitable and its only been the last week that I've been able to get out there and do anything because of the heat and humidity. I don't know about anyone else but I can't model while I'm dripping with sweat and as a result I think I'm going to have to put some air conditioning out there as I don't want to have to stop building Picton for 4 months of the year.
It was so good to be able to do some work again after such along absence and I've been able to lay some track and install 3 points and the associated point motors. Here's how it looks at the moment.

Point Motors and Wiring

Point Work

Point Work, Refuge and Mainline heading down the grade to Sydney

I hope the weather continues to get cooler and there's no Indian Summer to keep me out of the garage so I can get the track work finished and move back to building some trains again. Anyway, at least I'm doing something.