Rolling in dough

This Saturday I attended a sale day presented by the Epping Model Railway club. They were most considerate by having it start at 10.0am, as both Saturday and Sunday are currently my favourite sleep in days.

It was a lousy week for weather and I spent the fifteen minutes up to opening time sitting in the car waiting for the rain to stop.

At 10.0am right on the dot they threw open the doors and welcomed us to market day. There are two large rooms with private buyers having tables with their goods to sell. Most seemed to be private set ups, but Austrains were also there. I guess their motive was to save you postage. They didn't get a visit from me.

Past visits to these sales have been good for me. In the past I purchased a completed Hanovale weathered bogie ballast plough (BBP) for $25. I also acquired an Ian Lindsay bogie van (MCV?), last year I purchased some oil tanks.

This year I was lucky to pick up two Ian Lindsay Models that had been assembled but at this stage unpainted and decalled.

One of the kits was an EHO brakevan (commonly referred to as 'a loaf of bread' - hence the title of this thread) This is listed on the ILM website as $93 as a kit.

Also with the EHO was an assembled kit for another Ian Lindsay model being the KB mail van. (Listed for $77)

When I asked how much they were I quickly snapped them up at a bargain $30 each. Now I'm not sure how long they will stay unpainted like this, maybe when I get sick of doing scenery and have a break and finish off a few kits etc.

A quick trip round the rest of the tables didn't reveal much more. True there was plenty I could have got but having these two models in the bag so early made me more choosy regarding the rest.

The day is also enhanced by the club providing a sausage sizzle on all day. It was also interesting to see some well known modellers present with bags of 'leftovers' being flogged off. You know a few decals, plus a few other bits and pieces in a plastic bag for $20 or so. Kits they no longer wanted or could be bothered to put together.

After an hour or so I decided to leave, the rain had stopped by then and with my bag of goodies I headed home.

Fotopic has got the Flick (r)

I must have been one of thousands around the world that had photos lost when Fotopic suddenly shut up shop. I was posting photos there long before I had started this blog.

The story of how I also lost many photos when the hard drive crashed and was rescued by 'Albert' who had downloaded some of my photos was recorded on this blog recently.

In looking for another web hoster for some South Coast Rail I reckoned that Flickr was as good as any other, so I have recently uploaded some of my favourite shots onto this site. All seems well so far. A lot of the shots have already been on either fotopic or on this blog over time, but it groups them all together without the need to read all of my crap writings in between.

This weekend in the shed was a poor effort, only managing a few more shrubs outside the tunnel that supports Kameruka. So no need to show any of that effort.

The year has gone extremely fast again (Anyone else notice?) and I am looking forward to another break off in the new year.

The manufacturers should be a lot kinder to us NSW modellers with three locos I am waiting for will hopefully get delivered (48 + 40 + 422) and a few freight wagons as well.

Anyhow to get to the Flickr site just hit the link under "links in the right hand column "More South Coast Rail photos" and I hope you enjoy them the second time around.

Bonding Session

Well last night was another train night get together between our group. Most of the group  are known together because of the school link.

This link must be nearly rusted through as we go back to the mid to late 1960's. As I was not as smart as the other guys I left school earlier. I can see that the extra two years of schooling paid off for them as they have all done well in their careers and we are all approaching that magic thing called retirement. I was out already earning an income on the New South Wales Government Railways. Starting at Darling Harbour Goods Yard I only had the site and smell of 19 class shunting during lunch breaks while they were enjoying the smell of the hot asphalt in the school yard.
We met up again years later and begun having our irregular  train nights. We get in about three to four a year which pales compared to some groups who seem to see each other each week. One of our group was the late Ken Bowen, always the character and ready to show off his  large under house 'O' gauge model railway

Last night was Phils turn again and we were keen to see his progress from our last visit on Friday the 13th February, 2010. If you go back to my blog on that date you will see his initial work and now the progress he has made.

Phil makes and adjustment to the draw slider. On the left hand side is where the branch to Newcastle station will eventually be.

 Although rain was predicted, it didn't compare with the deluge we had at Phils previous visit.
The layout room scores a 10 out of 10 for design and comfort. Tons of fluro's, light blue coloured walls.
The layout design is a double track folded 8 with dogbone returns at each end. There is a branch into Newcastle and off that there will be a small shelf shunting section based on the Wickham Branch. Off the lower layout section there will be another branch station he will be calling Swansea. In the photo above is what he calls Broadfields (based on Broadmeadow). In the centre of one dogbone he is incorporating his 'Broadfield' turntable and loco depot. On the other dogbone will be a coal mine.

Early days on the Wickham Branch where the tracks and structures are laid out to see how they work. The gold top bottle is not expected to be a future structure.

Looking the opposite direction the curse of Newcastle another level crossing takes shape.

As there is a large amount of rolling stock on the layout Phil has incorporated a clever draw system as seen below for storing train consists in between runs. I have seen these used before on other layouts (Brad - Armchair Modeller). In this example the drawer cleverly slides under Broadfields above making the most of the room. On the far right of the layout Phil has used the conventional points into parallel sidings.

 

The multiple storage roads on the drawer slide. At least they are away from the dust when its slid in.

The future Broadfield Loco depot and mine on the right hand side

Close up of the future mine. Note the very solid baseboard construction

There is not a lot of area on the layout that can support scenery. I thought that his previous layout had more than this one will. I don't suppose that's a bad thing as he will get his layout finished sooner.
So we ran a few consists around and Ross gave his set of 4 new Trainorama BCW's a run. I noticed he was quick enough to get them off the train consist that was sitting on the draw slide before Phil could shut them away on him.
We later adjourned upstairs to partake in some tea, coffee, cake and scones and enjoyed an old black and white dvd on Steam on Hawkmount. It was a great way to finish off the night. Thanks Phil we will look forward to more progress in another year or so.

All in all its just another bit near the wall....

Close enough to that famous Pink Floyd song The Wall. Close enough indeed.Todays effort was to finish some scenery from the gully corner up to Kameruka. Having only a centimetre or so between the track and the wall it seemed the best finish would be to put a photo landscape scene there. As luck would have it, I had a photo scene taken from the platform at Tarago a few years ago when on a tour taking two 49's to Goulburn, then swapping a 49 for a 48 class. It was a perfect day there and I just took about three panorama shots.After some manipulating and cropping on the computer, mainly to delete the foreground tracks in the yard, I printed and glued them together. I was quite happy with the end result . This photo image has been sitting around in the shed for a few years now waiting a final resting place on the wall. It is not completely successful in that it is not very high in parts. I could have enlarged it on the computer but it will do for now. Maybe a replacement when the other two hundred and seventy five jobs are done.
The sheet had clouds present which didn't match the blue wall of the shed. So I got to work with the craft knife and cut away all the clouds and it now blends in quite well.There was only a gap of a centimetre or two to fill in between the track and the wall. I used some cleaning cloth 'grass' and a few other bits and pieces. The colouring matches fairly well and the blend line is not really obvious in the photo.