Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2014 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

When Less is More There seems to be nothing more pleasurable in the model railway adventure than the time we spend planning our empire; planning for the day when we have the time, space and money to build our dream. Countless hours can be spent, researching and doodling various track plans that will suit our ideals. Some of us share these times with close friends and further develop the ideas with sound debates. Some of us prepare written plans where the purposes of the industries are set out and then see these dreams drawn to scale on graph paper or with computer-based drawing packages. The dreams in written/drawn form are ideal, for they do start to develop the three-dimensional aspect of the layout. This is important, as is the need…

All hobbies and leisure activities have particular aspects that attract most of the attention, but the context in which hobbies take place more often than not goes virtually unnoticed. For instance, skydiving may be all about the jump, but the activity of jumping out of a plane is defined by the ground. The ground is what provides the thrill: without it skydiving would just be skyfalling. Skyfalling would probably be fun at first, but the novelty would soon wear off without the need to avoid hitting the ground. I expect all of us could agree that most of the attention in the hobby of railway modelling is directed at the locomotives and, to a slightly lesser degree, the rolling stock and model buildings on our layouts. So if our equivalent…

Readers interested in the Wolgan Valley, its industrial history and its railway will be pleased to know that a definitive work, Shale and Shays, by noted historian Mark Langdon, is in preparation and will be published by Eveleigh Press soon. It includes many unpublished photos, new research, plus extensive maps and diagrams. The book’s release date will be advised in AMRM at the appropriate time. These dioramas began as a way of portraying well-known scenic locations on the Wolgan Valley railway and became a reason for exploring some new scenery building techniques along the way. Introduction The Wolgan Valley railway, Newnes, and its history in the oil shale industry continue to excite and inspire those that become enchanted with this region of the western Blue Mountains, just north-east of Lithgow,…

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Victor Clive Barnes was born in Morpeth, NSW in 1916. He was educated in a one-teacher school before the family moved to Newcastle, where his father ran a store in Adamstown. During the Depression he worked the night shift at Electric Light Manufacturers of Australia, making light globes. It was at this time that he modified his birth date on some official documents to obtain his driver’s licence a year early. This minor misdemeanour caused him problems with officialdom for the rest of his life. When World War Two began his father sold the Adamstown store and he and Vic bought two trucks and contracted as carriers to the US forces. Access to supplies of US petrol during rationing allowing them to expand their business to other areas. Vic married…

Adrian Jack’ Hoad was an exceptional character who first appeared on the Australian model railway scene in 1982, as a member of the Croydon Narrow Gauge Group. He was, however, far more widely known as the creator of the infamous Far Twittering and Oyster Creek Railway and the delightful Ladysmith Sidings. Adrian’s thinking was always ‘outside the square’ and it was this philosophy that enabled him to create his many novel and unique small layouts. He displayed many in recent years as a potpourri group that included, Keep off the Grass (Gn15), Funicular (N), Fiddlers Green (N), Frog Hollow (SM32), Pagham Pier (Nn3) and Trips around the Lighthouse (Gn15). As an electrical engineer, Adrian always had animation and automatic control on his layouts. His first layouts were controlled by a…

Austrains had hoped to release their HO scale r-t-r NSWGR ACX composite branchline sleeping car at the AMRA (NSW) Liverpool exhibition, but much to the proprietor’s (and the potential purchasers’) frustration, they had not cleared customs in time. The ACX (plus LFX second class Express Lavatory (‘dogbox’) carriage) pack is now available in both the Tuscan and russet and post-1954 Indian red (illustrated) colour schemes. Austrains have released the remainder of the first run of their HO scale r-t-r NSW 81, AN BL and Victorian G class locomotives, after receiving the initial deliveries in dribs and drabs through the first part of 2014. The 81 class is available in FreightRail blue (8134, 8155, 8169), Pacific National blue/marigold (8125, 8150, 8178) and some ‘not quite right’ versions…

Although a relatively new member of the Australian Model Railway Association, Alan Cross arrived with a bang when he joined the Association on 21 April 2007, immediately becoming as Exhibition Manager and instead was elected to the position of President. However, due to the personal circumstances of the newly elected Exhibition Manager, Alan once again took an active and involved member. In less than six months, Alan had put his hand up to assist the club by taking on the role of Exhibition Manager. After ‘shadowing’ the then Exhibition Manager during the 2008 AMRA (NSW) annual exhibition (at Hurstville) in order to ‘learn the ropes’, he undertook the organisation of the 2009 exhibition, which also included the return to the Whitlam Leisure Centre at Liverpool. It did not take long…

Scale: Sn3½ (16.5mm gauge) Prototype: Midland Railway of Western Australia 1894-1964 Period: 1958 Layout type: Layout at front – fiddle yard at rear exhibition layout Layout size: 6.0m x 3.0m Rail height above floor: 1.10m Baseboards: Doors with pine cross girders and end-plates Track: Code 100 Atlas track and Peco medium No.6 turnouts Control: Lenz DCC, Tsunami sound decoders, Cobalt point motors and DCC Concepts point decoders Buildings and other structures: Scratchbuilt Scenery: Sifted sand and static grass Locomotives: Scratchbuilt bodies on proprietary mechanisms Rolling stock: Scratchbuilt and kit-built Road vehicles: S scale (1:64) Auto-Art, Biante and Matchbox Builder: Stuart Mackay, with a little help from his friends…

Having looked at service stations back in 2012 [‘Beyond the Fence – Service Stations’, AMRM Issue 297, December 2012 – Editor], it is probably time to take a look at the railway side of the petroleum industry, particularly now with so many r-t-r rail tank cars available from a variety of manufacturers, not to mention the building blocks of a typical fuel depot produced by Southern Rail. The photos presented here are intended to show how much, or how little, space would be required to model an oil depot.…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I’m preparing this in late October, so it seems strange to be writing about Christmas, but by the time the magazine is published, Christmas will be a lot closer… We here at AMRM wish all our loyal readers and advertisers a very merry Christmas and an exceedingly happy New Year! May your credit cards survive the shock of all that is written about below! AMRM Price Increase While we have managed to hold the cover price of AMRM to $9.50 for the last couple of years, production costs have continued to rise and we have, reluctantly, been forced to increase the cover price to $10.00 from the next issue (February 2015). Annual subscriptions will increase to $60.00 on 1 February 2015. If you…