Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

I was fortunate enough to buy cheaply a second-hand, bogies missing (used on another project), Silvermaz CPH kit and then paid full price for a Silvermaz CPH/CTH kit when on ‘home leave’ some years ago. This was before the Eureka r-t-r CPH existed (well before it was even rumoured) in the age of ‘build it if you want one’, or in my case two. So, once back home in the UK, I set about inspecting what I had bought and what I had to do to get the two CPH rail motors running, plus assessing all the missing bits from the second-hand unit. This started out by looking at available motor options, wheel diameters, costs and the general ‘how do I get these running’ thought processes. FITTING A MOTOR The…

As an active member of the Southern Wisconsin Sandhouse Crew modular model railroad club in the USA, I built and displayed two 6' (1.8m) long, North American-themed modules. Over time it became apparent that lugging about 12' (3.7m) of layout from show to show was not all that it was cracked up to be. I decided I wanted to downsize and at the same time I wanted to ditch the North American theme and build an Australian prototype module. As luck would have it the club had a ready-made opportunity for me to downsize. At one point the club had built a 2' (610mm) long ‘filler’ module that was used to close the loop of the layout whenever the combination of 4' (1.2m) and 6' (1.8m) modules resulted in a…

Stayers The preparation of Bob Gallagher’s Comment in this issue, highlighting some of the ‘stayers’ in our hobby, caused us to reflect on the contribution to our hobby made by all the ‘stayers’, even those that haven’t quite managed forty years yet. While Bob’s Comment only looked at some of the long-serving hobby shops, there are many other ‘stayers’, far too many to mention individually. Not only the hobby shops, but those such as the ‘cottage’ producers of specialist kits and other suppliers of low-volume product to the hobby who have been meeting our needs for decades. And not to mention the importers who created the current China-sourced r-t-r revolution in the hobby, some of whom have been around for over two decades, in one form or another. They all…

Although Alynvale, my first layout, was based on an actual track plan, nothing on it gave any indication of where it was meant to be, other than somewhere in NSW. Not being satisfied with this, I decided that my next effort would be based on a specific location, or at least a specific area, and that the scenery, structures and trains should leave little doubt as to the time and place the model was intended to represent. I started planning what would eventually become Reids Flat while still working on Alynvale and considered a number of busy mainline locations before realising that modelling somewhere like Koorawatha (as described by Bob Cooke in AMRM Issue 137, April 1986), located near Cowra on the Blayney-Demondrille cross country line, was a more realistic…

Having spent the past 37 years as a university lecturer, I have become accustomed to pointing out details written on a blackboard using a wooden pointer and latterly, details projected on a whiteboard using a laser pointer. Now, in retirement, I find myself needing to point out matters of interest on my model railway. This is not always as straightforward as it seems. Firstly, I have a layout that is only freely accessible from one side, meaning that I am sometimes discussing features that are 2m or more from the viewer. Secondly, your audience might be novices as far as railways are concerned, so if you are pointing out the movement of your ‘47 class’ in the storage depot, he or she may not know which locomotive you are actually…

The model display at the annual Victorian Prototype Modellers’ Forum continues to produce fine models. This Gallery continues from that published in AMRM Issue 312 (June 2015), illustrating some of the excellent HO scale models of locomotives and rolling stock that once ran in the broad-gauge states, Victoria and South Australia, seen at a recent Forum. The next Victorian Prototype Modellers’ Forum is scheduled to be held at the Thornbury High School on Sunday, 8 November 2015. Photos by James McInerney.…

Basic landform development There are many methods for creating the basic model landscape and then detailing it. I favour the cardboard web scenery framework developed by American modeller, Dave Frary. It is lightweight, cheap and easily modified. There are a couple of aspects of the method that I approach differently. During track planning, I set out key scenic features, such as tunnels, buildings, bridges, roads, high ground and low ground. I used cuttings to disguise the sharp curves. The visual break in the line of sight tricks the eye. However, the relatively small distance between levels, especially the low and medium levels, precluded the use of high embankments and deep cuttings. It is generally recommended that scenery slope downwards from the back of the layout to the front. This ensures…

While having a break between magazines back in July 2014, I photographed an unusual looking train near Exeter, south of Moss Vale on the NSW Main South line. It caught my eye as it consisted of a rake of hopper wagons with an NR locomotive at each end. Peter Clark’s article Lynwood Quarry to Rooty Hill Aggregate Trains in the January 2014 Railway Digest gave me some vital clues as to what it was, while the final details were filled in by Stephen Relf, Josh Beveridge, David Robinson and Glenn Kelly after an enquiry on Facebook. What I had seen was train No.2196, a (then) new train operated by Pacific National on behalf of Boral, conveying aggregate from the Peppertree gravel quarry, near Marulan, to Sydney for distribution. The interesting…

The growth of the model railway industry over the past half century, not only in this country, but all around the world, has been nothing short of incredible. With modern production methods and the growth of the manufacturing industry in China, what was, in the middle of last century, considered to be only a dream has now become a reality. Most models come with detail that was not available to modellers in the past. Just how much detail depends on the production methods used, and while some models have a slightly lower standard of detail, this in no way detracts from their suitability as base models for an ‘impressionistic’ layout. Many of today’s models can be used straight out of the box and, while lineside buildings and accessories are now…

NSWGR S truck, r-t-r in HO scale by Austrains Pty Ltd., PO Box 3076, Putney 2112. Website: www.austrains.com.au . Price: $195.00 per five-pack. Prototype The full history of the NSW S open wagons is more than adequately covered in Craig Warton’s articles, S, S and S in AMRM Issue191 (April 1995) and S, S and S – 2 The Fiddly Bits in AMRM issue 192 (June 1995), so I will only summarise the most relevant bits here. The S wagon, distinguished by an 18' body on a 10' wheelbase, four-wheel, steel underframe, was, for most of the 20th century, the most prolific open wagon on the NSWGR system. There were 8916 S wagons ‘on the books’ in 1963; the next most common were the 2508 K four-wheeled…