The World Is Yours

I came across a fantastic piece written by Linn Westcott which I thought I had to share with you all. The biggest impression was Westcott stating "avoid the cliche" with your model railway. No doubt you too will go away all that more wiser after reading this article.

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.

Small Goods Arrives

Here is a video showing a small goods train coming into the yard and terminating. The wagons will then be shunted either to the respective destination tracks or on the yard tracks as empties for temporary storage. The loco is then seen heading to the depot.

Taking Stock

Current stock as at 30 Dec 2011

Last few days I have fine tuned the shunting process and hence made it some what more prototypical. Initially the yard tracks were left empty, now I have wagons on the yard tracks which could be left there for some time, just like the prototype.

Point Activation using Dowels and Eye Screws

The last two days time was spent working on activating the points which lead to the departure tracks using the dowel method shown to me by another VR modeler. The procedure requires 6mm dowel from Bunnings, piano wire about 1mm thick, some eye screws - get the bronze ones if your layout is outdoors like in a shed/garage, and your basic tools such as power drill, drill bits, wire cutter, and junior saw / hack saw. See attached photos on how I did this. The major benefits are that it is very cheap compared to a servo or tortoise machine and it works really well. Not shown in the photos are the steps where I drilled a 1mm hole into the dowel then aligned the point and threaded the piano wire through the point and dowel. This was the most difficult part.

Bye now.