Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

Since the initial production of suburban electric trains by Bergs Hobbies and with additional models now being produced by Southern Rail Models, Auscision and others, there is an increasing interest in having layouts with overhead wiring, either for general effect or, more rarely, for additional electrical pickup. I joined the ranks of such modellers over 25 years ago, when Bergs’ produced its original single-deck suburban electric set. Masts and wires were promptly sourced from Sommerfeldt and other manufacturers and installed over the main line of my layout. The general appearance was most impressive, but there was one significant and onerous setback – cleaning the track with my Peco track rubber became extremely difficult in many of the hard-to-reach parts of the layout. When approaching the track, my arm tended to…

Modelling the Victorian Railways in O (¼") scale is thriving (thanks mostly to Veteran Models, it would seem!), as can be seen from these photos AMRM’s Production Manager, James McInerney, took at a recent Victorian Prototype Modellers’ Forum, as organised by the Victorian Model Railway Society. The 2015 event took place on Sunday, 8 November last.…

SDS Acquires Austrains Tooling SDS Models have announced that they have purchased all the tooling assets of Austrains Pty Ltd. This agreement only involves the tooling; the name Austrains and the current stock remain with John Eassie. Steven Pracy, the principal of SDS Models, has made the following statement: “John Eassie, of Austrains, has been looking to retire for several months now and we have been looking to buy his tooling for a similar period. Last month we concluded the negotiations. We wish to thank John for the opportunity and to wish him well in semi-retirement. As he still holds a quantity of Austrains stock, he’ll remain a familiar face on the exhibition scene for some time. We’d also like to thank John for his graciousness in allowing us to…

Continued from pg22 of AMRM Issue 314 (October 2015) Scenery Construction of the rock outcrop, the ridge along the back of the layout and the high ground above the tunnel relied upon the usual expanded foam, plaster bandage and rock moulds. The exposed rock areas were stained with grey fabric dye and then sprayed with diluted bleach. This treatment created some interesting variations in colour and weathering effects. The materials and methods used to create ground cover have changed substantially over the life of the layout. Initially I used a product called Tuft, which was dry plaster mixed with powdered pigments to represent various soil and grass colours. This material was very effective in reproducing the colour and various textures of soil and some of it can still be seen…

A lot of traffic on our railways was (and is) conveyed in open wagons. The products hauled in open wagons include aggregates, ores and concentrates. The appearance of the load in an open wagon depends on the product’s size range, colour and the shape of the load. The process used prior to railing depends on the product. Aggregates and ballast are simply suitable hard rock crushed to size. High concentration ores such as iron ore are sold as lump or fines products; like aggregates they are simply crushed to size. Metal ores such as copper, nickel, lead and zinc usually contain low percentages of metal. These ores require concentration prior to shipping or smelting. The ores are crushed and milled to a fine powder in water as a ‘slurry’. The…

Most layouts that model a country town setting have a couple of shops and houses, plus maybe a service station and perhaps a community hall, but there are many other building types to be found in country towns that can also make interesting and attractive models.…

Victorian Railways L Class Electric Locomotive, r-t-r in HO scale by Auscision Models, PO Box 1791, Castle Hill 1765. Ph: 0425 866 442. Fax: (02) 9620 6695. Website: www. auscisionmodels.com.au . Price: $295.00 (plus P&P). Ordered from the Preston (UK) works of the English Electric Company, the 25 members of the VR’s L class were specifically designed and tasked with traffic haulage on the newly electrified Gippsland Main Line, becoming synonymous with this line. However, they were also common on suburban goods workings around Melbourne. Commencing from the completion of the electrification of the Gippsland Main Line from Dandenong to Yallourn and Traralgon in 1956, the L class hauled a wide range of consists from long trains of brown coal to Melbourne and Newport, to…

Having been around in different forms for many years now, 3D printing’s popularity in the consumer market has taken off in recent times. This opens up a world of possibilities for railway modellers. It is technology that can appear intimidating, but, especially with the availability of 3D printing services, it truly is within the reach of anyone with basic modelling and computer skills. This article will take the reader through the process of designing a product, then through using a 3D printing service to get your models printed. Using a printing service eliminates the cost and set up issues relating to running your own printer and provides access to a higher quality of printing and greater range of materials. Materials Most providers will have a variety of materials available, all…

I model Victorian Railways prototypes in O scale (1:48) and the parts shown in the photos are of my scratchbuilt VR A2 Class 4-6-0 express passenger locomotive, No.995, prior to painting and final assembly. Between 1907 and 1922, 185 A2 class locomotives were built at the Victorian Railways workshops at Newport in Melbourne. Of this total, 125 had Stephenson valve gear and the last 60, built between 1915 and 1922, were fitted with Walschaerts valve gear. Originally powered by saturated steam, they were all progressively fitted with larger, superheated boilers. They had a boiler pressure of 185psi (1275.5kpa) and developed a tractive effort of 27,480lb (122.2kN) with 6'1" (1.85m) driving wheels, and were permitted a maximum speed of 70mph (112km/h). The model represents how they looked between 1926 and the…

I had a small gap to fill on our ABLO layout after some scenery reconfiguration [Photo 1]. Someone suggested a small quarry. The next weekend, I grabbed my camera and looked for similar-sized quarries in the nearby Adelaide Hills that I could use for inspiration. The southern Hills have many small, now disused, quarries which were in use up to the 1920s, including the Sleeps Hill quarries that supplied ballast to the SAR. I took a number of photos of small quarries in a similar setting. I was also interested in the colouring of the rocks, and found some good examples. Modelling the rock faces didn’t hold any terror for me, as I had picked up a technique from an early issue of Model Railroader when I was a teenager.…

Southern Rail have released the first examples of their version of the WA L class locomotives, r-t-r in HO scale. First to arrive, in time for the Liverpool exhibition, were the red and yellow ATN Access and orange and blue Westrail (including the ‘radio equipped’ locos that ran in Victoria) locomotives. The PN blue and gold, Interail blue, orange and yellow and the limited edition Westrail experimental colour scheme were (at the time of writing) expected at the end of October, with the original WAGR two-tone blue and ARG orange locos expected around the time this issue appears. There is also a very limited run of L class available in Southern Rail’s own (non-prototypical) black, orange and silver colour scheme. The models are all available with a factory-fitted…