Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

Although there are products such as the ChooChooCam available for filming from a moving model train, the financial outlay probably outweighs the number of times I would envisage using it. For this reason, I started thinking how I could make a video of the layout with more readily available devices. My first idea was to use the smart-phone. My layout is HO scale so, unless you model in G scale, facing the phone forwards is probably not possible. I therefore experimented with mounting the phone on its side and facing it sideways from a flat wagon. To hold it in position, I fabricated a right-angle bracket and secured this to the flat-wagon and sideways phone using Blutak. Unfortunately, the dimensions of my iPhone5, which is one of the narrower smartphones,…

SAR Centenary Passenger Cars, r-t-r in HO scale, by Orient Express Reproductions, 2 King William Rd, Unley 5061. Website: www.orientexpressmodels.com.  au. Price: $138.00 per car, plus postage. Prototype The South Australian Railways’ iconic passenger car was the Centenary type, a series of 55'0" long, 10'6" wide, suburban cars, developed from earlier cars introduced by the Glenelg Railway Co. in 1899. The twenty-five SAR cars were built between 1908 and 1913 by Islington Workshops and A. Pengelley and Co. of Edwardstown. They were end-loading, clerestory, bogie cars of typical American appearance, with sixteen windows per side in saloon cars and twelve windows in the combined baggage cars. Step-down facilities were provided from the end platforms. They were numbered 260-269 and 364-378, Nos 268, 269 and 375-378 being the baggage…

Having enjoyed my experience with the building and scenicking of my now retired Leanganook layout [AMRM Issue 227, April 2001 – Editor], I harboured the desire to build a layout on a ‘go it alone’ basis. I did labour on the decision whether to model a particular location, but decided to adopt a freelance approach. By the time I had completed the layout (if there is such a thing) I had spent, in round figures, $8000.00. The overall cost has been softened somewhat by the inclusion of resourced materials, scratchbuilding and making my own trees and the like. For me a new layout had to be simple to transport and operate and capable of being assembled and dismantled by one person. Background Fogarty’s Gap took almost twelve months to build,…

For a few years now I have been very busy modelling the NSW 72'6" Supplementary Interurban Carriages, that very distinctive feature of the late 1970s/early 1980s period on the NSW system, from various bits and pieces. So far, out of the twenty-four 72'6" supplementary interurban carriages built by the PTC/SRA, I have only four more to model and I will have them all. Why build these carriages, many have asked me. It’s a case of these cars appealling to me. I call them the weird and wonderful one-offs and not too many people have modelled them. In fact, after attending model exhibitions for the last 25 years, I am yet to see any supplementary interurban cars on display. The inspiration to build these carriages came from seeing Roy Howarth’s work…

Children really love to watch model trains run around a track. They love them even more if they are the ones allowed to drive them! Like most clubs, Canberra Model Railway Club uses a variety of means to advertise its annual model railway exhibition. This includes print and radio advertising, distributing flyers, using posters at community locations and clubs, roadside signs and, in earlier days, utilising TV advertising. The latter did not prove to be cost effective. For the past few years, the Club has taken an HO scale U-Drive portable layout to community markets, church fetes, Bunnings stores, seniors’ days and even to national institutions such as the National Museum and the National Archives. The current U-Drive layout is built in two sections, each measuring 1800mm x 1200mm, which…

The late Kev Loughhead’s Moping Branch Railway has featured many times in the pages of this publication, with extensive coverage in AMRM Issue 149 (April 1988) and more recently in Issue 289 (August 2011), along with a number of smaller articles dating as far back as 1977. As a final tribute to Kev, Don Bishop has assembled a collection of photos showcasing his modelling. Some of these photos show his early work, when scratchbuilding was the only realistic option available for prototype modellers, others were taken late in the life of ‘the Moping’.…

Whatever Happened To…? I read with interest the letter from Geoffrey Wilson entitled Whatever Happened To…? in AMRM Issue 319 (August 2016). I remember the first time I viewed Nambucca Heads (at Liverpool in 1998), I went straight back to the other three layout members and said, “We have got some serious competition here.” The station building was superb. I didn’t even realise, until reading this letter, that Viv Farrow had built a layout based on Macksville. As I have always wanted to model this location (but never did), surely someone has some more information including photos that could be passed on to the magazine? Macksville was quite a busy place in the 1980s (for a small yard), with banana traffic (NLEX ALEX VLCX), meatworks traffic in containers and a…

WARNING Please note: this modification requires soldering skill at circuit board level and soldering SMD components. It also involves modifying circuit boards. This modification will void your warranty and all responsibility resides with the person making the modification. This is a hardwired installation, allowing for independent control of the marker lights with the number board lights always on. I have used a Loksound Select 8-pin decoder for this install. I chose to completely rewire the locomotive for a few reasons, the main one being that the wires to the bogies can short out on the frame in their current position, while the required modifications to the light boards make the included main circuit board redundant. Dismantling the Locomotive The first step is to dismantle the locomotive. This is achieved by…

Have you ever wanted to make some nice barbed wire or plain wire fencing out of rail? Well, I did try this. I was making some five-strand wire fencing and had cut up about 100 lengths of weathered code 80 rail to about 20mm and had drilled the required five holes in the first two lengths of rail and drilled two holes in the third rail when my drill bit broke. Damn! There has got to be a better way of doing this. I’m all into this ‘better, stronger, faster’ stuff. Given that I could not drill any more holes for a while I started scanning the internet. Some of the photos of fences that I perused showed that the steel posts were more like I-beams than actual rails. Hmmmm!…

Farewell Phyllis Dunn With saddened hearts we say farewell to Alice Phyllis Dunn, the mother of AMRM’s Editor Ian (and brother Peter, both sons blessed with keen railway history interests). For decades Phyllis had been an ‘invisible’ part of AMRM, on hand to take those important messages that linked the AMRM team, particularly in the days prior to the internet. Phyllis was a delightful lady in person and on the phone; always ready for a quick chat and a question or two of my growing family. On more than one occasion Phyllis became involved in our magazine and book production, in one instance observing a grammatical error in a proof page just after son Ian had departed on an overseas trip. Quick to make contact, Phyllis helped us avoid an…