Bits and Bobs

 Things have been plodding along nicely on the layout doing bits here and there.

I changed a bit of furniture in the room to improve access under the layout.

I planned a goods train schedule for running sessions.

And then I had a better idea.

As part of the industrial area known as Junction Yard alterations, I changed some of my container wagons. A couple of posts ago I had a couple of OCY wagons with some blue bulk flour containers. I repainted the containers and put them on three ICX wagons instead as three wagons look a bit more impressive.

This meant less container wagons on one train. I found some old OCY decals to put on the old OCY wagons. The drawback was that they were too big for the space on the wagon. The result is from a Word document to represent the number panels. I had six OCY wagons that I has never put decals on. Now they are numbered up and back running on the layout. I fixed number panels to a couple of other scratch built wagons as well while I was at it.

Here are the OCYs.

Here's a bit of a formula: 2 x OCY = 3 x ICX

So the three ICX wagons lost were replaced by 2 OCYs. The train went from 9 wagons to 8. However, it fits nicely into the arrival and departure roads of Junction Yard. It also fits into the siding at Billabong Marina that has been holding a rake of 8 wheat hoppers.

I have 6 GME container wagons that I have kept as a fixed consist that travels from the container yard at Junction Yard to the dockside at Billabong Marina. I've added two OCYs to this consist.

But that is not all. I have 2 OCYs left. I have five Auscision container wagons that were sold unpainted years ago. I painted them different colours and put different wagon codes from NQIW and RQIW. These wagons had their numbers boosted by putting some containers into open wagons.

All up, I have 24 container wagons in three trains of 2 OCY wagons and the rest with 48 feet long wagons.

One train is in staging. One train is at the container depot in Junction Yard and the third is at the container siding at Billabong Marina.

One of the new jobs for the layout is to take a train from staging to Junction Yard, swap the wagons and go to Billabong Marina, swap the wagons here and travel to Boydtown Yard to swap the loco over before heading to staging, ready for the next run.

I've tested it out and it's a fun train to run.

Until next time.

Revitalising Yards

I've been using my fifteen minutes a day on the layout to rework a couple of yards.

The first yard reworked was Tathra Yard. This out of the way place is quickly turning into a solid destination with the sidings holding up to 16 wagons. The loop is really suited to 7 BCH length wagons and a guards van, so up to four goods train per day are required to shunt the yard.

With the impending work on Junction Yard and the removal of the brewery and McGuffins Industry, a new siding was added for the relocated brewery. This will need a new building, but more on that later.

The Dairy Siding was reversed as well, thanks to the employment of a 3 way point. I had this as a spare back up as I think that I may need to replace one of the old ones soon. Hopefully, this won't need to happen. The siding is also a little longer too.

The brewery will need to be shunted via the quarry siding. I reckon the quarry folks won't mind, especially if they have a few free samples.

I may have added an extra bit of timber to widen and already widened board to accomodate the dairy.

After working here, I turned around and reworked Junction Yard. The image below shows the result. 

Where the white and silver flour vans are needed no change, however, this is where the flour mill will go. The two VR VLX louvre vans are where the dairy used to be. This siding was extended and a warehouse will be put there for the bagged flour to be loaded into the vans.

The white milk tanks are in the new dairy siding. It's a little shorter and it will need a new building.

I reckon that's it for this area. The corner behind it was finished years ago. Maybe this is the spot to finish off with scenery now.

Until next time.

The Industrial Area

 I have an industrial area on the layout called Junction Yard. The name was a place holder as it is a goods yard next to a junction, so it ended up sticking. Here's an old image. I have just realised that there is not an image showing the whole yard. 

I've been spending a good deal of my fifteen minutes (hours truth be told) thinking about revamping it.

There are a couple of industries that are a little fun.

The first is Two Teachers Brewery. It's a Kibri Paulaner Brewery kit that has been on about three different layouts. Some of it is in a box somewhere but this part, combined with Faller grain storage kit, it looks good. It receives BWH hoppers with grain for the beer making and it sends the beer out in surplus MRCs.

Next is McGuffin Industries. This is another Kibri kit and has been reused a couple of times as well. What does it make? Who knows. A McGuffin is used in a story to move the plot along, such as trying to recover a Maltese Falcon. It could be anything, so long as the characters in the movie want to get it. This makes whatever. It receives all manner of wagons that might need a place to go. It shares the same track as the brewery and are often shunted at the same time.

One industry that I wanted to have is a dairy. There is a corresponding siding on another part of the layout so the transport of milk is essentially confined to the layout without the need for the milk tanks to go into staging. It was scratch built for the last layout in 2019 and fits in well here. The three unbranded Dairy Farmers tanks are swapped with branded Oak milk tanks. The MRC takes bottled milk to other places.

 

These industries have served me well for the last few years, but recently I went though a couple of old boxes and found my NGFF wagons. These are IanLindsay Models kits that I built in the 1990s. In real life they ran from Manildra in NSW to Clyde Yard in Sydney carrying bagged flour. When I plan a layout, I try to fit the stock that I have on it and plan industries for a type of wagon. For the last two layouts, these little fellows have sadly missed out. I was working on a siding on the last layout before its untimely demise. Chatting with one of my mates, he suggested that I could put in a siding next to the dairy as an unloading point. I would need to put in a very extreme low relief building to cater for them. I didn't think that it would be a problem...

...until I went the the Canberra Exhibition last weekend, and found a pack of V/Line flour hoppers in the sale box at SDS. I had seen a photo of these behind a NSW loco, so I reckoned there was a precedent. They look great. I spent the afternoon last Saturday researching what I could. Their time on the standard gauge was probably spent hauling limestone or cement. I already have enough wagons for my cement terminal.

These wagons went loaded from regional Victoria to Melbourne. My afternoon of research landed me on this blog: https://vrballarat.blogspot.com/ I hope the owner doesn't mind me linking it here. On his blog, Greg, the author, describes how he uses these wagons in operating session and has images of how they are loaded.

When I purchased the pack, I though that I would keep one and sell the other two and get my money back on them. I would put it where the NGFF wagons would be unloaded. They are removed and the flour hopper takes their place. Then I had other thoughts. 

I have the wheat silos. Why not have a flour mill next to it? Wheat comes in and flour goes out - bagged and bulk. These three wagons were going to reorganise my freight yard.

Then I remembered my trips to Bomaderry in the 1990s. I would catch the train there and while I was there I would see 48 class locos shunting light blue containers on wagons. I remember seeing flour in some of the corners of the corrugations of the container sides when I was on the train waiting to depart. I later found out that this was containerised flour from the Manildra Group mill. They were top loaded through hatches. The same type of hatches on the Powerline Models containers of the 1990s.

I had some in a box and found some paint. Then I put them on a couple of Silvermaz OCY wagons that I had in a draw waiting for a bit of finishing. I prefer the idea of these containers on short wagons as three wagons looks longer than two. I could pick up three container wagons on one shunt and replace them with the three flour hoppers. For now, here they are. If I go ahead with this, I might need to strip the paint off and try again, you can see the previous paintwork underneath.

I picked up a Walthers Redwing Milling kit to use. I'm still not sure whether I make it as it should be or use both the front and rear walls side by side and the side walls on either end like a low relief building.

Sadly McGuffin Industry will need to go. It can be consigned to a storage box.

The same will happen to the brewery. However, I could use part of another kit to replace it.

The diary, I really want to keep. Maybe, I might have to reduce the the wagons to tanks only.

Here is some thing that I have planned at least. The brown building could be the brewery. The red building on the end is a scenic block to hide trains that are going up the inline. Where it starts on the left is close to the incline - see the image above with the tautliner NGFF wagons.

One thing with this plan though, there isn't a place to load the NGFFs with the containerised flour and the flour hoppers.

What am I going to do? Sit on these thoughts for a bit so that I don't rush into something. Future me is never a big fan of past me and the lack of thought sometimes. I'll ask for advice from friends. I'm thinking of making the flour mill as big as I can and putting a warehouse for the flour where the dairy is in the image above. I might have to remake the dairy, consigning this model to the storage box. 

It's sad for these buildings. They join the others from previous layouts in storage, waiting for a future layout. I reckon that if I get my act into gear, I could finish this by the end of the decade. I also reckon that after I retire, (still a long way off yet) I'll have another layout in me with ideas and lessons learned from this one and spots for buildings

For now, I'll keep running the layout.

Until next time.

  

Making Stuff Up

 After creating my track clean train, I was left with two E wagon kits. While I was at Casula Hobbies a couple of weeks ago, I spotted some E wagon log loads. So I bought a couple.

I've been looking into the industries around Tathra, mainly because I had added another siding to the yard. I had been using it to load ballast hoppers. However, the small loader that I had been using kept getting knocked over and the clearance because it was on a curve was very tight. Not only that, but after watching a clip on a modern stone train being loaded with a front end loader on YouTube, I realised that a significant amount of dust is produced. This obviously pretend HO scale stone dust would end up over my little plastic people waiting at the station opposite the loading. That would never do. So I put in a new siding.

Now that I have a spare siding, what could I have loaded there?

I had put my sleeper wagon there to be loaded with timber sleepers. I have a couple of other WSC kits to build. One is Sydney Hobbies and the other is an IDR Models kit.This is more coincidence than knowledge, but I have since found out that sleepers were cut on the south coast and shipped by sea to other places. This industry dried up in the late 1950s. But what if it didn't? I just need to build the kits and presto! A definite new industry.

Timber is also an industry in the area as well. Timber logs are processed (turned into wood chip) at a wood chip plant in Eden and exported to be turned into paper and cardboard.

My E wagon log loads could help with that. It seems that the NSW railways didn't have specific wagons for the task according to Railway Freight Wagons in NSW 1982 by John Beckhaus.

I looked into modern log trains in NSW. Today it seems that timber logs are loaded onto a flat ISO container base with bolsters to hold the logs in place.

I've always had a soft spot for the UK style timber wagon (OTA) that I saw while travelling by train through the Scottish highlands in the late 90s.

So I made my own wagons up.

I used the E wagon base. I had issues fixing the truss rods underneath the first wagon. I'd cut the supports too short. So, using an ICX container wagon as inspiration, I altered the underside if the wagons. Next, created bolsters for the wagons and some panels for the ends. I drew my inspiration for the end panels from the NGFF Taughtliner wagons. (I have a couple of these to add to the roster.) The end panels are not an exact copy of the NGFFs but are loosely based on them.

They were painted in weathered grey (Vallejo Air Tire Black) and the ends and bolsters in red (Model Master). My airbrushing skills have taken a hit from not being used for a couple of years.

What would you call such a wagon? Using the above mentioned book, I called them NFTF. N for NSW, F  for flat, T for timber and F for the type of bogie they are on. I gave them numbers outside of the numbers used in NSW in 1982.

It was a bit of fun. I did need to buy some styrene from my local hobby shop so the two wagons cost me $24 each if you include the two loads.

Here are a couple of images for the finished wagons ready to run on the layout. They could do with a spot of weathering, but that can wait for another day.

Would I make more? Probably. I have all the styrene that I need, as well as bogies left over from old scratch built container wagons that I made over 25 years ago. I might paint them in other colours first. However, I have a couple of sleeper wagons to build first.

Until next time.

I'm still here. It's just that I've been doing other stuff.

No posts in 2025! Well, as the heading says, I've been doing other stuff.

I won't go into it as it is not that exciting.

I've still been working on the layout but not a lot. Most of the stuff was done in the last few weeks.

Over the last couple of days, I built a kit. This is my first kit in a while.

I popped into Casula Hobbies last week for some S and K truck loads, as well as some sleeper loads for WSC kits that I have. While I was there, I spotted a Silvermaz bogie water gin kit. I hadn't seen one for a while and I know that there is also the Casula Hobbies kit which is a little fancier but I didn't need fancy. I just need the the top of the kit for another track cleaning wagon.

I've already written about my track cleaning train - in fact this has been the most popular post on the blog.

I have a Walthers track cleaning boxcar. It's the same length as the water gin. Take off the body and modify the water gin tank a little and hey presto - a track cleaning vehicle that is based in New South Wales.

This one has a cork pad. The other one has a track rubber. The MHG has the Noch track brushes.

It's a different colour because I couldn't remember the yellow that I used the first time.

Now I have two flat wagons left over. Their story is for another post.

Until next time.

Slow but Steady Progress

 With a bit of renewed enthusiasm, I've started the the scenic work on the layout. Of course once that starts, running takes a back seat. Hopefully, I can plan some things well so that I don't need to move too many thing around.

The first part of the work, I started on the station on the corner of the layout. The blocks of flats were from the first layout when I was still in my old house in the coast. I'd like to use them all and they sort of just squeeze in. In front of them is the station on a rather sharp curve. There will be a huge gap for the little plastic people boarding the trains. Fortunately, it is high and a fair distance from the front, so it hopefully won't be too noticeable. I've yet to cut out the front platform. I've also decided to extend the rear platform. Just out of the image to the right is raised section with buildings on it. My plan is to put the station building up there and stairs leading down to the platforms, similar to Waverton.

Next I thought that I'd start on the top retaining wall again. I had started using Lego boxes. I got back into Lego during lockdown, right after the train room flooded, the layout went mouldy and I had to rebuild. I couldn't get straight into the rebuild as I had to wait for the walls to be replaced. So I had a few boxes and I thought that I could recycle them. I put Scalescenes brick paper on them printed on my inkjet printer. It didn't look too bad. However, after awhile, the walls started warping. I think it was because there was a printed side and a brown side. I glued the paper on the brown side so that no print could come through.

After having a chat with someone about my woes, they suggested going to Officeworks and buying some decent cardboard. Two sheets of 1000gsm card later and I have a 2.5m retaining wall.

Then I ran into brick paper quality control issues. I ran out of Miccador Matte Spray. Officeworks said that they stock it, but they didn't when I got there so I bought a cheaper alternative. It does not work as well. I am now waiting on a delivery of Miccador Matte Spray. The spray seals the paper so that the ink doesn't run. Something that the cheaper brand didn't seem to do.

I had enough pre-sprayed sheets (two) to start on the wall near the terminus. Looking at the photo, I think it might need a bit more added to it, maybe a girder.

It may not look like much but considering not much has been done lately, it's a big step in the right direction.

Until next time.

It's Been a While... Again

 Crikey! As I look back at the last time I wrote anything, it was over twelve months ago.

What's been happening?

I've been running trains. I haven't done much to the layout at all. However, I've added a couple of extra sidings at Tathra and I had to realign the head shunt for Junction Yard, which also meant that the up and down main lines needs to be realigned too. The cause was due to no clearance between the head shunt and the incline to the terminus, which meant that any plans for a back scene between them would not work.

None of those operating noticed this change. However, it shortened the head shunt by the length of a bogie and for some trains, that is enough to make things awkward. Trains and some of the sidings had a lot of thought go into them for operations. A slightly shorter head shunt means that longer locomotives will need more movement to shunt the same trains.

I reckon it's time to make a real start on the scenery. I need to get back to my 15 minutes a day philosophy.

In the meantime, here's some footage of the Transport Heritage Expo from the weekend just gone.

Until next time.

Some Alterations Done

 I'm still poking around where the incline is. The new incline is working well but the set of carriages which caused me to change it still has some problems. To be correct, a couple of carriages have problems and it appears that the chassis is twisted by not very much but enough to cause a problem, not just on the incline but in other areas too - mainly on curves.

Yesterday, I decided to complete a job that I thought should only take ten minutes. I wanted to add a siding at the coal mine for a couple of extra hoppers. I have a hopper from the loco depot and an American hopper, which was a gift from an American friend, that travels to my Tathra station for unloading. I could be good to unload some supplies at the mine as well. I did think that it would be a good spot for my explosives van until it was pointed out to me that using dynamite in a coal mine would kill everyone. I'm sure other supplies could be dropped off there.

As I like photos, here is the process.

Before.

I marked where the point is going and used a razor saw on the ends of the track to mark on the track where to cut.

I then removed the length of track and believe it or not, cut out the middle. It seemed easier than trying to measure small bits of track.

Job done. How long did it take? About half an hour but about half of that was putting in the siding after finding a suitable piece of scrap cork. I then planed the top of the baseboard so that I can attach a facia board with a bit of height to prevent accidental knocking off of trains to the floor. It hasn't happened yet but I reckon it could be a possibility.

 

Before I took the last image, I also installed the windows int he coal tipple and reassembled it.

I've a busy week ahead with work and I reckon my fifteen minutes a day will be running trains.

Until next time.

New Incline

 Last Sunday I wrote about having trains running by Friday. That didn't happen. I had to order some more cork off ebay which arrived on Thursday. I painted it yesterday and it's ready to go onto the layout. The incline has been installed and I padded out a section with some green foam which I bought at Bunnings a long time ago. It now looks like this:

Compare it to before.

This time I have more space for the track. It will be laid directly onto the cork on top of the plywood incline. In the image above you can see where the incline is exposed. It had picture mounting board on it, if fact the rest of it still does and you can see the same closer to the camera. I used this method on my last layout and it ran faultlessly. Like last time I used 4th radius set track on the inner curve, however, this time I also used it on the outer curve with some short straight sections in between each double curve section to help maintain the space between the tracks. I also used set track spacing which is wider. I did this to speed up track laying of a slightly tricky bit. The cardboard was wider, but it hung over the side of the Woodland Scenics foam inclines. I propped up the edges with some foam core board. This wasn't always spot on. I'd rushed the job originally and spent way too much time fixing bits if it.

Hopefully, by this time next week, trains will be running again.

Until next time.

Stuff Has Happened

 In the last few months a lot of stuff has happened. But if I didn't blog it, did it really happen?

The last post finished with more track painting. That was done. 

I put in a section a section above the mainline on the top level for a little town scene. I've now inherited all of Dad's Metcalfe buildings, so there is a row of shops roughly placed on the top.

The next stuff to be done was the baseboard next to the station. This was put in place and buildings taken out of storage. I seem to have enough buildings to build a small city - which was the idea with the first layout in this location. I've placed a few buildings on the layout to see what it looks like. See the first picture.

It's a small square with a market. I think the bus stop might need to go but realistically, the main purpose was to empty a couple of boxes.

On the rear of this square is a small goods yard, utilising Dad's Metcalfe buildings from a small shunting layout that he enjoyed building. I though it would be good to try and replicate  part of his layout. I've done my best to get something that is fun to shunt. See the next picture for that.

I've adjusted the good shed to be parallel to the other tracks and that can squeeze in an extra bogie wagon. The yard can hold 6 bogie wagons and will be shunted by a X200 rail tractor. I've yet to steal some set track points from Dad's layout.

I've also spent a lot of time running my layout. It runs really well with the odd issue.

And, living in Sydney, I went to the Epping Model Railway Club Exhibition a Rosehill Gardens. I wasn't planning on buying much but SDS had some FO carriages on special.

They run really well except for one spot - the odd issue. It's on the incline near the door of the room and a number of cars were coming off on the same spot. It's the same spot as a few other issues. It has been packed a few times and the track isn't as good as it should be. The incline changes from a Woodland Scenics foam incline to a wooden bridge back to the foam incline. I took up the track and relaid it. It seemed to work better but it failed on repetition. I adjusted wheels and bogies as well. All to no avail. Earlier today the area looked like this:

The bridge was glued at one end and when the support was placed underneath it, the support lifted the other end, nearest the camera just enough to cause some issues. I decided to fix all the issues in one go. The inner track of the incline is too close to the other tracks. This caused some clearance issues with the scenery. I'm going to bring the tracks out a bit more so that I can fix the scenery issue. This means that I'll need to realign some ballasted track from the junction and add a bit more board as I may have cut the board to narrow originally. 

To do this, I have cut a new section of plywood running replacing the bridge and the incline. Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I'll be able to cut some timber supports and paint the new board.

I'm hoping to get trains running by Friday night.

Until next time.

Happy 2023!

 G'day and happy New Year!

I'll be honest, despite my best intentions, not much work has happened on the layout. Today I thought I'd do something small and quick. By the time I moved the stock away from where I was about to work, time started to disappear.

I need to clear some space in the train room. I have a stack of boxes with buildings in them but nowhere on the layout to put them. A quick trip to Bunnings bought me the timber that I needed for the very top level. Before I add the timber, I need to paint and ballast the track. That was today's job. 

I painted the track leading into the covered sections and then I stared on a whole lot more. I couldn't do all of it as the air compressor was starting to get hot but I got enough to do the ballasting that I needed to do. Now I just need to wait until that is dry to put the top on.

It's not an interesting image but here is some of today's painting efforts.

Tomorrow's plan is much the same as today's.

Until next time.

Operations Part 2 Some Paperwork

I'm an operator. My trains need some sort of purpose. Wagons moving on the layout need to have a reason to be there. Even as a teenager with my British trains, I had some sort of paperwork. These were simple cards with the wagon name and number and a fictional destination. Most destinations were off the layout. 

When I started modelling NSW trains something similar was used. I also rolled a dice so that there was some randomness to how many wagons I needed for certain industries. I didn't have car card boxes but wooden pegs blu-taced (I'm sure that's a word) to the layout to hold my small cards, handwritten on small steel blue bits of cardboard that I have scrounged from somewhere. The ideas came from several articles from the Australian Model Railway Magazine over the years.

I can handle trains wandering aimlessly around the layout - it is sometimes truly blissful.

But... shunting is just plain fun.

I've built a couple of layouts with Inglenook shunting puzzles in them. So that I knew what to put where, I created some shunting lists. I still have them somewhere and when I needed to change from bogie wagons to four wheel wagons, it was a simple process.

For the last few layouts I have been using car cards and way bills. The waybills have been getting simpler and more user friendly over the years as I have guests operating the layouts. The car cards clipped together becomes the crew's paperwork.

I've considered 'switch lists' for the crews to fill out and created my own version of an X2010 form used by real train crews. I found an image online to help me out and it was put together using Word. I print it on A5 paper for small clipboards. Here it is:

I have found this useful when running by myself as I don't have to juggle cards. I showed this to one of my operators who thought that it would be good.

Then I found out about JMRI Operations Pro. I subscribe to trains.com, which about a week ago posted a video about using Operations Pro. It's part of the JMRI package which I download with Decoder Pro. I didn't know that I already had it. I followed the tutorial on trains.com and that got me started.

I spoke to the same operator about how marvellous this program is and that it would get rid of car cards. He seemed a little hesitant.

I entered in my container wagons. I have recently reduced them to 15 from 23 or more. In the last post I wrote about the GME wagons on a dedicated pathway from the harbour to the container depot and back again. I haven't quite worked out how to make that happen. I have however worked out how to take 9 wagons from Boydtown Yard to Junction Yard and then only 6 to Billabong Marina.

I had a lot of help from SoCal Scale Models on YouTube. Check out his video here and then subscribe to his channel. He will explain it better than I will here.

The trick is all about "movements". I had 9 wagons entering the yard from two trains. The default number of movements is 5, which means 5 wagons will be added to the train. I was getting four left behind every time. Once that was fixed, I wanted to park them all at Junction Yard and pick up the six already there. I need 9 movements to drop off and 6 movements to pick up. I can now take 9 wagons to Junction Yard but JMRI has me consistently dropping 5 and picking up 2. I still leave for Billabong Marina with 6 container wagons and need 6 movements to set out all the wagons.

It's the reverse on the way back. Something that I have found interesting is that out of the 15 wagons, only 11 or 12 are used for each journey. On one return journey, one lonely ICX wagon didn't move at all.

This is what the operator gets:

The crew receive their manifest for the job. The train is T005. T is for Trip working. 005 is the fifth trip working on the line. It is an odd number as travelling from Billabong Marina to Boydtown is in a down direction from Sydney. The train to the port is T004. It may be renumbered later when schedules are sorted out. I had to come up with a numbering system based on the real thing.

The crew assemble the train leave with all six wagons.

When they get to Junction Yard, they drop off 2 and pick up 5. Not all of the wagons in the yard are leaving but we leave with 9 wagons for Boydtown Yard. In theory, four will leave for Canberra and five will leave for Melbourne. I think it may depend on which order they are built.

When a train arrives and has been shunted, the train needs to be terminated in JMRI and the wagon locations are stored in the software and ready to be built into a new train.

While it isn't what I had planned, there is some sense of randomness about which wagons are used. I makes it a little more interesting.

At the moment, there are only 9 cars in the yard so everything is working well. Hopefully I'll add some more cars this week.

Until next time.

Operations Part 1

I don't know how many parts there are going to be in this. So let's start with part one. I'm sure that it'll be interrupted by other topics.

So... Covid finally got me. The next day after my last post and it laid me up for a couple of weeks. I seem to have recovered well, except for the time lost from work. In my line of work, at this time of year, there are deadlines which I have to meet. I'm going to need to burn a bit of midnight oil to catch up. At the same time, I've got to help my parents move out of their house. It'll all be over by Christmas but in the meantime, I'll be busy.

This means I'm going to need a bit of time set aside to wind down. If you've followed my blog on Billabong Marina, you may have come across my 15 minute a day philosophy. If not, check it out here. I have to confess, that I don't always stick to it and sometimes my 15 minutes is spent on other hobbies. But when life gets busy, I always fall back on it.

What's this got to do with operations? Just before I got sick, I nutted out some ideas.

First up, I use car cards and waybills. This means that I need to make a whole heap of boxes - one for each industry and siding. Done. I even painted them according to the colours used on my waybills. I colour code the destinations for different sections on my layout. I got the idea from the Willow Creek Railroad. It's worth clicking on the link.

Next I had to plan and write up my waybills. I put a lot of effort in making sure that every wagon goes to the right place and all the sidings are shunted with the right number of wagons. I've seen other layouts and they have a one in one out policy. If you put a cement wagon in, you pull one cement wagon out, even if there are two in the siding. I have worked my waybills out this way.

I also have the idea that every morning four trains arrives from Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Bega. The last is a pick up goods. Don't forget that my layout is fictitious and that I have dumped enough people to populate a small city where there is currently nothing but bush.

These trains arrive in Boydtown Yard and get sorted onto different trains. Trip trains take the wagons to their destinations, swap them over and return to Boydtown Yard for the wagons to be re-marshalled into the trains for the four off layout destinations. These trains leave for staging and the session is over. This did happen a couple of times with the old layout.

Right before my Covid stint, I did start messing about with this. I have to say it is a lot of fun. I made sure that all of the car cards were sorted correctly into the right boxes. However, while chatting to a mate, who gave the layout the once over on a visit, came the suggestion that the layout was overstocked. He's not wrong.

Here's one example. The fish siding at the new Billabong Marina takes four refrigerated vans. The fish is loaded for overnight delivery to Canberra and Sydney they are swapped over near the end of an operation day with four which have come off the inbound trains earlier in the day.

Is it fair to expect that in the real world, this might not happen? Could the vans of the arriving trains just be taken and deposited in to an empty siding? The folks at the fish siding could spend all day loading them for an evening pick up. This means there are four vans that don't need to be on the layout.

Here is another example. I have 6 Austrains GME container wagons. I love the back story which was on the Austrains website at the time. They were in fixed trains with a guards van at each end and were worked between - I want to say - White Bay where there containers came from the ship to Rozelle Yard where the containers were unloaded. I could be totally wrong. I haven't been able to find the information for a few years. I like the idea and have always kept the wagons together. They work from the new Billabong Marina to the Junction Yard Container Depot.  (One day I should put together a diagram of the layout.) 

When they are picked up from the harbour, they have always been replaced by the same number of wagons. Could they be picked up from the container depot in the morning and be placed wharf side and returned in the evening?

The container depot can hold 12 of this length wagon. Does it need to be full all the time? One thought is that it could hold the 6 GME wagons in the morning. When the trains from staging arrive, containers are taken off and then hauled to Junction Yard. The GMEs are picked up and taken to the harbour. In the evening, the reverse happens.

However, the loco could leave the harbour with nothing but a guards van as there are no wagons to collect. I have now got away from the one in, one out idea with both of these examples.

As I muck about on the layout, I jot down notes as I go. I hope to spend some time this week jotting down more notes. The layout needs a bit of clearing at the moment as somethings were placed in the layout room for somewhere to go. My first job tomorrow with be to tidy up a bit.

I also want to find out more about JMRI Operations Pro. It could be something worth trying.

Let me finish with a photo I took on a trip to the UK before the pandemic. I don't have an image of what I've been writing about and I like a photo in my posts. It's a class 66 with some hopper wagons heading through Leicester 15th January, 2020. 

Until next time.

Not the post I started drafting.

Once again I've found myself with a long time between posts. In fact, I started this post 4 weeks ago and I was going to write all about operations. I even had comments on the last one, which I don't normally get. I might need to start checking more often.

If I thought that first seven weeks had been a bit hectic with Covid and unrelated colds and rearranging the house for the final part of some renovations, the next five were worse - my parents decided to sell their house of 56 years and downsize into a two bedroom retirement place.

There was a lot of stuff to do and pack up.

There are a lot of sad moments in packing up a house. A lot of memories in all of the rooms, a lot of rediscovered treasures from an age gone by, some from people who are no longer with us.

Perhaps, not the saddest moment but sad none the less was watching Dad packing up his trains and taking the layout apart.

It was one of CJ Freezer's plans from "Book of Model Railway Track Plans", called Trent. It went up pretty quickly but like most layouts, it never got finished. It reached its purpose though. It provided Dad with a lot of fun (and sometimes trouble) and gave us something to talk about. He enjoyed running a Garratt with ore wagons around it. Can we ask a layout to do anymore than that?

He also has a smaller, more portable layout designed by Paul Lunn. It's about 900x1200mm and has two docksides linked by a hidden reversing siding. He saw it in a Railway Modeller but it's also in the Peco Setrack OO/HO Plan Book. He loved the idea and built it, along with the Metcalfe buildings the article suggested.

While the layout may not run again in its proper form, the buildings have been passed on to me for my layout. I can't use them all but there is a section yet to be filled in that perhaps, I could put some track to utilise the Metcalfe brewery. It does need some attention with windows which have fallen out.

As for layout for Dad, I'm not sure how much room he'll have, but we're thinking of some ideas.

In the meantime, we went to Asquith station to watch 3801 return to Sydney from Newcastle on Saturday. I headed to Mt Colah this morning to see it again. I'll leave you with the clip.

Until next time.

Let's Poke a Bear

Let's cut to the chase. I'm going to poke the track and wheel cleaning bear.

Here is my track cleaning train. How I got to this train is a bit of a story.

I'll start by saying that track rubbers are not good. They are abrasive. As one modeller once told me, no one will let him clean their car with a track rubber.

However, some of my track is really old and so the 'don't use a track rubber' ship sailed long ago. I use a Fleischmann track rubber and I find that it does the business. I also use a Walthers track rubber on the bottom of one of their track cleaning wagons.

Another fact is that if you regularly use your layout, you need to clean it less. I have found this to be true over the years. Covered tracks also need less cleaning. I once left a small portable layout covered for six months and the track was fantastic. In comparison my main layout left uncovered next to it had grubby tracks.

Back in 2005 when I joined the Gosford City Model Railroad Club, I noticed that they had a couple of modified wagons which had track rubbers attached to a pad underneath them pushed by a loco at the start of every night. One car had a masonite block underneath it with the rougher side to the track. It worked with the same effect. I found a track cleaning car in a local hobby shop and thought that I would give it a go. It's the Union Pacific car.

I had seen another modeller's track cleaning train years ago. He had a Centerline track cleaning car which he had put a body on. These cars are a rectangular slab of brass or metal with rectangular hole in the centre. In that is put a brass cylinder which is covered with a strip of Chux wipes. The Chux is secured with a rubber band. It was doused with isopropyl alcohol and run around the track. Then a new Chux strip was doused with CRC 2-26 (I think). The train was run around the layout and the layout was given a couple days for the CRC 2-26 to work its magic. Then he reckoned that he didn't need to clean it again for six months.

I made similar wagon with an old Trax MHG, I swapped the bogies for some Powerline clip in bogies with metal tyres on the wheels. For the cylinder I used an old 35mm film canister which I cut down and filled with lead sinkers, all held together with Tamiya masking tape. I used an old Lima loco weight to hold it down. It worked. And the above method worked well... the first time.

He has also replaced the Walthers track rubber with a bit of cork to help collect some of the dirt before the roller reached it. So I did the same. It does work well.

The second time I used this treatment there was too much CRC2-26 on the track and I had to wipe it all off.

The track cleaning train was relegated to the off layout shelves until I needed a better solution to hand cleaning the tracks.

With the last layout I needed to employ another track cleaning train. By this stage I had started using the Noch clip on cleaners. They are a little brush of sorts that clip onto an axel of a wagon. They won't clip onto newer Australian models but will to a couple of the older Powerline wheels with metal tyres which are on the old MHG. The Union Pacific wagon was re-employed with the cork pad and I bought another Walthers track cleaning car with the rubber. This time I pulled the body off and put a Casula Hobbies or Silvermaz kit water gin on top. I painted the two Australian wagons yellow to represent the permanent way department. 

Next time I'm down Liverpool way or at an exhibition, I'll probably buy another water gin kit for the original track cleaning car. I'll also buy a roll of HO underlay cork as it fits well on the pad. The cork was originally blu-tacked on and it stayed for quite a time. I replaced the cork and used a UHU glue stick. It worked a treat.

One thing that I have found with these Walthers wagons is that you need to take a spring off one of the screws that hold the pad in place. After a while, turn the wagons around to even the wear.

CRC 2-26 is not good on traction tyres. I have Minimodels suburban sets with traction tyres so I need something else. We also used CRC 2-26 to clean wheels of locos. We'd spray some on a paper towel and place it in the track. Next we would place one bogie on the paper towel and the other on the track, turn the power up and hold the loco in place. We would then turn the loco around and clean the other bogie.

This worked well too and would spread the CRC 2-26 thoughout the layout. However, we had one bloke in the club who hated it. He was German and with his accent he would call CRC 2-26 "Das oily schitt". 

To clean loco wheels he would only use a brass brush to scrub the wheels. Peco produce a wheel cleaner like that. I have two so that I can clean opposite wheels at the same time. They are connected to the track with alligator clips. When hooked up and the power turned up the Peco brushes are applied to the wheels which spin and get cleaned. It works 99% of the time.

However, when I had to clean the wheels on my Southern Rail interurban, the wire brushes weren't as successful. On closer inspection, the insides of the wheels were dirty and the pick ups weren't able to do their job. 

To solve the problem, I spayed some paper towel with some isopropyl alcohol and put the loco on it. I also took the bogie being cleaned and made sure the towel was brushing the inside of the wheels. It made the world of difference.

I put some isopropyl alcohol on the cork and ran the track cleaning train up and down the incline from the terminus. This also made a world of difference but the cork needed replacing. I've got a supply to keep me going for a while.

There are other chemical products out there such as Rail Zip, which I haven't used with success, and Deluxe Track Magic, which I have yet to use. According to UK publication Model Rail the latter works well. I have a mate who swears by it.

Everyone has their own method of cleaning tracks and with the past treatment the track has had, I find that my little train works well.

Until next time.

Happy July

Wow! Just over three months since the last update.

Since then, I have linked the coal mine head shunt to the line from platform one of Bega Station, I have re-aligned the track at the renamed Billabong Marina to fit in the Fine Fish building. I'll need to block off the ends where vans went through on the old layout.

The third thing mentioned from the last blog post was an unloading platform for the coal mine for supplies.  I'm going to need to build the coal tipple first to see if there is enough room.

As for working on the terminus, not much happened. We have some renovations going on and while I was able to get a start on it and adding bits of track with my 15 minute a day philosophy, work was soon halted as stuff needed to go into the train room for temporary storage.

We were meant to be going away last week but someone in our house got COVID. As an aside, we're triple vaxed so for the infected person, things weren't too bad. Dad came down with it too on the same day. It was a coincidence as the the only common factor is me. However, I love that his doctor prescribed him some $1000 antiviral tablets and it cost him less than $6. Mum came down with it a few days later and received an even better deal. I love that we are in a country with health care like that. I'm happy to pay my Medicare levy.

Despite the illness, I looked at the silver linings of the storm clouds that battered the NSW coast for the first week of the month. I didn't have to drive in the hazardous conditions and I could self isolate to the train room. As a close contact (I still am) I don't want to go anywhere and potentially spread something.

The train room needed some cleaning. I'd stacked some stuff where the terminus station was planned. It was convenient to put it there. I had to buy some new points as well. There may have also been some binge watching as a distraction too. However, as of last night, the terminus has been put down and trains can now arrive and depart.

The curved track placed in the foreground is to a planned good yard. There are 6 platforms and a bay siding for unloading parcels vans. In later years, when passenger traffic increased, this was turned into another platform. However, the new platform couldn't be named platform 7 as it was on the opposite side to platform 6. There are a number of station which have a platform 0. Lidcombe is a good example. Why not renumber it platform 1? Apparently, it's a big programming issue. I don't know the ins and outs and I don't really mind that I don't know.

Why put a platform 0 on a new layout with a fictitious station? It is a shorter platform than platform 1 and I like the idea of the more important express trains leaving from platform 1. 

The original idea was for a 4 car suburban train on a DC shuttle from the bay platform as though it was travelling on a different line. However, there isn't enough room on the other end to hide the train. With the shuttle at the back of the layout, there would be less things to interfere and it could be its own little circuit.

With that idea not coming to fruition, it is just another platform for trains on the rest of the layout.

It was pointed out to me by a friend that platform 1 on every Sydney station has trains heading to Central. I think Museum on the City Circle is an exception but trains on both platforms are heading to Central one way or another. Platform 1 is always on the up side of the station. Maybe my platform numbering is totally wrong. I'm not changing it.

There are also no points at the buffers end of the station. That means we need a station shunter. I've a couple of locos that can fill the job. The operator can uncouple the loco at the buffers and at the other end of the station, the shunter can come in and remove the train to the carriage sidings or onto another platform. The loco can then head down the hill for servicing a the loco depot. With the terminus at about 1.4m from the ground, I reckon that some of my operators (including myself) might not be able to reach any points a further 50 cm from the front.

What's next?

Fill the rear window with a a board for a backscene.

Get some timber for the platforms.

Build the coal tipple for the coal mine.

As I'm still a close contact, the tipple might be built tomorrow.

Until next time. 

A long overdue update.

 

Yes... it has been a while. What's been happening? I've just been enjoying the layout and running trains. I've been working on some waybills and car card boxes for operations on the layout because realistically, all of the freight stuff is done. I've learnt some stuff on the way.

Most of the work in the train room has been furniture based. I've got a mould problem. I've wiped down as much of the furniture as I can with vinegar in January and even pained some old shelves. They look pretty good now. But the mould all came back too soon. 

So I replaced the furniture. That helped. As did throwing out the unpainted ply. I was ruthless. Anything that had a hint of green fuzz went out the door. This included some old wooden boxes that I have had for nearly twenty years. One of the victims of this purge was my micro layout Billabong Marina. That had some nice green and yellow fur underneath it.

It might seem extreme but my cavalier attitude to mould in the past has lead to a mould allergy. The long and short of it is that it makes me cough and that is not socially acceptable these days.

Today was spent painting and installing more shelves to replace some old Aldi MDF shelves. The new shelves are very similar but the MDF is nice and white.

But while running trains, what did I learn?

The line from the coal mine is way too short for coal trains being loaded by a flood loader. These trains will block the return loop for the mainline, even if they go the other way than I originally planned. The coal mine head shunt runs along the same line as platform one of Bega station. The line veers right and there is a short stub siding. The plan was to put a signal box in there. Now there will be a new piece of track.

I reckon the coal mine needs a siding for unloading equipment and supplies such as explosives. I could also put a small platform there for workers trains. The old layout had a space for one at the mine.

I figured that if I was putting platforms in then one at the harbour area might work. I could put the Billabong Wharf station building there.

The Fine Fish building from Billabong Marina could fit in the harbour area but some track work is needed for it to fit - and some perspex as the track will be very close to the edge.

However, I reckon that the biggest thing that I have learnt is that it's just plain fun to run trains. That's why we're here in the hobby isn't it?

With the Easter break coming up, I'm hoping to get on with the terminus level and some of it is already in place.

Until next time. 

The Industrial Area

With most of the work around the inclines completed, (The stuff that is left requires work closer to the front of the boards to be completed first.) I can get to work filling in the loop with the industrial area.

Here's what is in so far.

The track for the brewery and manufacturing industry is in. The next two lines are the wheat sidings and then the container sidings.

I've spent some time during the past week putting together a Walther's Medusa Cement kit. I've still got a bit to go but I put it on the layout for a bit of an idea as to how it would fit. In between the cement works and the container sidings is the steel works.

I had planned to use a Peco Manyways train shed. It is a little wide. I am trying to cram in as much as I can. It may be slightly unrealistic but I am more into the operations side of model railways so more industries to shunt is more appealing to me. I can save about 3 cm by using old Hornby Tri-ang loco sheds. While these are red and yellow with big windows, a bit of brick plasticard and some paint and they should look the business.

In the meantime, they will hold a bright place before the work is done.

Behind the wheat silos I've placed an extreme low relief building. It will hide the incline but still allow some access. I'm considering placing more behind these buildings so that the line to the terminus on the upper level disappears for a while.

The plan for this week is to finish off the cement works kit and lay some track.

Until next time.

Mind the Gap

 Before:

Oooh! What a nasty gap. I always thought that it would be a problem for future me. A bit of masking tape and some plaster, paint and some scenic material later and we have this.

While the gaps aren't gone, they are better disguised. The big one on the left is for future me to deal with.

The end result for today is this.

This is closer than people will get to the scene but I can tell that there are some patches where the ballast needs topping up.

Some of you may notice that I am using three different shades of ballast in this scene. There is a fourth shade around Bega. At the main junction of the inclines the track looks like this.

The three colours are for three different routes. I got the idea from Tony Koester, the American railroad modeller, author and legend. On his layout he uses a different colour of ballast for his mainline from his yards so that his operators know which track is the mainline.

All of my sidings that have so far received ballast all have Bombo ballast, which is the brown ballast on the right. The mainline on the lower level has a shade of grey of unknown origin. It is a lighter grey but you can still discern the mainline from the sidings.

On this level the mainline will have Ardglen ballast, which is a dark grey and on the left. This is the track that comes up the incline from the bottom level. This track runs along two and a half walls of the room before entering a return loop and coming back before heading back down to the bottom level.

The middle two tracks head up to the terminus and has Martin's Creek ballast. All of the ballast used is from Matt's Ballast and picked up from my local hobby shop or exhibitions. 

The track on the bottom level to Tathra should have Martin's Creek ballast as well but I used something that looks more like budgie grit or crushed shells. I thought it was good stuff. When I get the chance, I'm going to replace what I can with the real deal.

Operators will know that the lighter grey of Martin's Creek represents branch lines and the dirtier brown of the Bombo ballast as sidings to help them guide their trains through the layout as they change the points themselves.

This is a function of interior designed used in a lot of public spaces such as shopping centres and airports, if you remember going to them. The floor is a colour that takes you where they want you to go and can help differentiate from thoroughfares to areas such as shopfronts where they don't want people bustling past. I had to dig the clip up but I saw this years ago. 

I'm hoping that using similar principals of using colour will help operators. My layout is complicated and while I know it well, visiting operators visit once a month so it takes a while for them to learn the route. Hopefully, this will speed the process up.

Until next time.