Sparks will soon be flying...
Well there are only a few weeks left of 2013 to allow Auscision to fulfill their promise of having the 46 class available in 2013. It was the pilot model of the 46 I saw at the 2012 Liverpool exhibition that prevented me going haywire and modelling some obscure South American 80 year old electric box cab locos. When you add up the hours it would take to make a few models, I quickly realised the 46 class would do for what I wanted and still allow me to be modelling the NSW railway system.
Electric modelling has come ahead in leaps and bounds lately and nearly all of NSW locomotives and passenger electric rolling stock has been either made or is in production.
I guess we are all different animals when it comes to running our layouts. Some people are just happy to run trains on a layout without any scenery at all. Just track. Then others have the scenery all completed. But with the "new element" of modelling electric railways comes the "pain"of overhead wiring. Europeans with their prominence of electric railways has made the production of model overhead wiring systems common place. Marklin certainly has produced overhead systems for their model railway systems and other specialist companies such as Sommerfeldt and Veissmann have produced many of the parts required to model overhead with authenticity.
Now one of the issues for model overhead wiring is the compromise between robustness and getting it looking real.
Another aspect is the additional cost of components to produce the overhead. If you commercially source all the overhead unless you are modelling the Carlingford branch be prepared to spend quite a few dollars on your overhead wiring bits and pieces.
Now as an introduction to my electric modelling I recently received the swap part of a deal with one our group member Ross. I swapped an Emu Flats school house kit for some overhead staunchions from Southern rail. He received some as a deal when he purchased some interurban cars. He has decided not to electrify on his layout. I simply drilled two holes into the layout and pushed the legs of the staunchions into them. Straight away it changed the look of Bodalla forever. I will gauge how much they get in the way before I commit to proper overhead throughout. Leaning over the layout will bring new consequences and probably new swear words when the overhead comes down. Further down the track (ah I like that saying) I hope to construct my own overhead to a much finer tolerances than the commercial products. One safeguard for protecting the overhead might be the installation of perspex screens along the edge of the layout, but they will be easily removed with slotted screws to enable photography and other maintenance issues.
 

Electrification is coming!!!!

I wonder if Auscision with their many electric models coming may go into making the overhead components?
The 46 class was chosen to match the era of my modelling which is the 50's to early 70's (need justification for a 422 class). My foray into the Victorian modelling has also got me  collecting similar era locos and rolling stock. How great is it that Auscision has decided to model the Victorian electric "L" class loco. As with the NSW plan for operation, electric locos will run part way and then change over to steam or diesel to finish their journey. And the opposite will apply for the reverse journey.
Today I was lucky enough to photograph a quad header of all the Victorian fleet on a freight. Just something about the blue and yellow. As the B class is sometimes used for passenger services it hasn't yet been weathered.

Well I am not sure if this will be the last blog for 2013 but their will be a major announcement re the layout early next year.