Beautiful weekend to be outdoors

With the Southern Spirit making her way down south from Acacia Ridge on Saturday, I ventured down to the Border Ranges with a friend early morning. The scenery is just spectacular. We managed to film the XPT which was a bonus as it was running late. Following the XPT was a Melbourne Bound Freighter and finally the Southern Spirit. Just too good an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and hence no time to be in the shed railway modelling!

Satisfactory Tarps at Last!

At last I have found a satisfactory way to create tarps for my GYs and other open wagons. I was quite impressed with the way these tarps came out, compared to my previous and first attempt using tissue paper and white glue. A chance encounter with Ben at one of Craig's running session together with a tip from Ray Pilgram from his site on how to create tarps, I found the receipe to create tarps which looked quiet good to me. Some photos below. Special thanks to Ray as he suggested in his blog that he uses wrapping paper which I found to be the key. I painted the tarps using a Humbrol green. If anyone is interested, I can suggest the Humbrol Number I used. a

Time for a Departure

Now that there is enough loading for northern destinations, we see a train depart for these destinations. The extra T Classes are used for loco balancing on this occasion. All the loading on this train have come from previous trains (and if required may be some empty wagons from the yard itself), which have been shunted onto the road for "Northern" destinations. The locos were serviced at the depot, marshalled together, ran light engine to the yard, and attached to the train on the appropriate departure track.