Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2014 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

Some years ago readers may recall reading how I was ‘training’ an apprentice photographer, my then five-year-old grandson, Charlie Elward. [‘Starting Them Young’, AMRM Issue 286 (February 2011) – Editor] I am now training my youngest (and last) grandson, Bailey Thorpe, who has been toting a spare Canon DSLR since he was three and a half. Bailey, who was not quite five years old when this story was written in December 2013, is starting to take to the camera akin to his older cousin, Charlie. And his images are getting straighter and more accurate. While Charlie has now had copious pictures published in newspapers, calendars, books and magazines domestically (and as far-afield as England), Bailey might well be on his way as well, for he truly loves his trains. He…

Many of you would have these classic NSWGR Lima carriages in your collection and the following shows how to take your Lima carriage (not just the MFE, as they all had similar underframes) and turn it into a detailed model. I have, up until recently, concentrated on constructing freight rolling stock and detailing/constructing diesel locomotives, so this is my first step into detailing passenger stock. After this I now have the confidence to perform more complicated ‘cut and shut’ jobs to make the many other types of NSWGR twelve-wheeled passenger cars. Construction Roof 1 Start by removing the roof from the body, using the tip of a scalpel blade to pry the tabs on the cast window ‘glass’ in four window openings along each side. Use your other hand to…

About Allan English Allan English was born at Eugowra during World War Two and saw the steam era NSWGR up close. He travelled widely by train during his early life as his father pursued a career with the NSWGR, first as a station assistant at Cowra, then at Carcoar and Wallerawang, transferring to Sydney as a shunter, then goods guard at Enfield, before becoming a guard on the Sydney suburban network in the days of the single-deck fleet. As a child, Allan often travelled with dad while he carried out his official duties on ‘trikes’ and in brake vans. This also involved the climbing of many signal posts! Allan has been modelling the steam era of the NSWGR for many years and has every issue of AMRM, which has provided…

O-Aust Kits released an O (¼") scale urethane kit for a VR P type explosive van at the AMRA (Vic) exhibition at Caulfield in late August. Also now available are 7mm scale whitemetal kits for NSWGR 2AT and 2AP bogies, complete with wheels. Peter Boorman’s Workshop have released three new wagons in their N scale NSWGR range. The four-wheel HG goods brakevan has a cast urethane, one-piece body that fits on an Aust-N-Rail etched brass underframe (included in kit). The model includes etched brass steps and white metal buffers. The BEX and TE flat wagons are two-piece urethane kits and, in the case of the BMX, etched brass steps and decals for both the three- and four-letter codes. Both flat wagons are marketed in two-packs. Columbia…

AMRM Digital My latest issue of AMRM arrived in the mail recently. Pulled it from the plastic jacket, first thing I noticed was the lovely smell from the glossy paper. As pages are turned they crackle and pop. What a nice sound! So, some readers do not want the magazine delivered by post, but sent to their electronic device to read it in digital form. There has never been a problem with postal delivery to my location and I always look forward to its arrival, though I don’t expect it on a certain day. Times move on, as they say, and now everything has to be digital. Be that as it may be, there appears to be too much reliance on digital media. I already receive another publication online, but…

My current layout, Yea, is built to represent the prototype station and yards from the 1930s to the 1960s, modelling the section from the departmental residence (DR) at Lyon Street to the gates at the Mansfield end of the station. Yea (pronounced ‘yay’) is a picturesque town, once 79¾ miles (127km) by rail north-north-east of Melbourne, on the now-closed branch line from Tallarook on the North-East Line to Mansfield. The railway as far as Yea opened in 1883. I’ve tried to get as close as possible to the appearance of the prototype, using photos and station maps from the Victorian Railways infrastructure website: www.victorianrailways.net. The layout is housed in 6m x 4m garage which has plaster walls and is carpeted and lit by fluorescent lighting. The layout frame base was…

When you have been in this hobby for as long as most of the Friday-night Ramblers (forty years plus, for most of us) you will have seen most of the trends that have taken place in the hobby over those years. The obvious trends like the move to Digital Command Control (DCC) are easy to spot, but other changes can be almost imperceptible, absorbed into some aspect of the hobby or other without drawing particular attention to themselves and certainly without attracting the attention of your humble scribe. As is so often the case, it was at a regular Friday night get together of the Ramblers that your scribe’s attention was drawn to another of these overlooked trends which has infiltrated the hobby and left its mark. This particular trend…

The NSWGR’s 27 MFE second class 72'6" compartment passenger cars were converted from MFX second class saloon cars (25 between 1938 and 1940) and RFX second class buffet cars (two in 1947). The conversions were mostly internal and they retained tongue and groove siding and crownlights when first converted. The carriage colours at this time were either varnished unpainted timber or Tuscan and russet painted exterior. From 1955, overhauls saw the cars repainted Indian red with buff lining. From the late 1950s the crownlights (replaced with a two-piece plain letter-board) and t&g siding (replaced with plain plywood or Masonite panels) were gradually removed during overhauls. Some of the cars that survived till the 1980s saw further alterations with the removal of the two-piece letterboards and replacement with a one-piece panel.…

Modern Australian corrugated iron comes in 812mm (2'8") wide sheets with a ridge to ridge distance of 76mm (3") and a valley depth of 18mm (¾"). These scale down to an HO sheet width of 9.3mm with a ridge to ridge distance of 0.9mm. By chance, I noticed that the edging material on the floating floor being laid in my daughter’s unit had a corrugated surface which measured 11mm wide with corrugations at 1mm centres. Having read online of modellers making scale corrugated iron with various moulds from aluminium foil, which is very flimsy, I thought I would try to make my material from more robust soft-drink or beer cans using the edging as a press. I fabricated the press from scrap steel in my workshop, plus an offcut of…

I believe that what makes a good model steam locomotive (and rolling stock) more interesting is that little ‘extra’ detail, often obvious in photos of the prototype. I model the NSWGR and refer to details such as steam locomotive fire irons, drivers’ and firemen’s tucker boxes (sometimes home-made, sometimes Gladstone bags), water bags, the red or pink deck hose that usually hangs out the fireman’s side of the cab, the coal shovel jammed in the handrail outside the cab, the canvas weather shields fitted to the rear of the cab roof and sides, also, in days gone by, sometimes a push bike on the running board. ‘Guesstimated’ measurements of the above objects were made from photographs. Fire irons approximately 8'6" x 1" diameter can be fashioned from brass wire. The…

Victorian Railways BB, BLF, BLX, VBBX, VBBY and VBBF bogie box vans, ready-to-run in HO scale by On Track Models, PO Box 15, Emu Plains 2750. Ph: 0438 380 130 (9am-5pm). Website: www. ontrackmodels.com.au . Price: $180.00 per three-pack (single packs are now sold out). The history of the full-sized vans was covered in the author’s previous BLX review on pgs. 46/47 of AMRM Issue 305 (April 2014). Please refer to that issue for details of the prototype appearance, history and usage. The vans I received for this review were BB23 (from pack BB-01), BLF25 (sold as a single unit) and BLX26 (from pack BLX-03). The vans are retailed in three-packs containing various codes in VR and V/Line condition, or in single van packs containing…