Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

I have often wondered how one could give some depth to backdrop scenes. I have now tried to do so using layers, like movie cartoon animators do, or like layers that pop up when I open some children’s books. The word ‘layers’ immediately brings to mind photography and photo editing programs, in my case, Adobe Photoshop. I wanted a scene with numerous objects in it, at varying distances. I wanted plenty of hard-edged objects, e.g. buildings, more than soft-edged, e.g., foliage. I found a suitable scene [Photo 1] while travelling by ferry to Darling Harbour, Sydney – a scene of CBD buildings looking to the east. I cropped it as per Photo 2. I wanted my perspective scene to span a wall-space 600mm wide at the back of a city…

Newcastle’s Peter Lewis has made a bit of a specialty of constructing very highly detailed HO scale exhibition layouts that relegate the trains to the background and focus on his beautifully scratchbuilt from styrene buildings, modelled (mostly) from prototypes found around his home town. The first was Time & Patience, featured in AMRM Issue 268 (February 2008). Since then he has completed four more, including this one, A-tracktiv Effort, photographed by James McInerney at the 2017 Thornleigh model railway exhibition, organised by the Epping Model Railway Club. This grouping of buildings, garage, church and two houses, were all modelled from prototypes found in Teralba. The roofing material is made from handmade corrugated aluminium, locally produced in Tasmania and the railings/fencing at the front of the church were handmade from brass…

Staff Changes We have received a number of very welcome offers of voluntary assistance to fill the void left by the departure of our long-time draftsman, Jonathan Llewelyn. One of our ‘final’ proofreaders, Pete Grant, has expanded his input by offering to illustrate the feature layout track-plans needed for every issue, while first-time volunteer, Mitch Camp-ton, has put his hand up to provide drawings on an ‘as required’ basis. Mitch’s first drawing, a rather unusual VR louvred van, will appear in a near-future issue of AMRM, while Pete’s handiwork can be perused on p.20 of this issue. As well, in order to cover the impending retirement of our excellent ‘first’ proofreader, Bob Comer-ford, we have persuaded one of our very practised past ‘final’ proofreaders (2009-2013), the delightful Louise Smithers, to…

› One of the advantages of modelling a stretch of railway line, rather than a station, is that the era is set primarily by the trains, rather than the infrastructure. This scene could only be the early 1980s, as a relatively clean ‘candy’ 421 class drops downhill on a bulk load of superphosphate as Indian red 42216 and 4536, having traversed the spiral with their Sydney-bound fast freight, cross over the down line to regain the correct side for left hand running on the double track ahead. A time warp in progress, as late 2000s era, Independent Rail ‘Helga’ 1428, rolls downhill with an empty rail set, passing over the tunnel carrying the up line under the down line. After a short cutting, the up line enters another tunnel under…

Further to the review of the SDS SAR SOC/SO ore wagons in AMRM Issue 329 (April 2018), Graham Ahearn has delved into his extensive collection of photographs and come up with these images of AOQY wagons running in NSW during the 1980s. For those for whom prototypical accuracy is important, we now have proof of the use of these vehicles in NSW east of Broken Hill. The AN ore wagons, conveying silver/lead/ zinc ore, started their journey at Cobar, marshalled in a train with the NSW wagons that carried copper ore to Port Kembla. At (one assumes) either Dubbo or Orange, the South Australian wagons were detached and forwarded to Broken Hill for onward transit to Port Pirie. If there was enough loading, the vehicles would form a block load…

Fifteen minutes a day is an hour and 45 minutes a week or seven hours in four weeks. Seven hours. That is a whole work day with an hour off for lunch. Imagine if you could spend a whole day on your model railway. Last year I was insanely busy during the last three months. I looked at my little model railway which was still a ‘Plywood Central’ after four months and wondered when I would find the time to finish it. My calendar was pretty much chock-a-block full. I had meetings after work and other community commitments some evenings. In my line of trade, there is always work that I have to take home and the last three months is the real business end of the year. If I…

South Australia’s railway buildings from the steam era have a distinctive architectural look about them. Built in stone, brick or timber, their design was unique to the system, but the building techniques used were those of the domestic housing of the day. This model is based on one of the smallest of the type on the SAR, examples of which were located at Oodlawirra on the Peterborough to Broken Hill line, Booleroo Centre on the Gladstone to Wilmington line and Owen in the Clare Valley, though the latter was to a slightly different arrangement; it had a skillion roof instead of the gable style of the others. I have selected a building with smallish dimensions and reasonably simple proportions for this project in HO scale, so the materials mentioned are…

NSWGR 30 class 4-6-4T Steam Locomotive, r-t-r in HO scale by Austrains Pty Ltd, PO Box 3076, Putney 2112. Website: www.austrains.com.au . Price: $595.00. Prototype The 30 class 4-6-4 tank locomotive, introduced into service in 1902 as the S class, was one of the trio of William Thow designs that transformed the NSWGR system, beginning in 1892 with the introduction of the P (later 32) class 4-6-0 passenger locomotive and then the T (later 50) class in 1896. These three classes (together with the Lucy modified TF (53) and K (55) classes that were developed from the T class) remained the backbone of the NSW system right up to the demise of steam in the early 1970s, despite the advent of more powerful and glamorous classes in…

The announcement by Casula Hobbies in AMRM Issue 327 (December 2017) that a ready-to-run HO scale model of the NSWGR HG four-wheel brake van would be available this year has been of great interest to me. In my display cupboard are several scratchbuilt OO scale models (4mm to the foot) of NSW rolling stock, together with one locomotive. These were all built 50 years or more ago, before HO scale kits of Australian prototypes were available. Indeed, the oldest of these items, an HG brake van, is about 65 years old. As a teenager in the late 1940s, my interest in model railways was stimulated by reading the English magazine Model Railway News (MRN) with its articles about John Ahern’s Madder Valley Railway, as well as his three books about…

On my layout, the point motors of choice are motor-driven units, usually Tortoise by Circuitron, that require a constant power source and hence there are problems with two-way switching. This article describes how I managed to solve the problem. Definitions ‘Two-‘ or ‘multi-way switching’ means operating a single turnout from more than one location (e.g. from two separate control panels at opposite ends of a layout). ‘Point motor’ means a mechanism for switching the point blades of a turnout that is based upon a motor-driven gearbox slowly moving the point blades. Examples of this would be the Tortoise point motor from the USA-based Circuitron Corporation and the Cobalt from DCC Concepts of Western Australia. ‘Solenoid’ (or Solenoid Motor) means the mechanism produced by manufacturers such as H&M (no longer made,…

In my previous article Computer Aided Design [p.25 AMRM Issue 328, February 2018], I showed how a computer program can be used to design a model railway layout. Although such programs can be a wonderful aid in designing your layout with accurate specification of track elements (flexible track straights, turnouts, slips etc.), they only provide a basic 3D image of how the layout will look. More importantly, they can only offer a static image of the layout i.e. they do not show the trains actually moving around the layout and interacting with each other. To do this, we need to move into the world of computer train simulation. In this article, I will explain what computer train simulation is, how it can be used and, via a link to a…

SCMRA ACTIVITIES For all activities contact Eastern Division representative Graham Windmill on (02) 9626 0351. 9-11 June Stand at the Epping Model Railway Exhibition, Rosehill Gardens Grand Pavilion, off Grand Parade Rosehill. 14 July Open Day by SCMRA and EMRCI at Epping Creative Centre, 26 Stanley Rd, Epping. 10am to 3.30pm. Layout operation. Getting Started clinic at 11.00am. Free sausage sizzle lunch. Details from Trevor Moore (02) 9876 3522. EXHIBITIONS RICHMOND VALE – NSW. May 19-20, 2018. The Annual Model Exhibition, Richmond Vale Railway Museum, Leggetts Drive. 9.30am-4.00pm (Sat & Sun). Due to fire damage in September 2017 there will be no train ride to Pelaw Main but hoping to have some of the Mulbring Road line open. Facebook or www.richmondvalerailwaymuseum.org BALLARAT – VIC. June 9-11, 2018. Ballarat Model Railway…