Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Australian Model Railway Magazine

Mildura is a large provincial city in north-west Victoria. Until natural gas was provided to the city, portable gas supplies in steel bottles were the principal source of gas energy for homes and businesses. Mildura is also the terminus on my Maryborough to Mildura railway. Amongst the features replicating this station and its environs are a number of private sidings serving fruit packing sheds, oil companies, livestock, cement and the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria (as it existed during my modelling time line) trading as Heatane Gas. The prototype siding was opened for traffic on 5 March 1979 and consisted of a short dead-end siding facing down trains. Its purpose was to provide a safe stabling place for one LPG tank wagon. The Heatane Gas depot was nearby and…

Marmalake is a large bulk grain storage facility and sidings attached to the yard at Murtoa, 296 km (185 miles) from Melbourne on the main western line to Adelaide. [Editor’s note: Bushel measurements have been retained in this article, but cited tonnages apply to wheat only.] When the Second World War broke out, wheat that would have been exported had to be stored for domestic use. Murtoa and Dunolly were selected as the places to build large wheat storage sheds. The Murtoa site was located just south of the railway yards. No. 1 shed measured 265 m (870 ft) long by 60 m (198 ft) wide holding more than 81.6 thousand tonnes (three million bushels). No. 2 shed measured 405 m (1330 ft) long by 73 m (242 ft) wide…

Domestic containers are an unusual beast and, as the name implies, they are used in ‘local’ Australian applications. They partially comply with ISO standards, but need to comply with other equipment interface standards. They can be unique and innovative in their design. Australian domestic containers are often referred to as ‘Series R’ containers and comply with Standards Australia requirements AS-3711 and AS-4615. ‘Series R’ containers do not necessarily comply with all ISO 6346 standard requirements, although the method of securing containers to freight wagons, trailers and other containers remains the same. Australia has embraced a containerised supply chain and, as a result, an interesting collection of domestic containers operate on trains and trucks around the country. Due to the large variety of domestic containers and operations, this article primarily looks…

Andlan Models› have recently retooled their HO scale New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR) BLV kit. Masters for the body were done using all new CAD drawings, 3D printed on higher quality printers than they previously had access to. Bogies side frames are also from new 3D masters that overlay onto etched nickel silver bolsters. Anton Trains› have released a HO scale 60 foot Well-type NSWGR turntable. • Sold painted and ready to run, features include: • Motorised with stepper motor and micro processor control. • Pre-programmed for 12-degree indexing. • Bridge length 209mm. Cutout 220mm. • One piece formed metal well for strength. • Metal section reinforced polyurethane bridge for detail. • Etched brass handrails and nickel silver track. • Motorised unit comes complete with a 2m power control…

Introduction Two of the great temptations of gaining your own space to build a model railway is to fill that space with as much track as possible or to inadvertently design and build a layout that neither fits the time you have available to build and operate it, nor achieves what you want out of your modelling. The result: an unpainted timber concoction of track and wires that leads to more frustration and disappointment than joy, ultimately discouraging you from finishing that layout. Sound familiar? At the end of 2015 I was preparing to move interstate for work and into a much smaller home. I read a blog post by North American model railway author Lance Mindheim encouraging modellers to build layouts to suit our lifestyles. The theory goes that…

Many of us like to take photographs or videos of scenes on our layout. One way to do this is to use a camera mounted on a small tripod or by placing it directly on the baseboard at track level. Although track-level photos can be very effective, positioning of the camera in the desired position can be limited by its size and by the presence of structures such as telegraph poles and figures on the baseboard, by accessibility to parts of the layout and by general scenery ‘clutter’. An alternative to using a camera is to use a smart phone, many of which are now able to take photographs with a quality similar to a good digital camera. To some extent, the smaller size of a smart phone overcomes some…

While I have been scratch-building and kit-bashing carriages and wagons in HO scale for many years, I was nevertheless surprised just how large a Bluebird railcar would be in O scale. Building such a model in O scale requires a large amount of scratch-building and I find there is a measure of satisfaction in what can be achieved. To effectively construct any model, it is essential to have a good plan to a consistent scale. I obtained some large-scale Bluebird plans from Refreshing Memories. However, the dining room table was needed to lay them out, so some smaller scale plans also proved useful. While I knew a reasonable amount about the sides and ends of the Bluebird, the plan of the underframe proved invaluable. Another invaluable item was a steel…

HOn30 E M Baldwin Bo-Bo Sugar cane locomotive by Lyndon’s Trains. Price $200 plus postage. www.lyndonstrains.com/ collections/cane-trains I have to admit that I am not an expert on Queensland sugar mill tramway operations or their equipment. In my research regarding E M Baldwin and their locomotives, I used the book A guide to Australian Locomotives (2009 edition) published by the Australian Railway Historical Society, New South Wales. It would appear that E M Baldwin started as a “backyard operation” in Castle Hill in Sydney. They had a reputation for accomplishing work that other builders were reluctant to take on. The first locomotive they built for Queensland sugar mill tramways was for South Johnston Mill in 1960 and they continued supplying the market until 1983, when they built their last locomotive…

Name: Rozelle Street Scale: HO Period: NSWGR 1978–79 Layout Type: minimum space shunting layout Layout Size: 1400 mm x 330 mm Rail height above floor: 1245 mm Baseboards: 6 mm ply on a pine base Track: Peco code 75 Control: NCE DCC Buildings and Structures: kits, scratch-built from paper and card Scenery: Woodlands Scenics, Mininatur and natural dirt Locomotives: R-T-R from Auscision and IDR Models Rolling stock: R-T-R and kit-built Builder: Ben Gray…

Nestled in the south-east of Western Australia is the town of Esperance; the fuel sidings there would make an interesting location to model. The original narrow gauge Esperance line became marooned by the gauge standardisation project in 1970. In 1974 it was converted to standard gauge, thus this sleepy branch line was extensively rebuilt. The original narrow gauge yard was abandoned and an extensive marshalling yard was built to the west of the city. Two standard gauge branches were built: one to serve the port of Esperance the other an industrial branch. This industrial branch served: • Cooperative Bulk Handling (now CBH Group) grain bunkers, • a superphosphate facility, and • fuel sidings. The industrial branch operated in isolation to the rest of Esperance yard compete with lockable points at…

EXHIBITIONS & EXPOS BURWOOD – NSW. October 15-17, 2021. TT scale railway layout and construction display plus railway films not shown on TV. Burwood Uniting Church, Burwood Road (between Burwood station & Westfield). 2.00pm-5.00pm Fri & Sat, 12.00pm-5.00pm Sun. Peter Gray 0458 043 985. SHEPPARTON – VIC. October 16-17, 2021. Shepparton Model Rail Exhibition (Mooroopna), GV Rail Club Inc. SIR IAN McLennan Centre, Mooroopna Recreation Reserve (Echuca Road entrance). 9.00am–5.30pm (Sat), 10.00am–4.00pm (Sun). Adults $10, Children $5, Family $20. Ross 0407 845 247. https://www.gvrailclub.com CANCELLED – SUNBURY – VIC. October 16-17, 2021. Sunbury Model Railway Club, St Anne’s Church Hall, Riddell Road, Sunbury. Mark Warner 0407 880 604.mrwarner@iprimus.com.au COWES – VIC. January 15-16, 2022. Phillip Island & District Railway Modellers Show, Senior Citizens Hall, 6 Lions Court, Cowes. Open 10.00am–5.00pm…

Beginner’s› content I was a bit puzzled by John Fuhrman’s letter in the August 2021 issue of AMRM. He claims that the magazine doesn’t publish “how-to” projects, or other content aimed at “new modellers”. I say puzzled because the August issue has 4 articles out of 6 that describe “how-to” projects, and in previous issues for 2021 the ratio was about the same. I’m also puzzled when people ask for articles aimed at “new modellers”, but never actually define or specify what they mean by that phrase. Are they referring to people who have no previous knowledge of railways and no previous modelling experience? Knowledgeable enthusiasts who aren’t modellers yet? Experienced modellers who weren’t previously rail enthusiasts? I’d suggest that articles aimed at any one of these groups wouldn’t necessarily…