When I was modelling the New South Wales railway in HO scale there were hundreds of track designs that could be modelled. It varies from a boring loop with two set of points way up to the likes of complicated locations such at Central Station and varying degrees of complexity in between.
Then the modeller may just like the northern, western
southern or other specific districts and want to faithfully model stations
purely from that area.
The other option is to just model freelance and do your own thing such as name
and track design. I did this on the HO layout, calling it South Coast Rail. I
then had stations such as Bega, Batemans Bay and Narooma, locations that never
had and never will have a railway although many were proposed in the past.
I continued this theme when I converted to Victorian narrow
gauge, the layout name South Coast Rail was retained and some of the station
names were reused. The former Bega on
the HO layout was a major station with three platforms and two docks, a large
freight yard, carriage sidings, loco depot area and a few private sidings. But having
converted to narrow gauge I now had to rethink small. Bega has a main line, loop, a goods siding and
a two track loco depot area. A shadow of its former namesake.
Apart from Eden and Bega on the layout all other stations
are what is referred to as 'mallee sheds'
There will be a few of them around the layout. They don't
even need a platform to be used , just surround them with some dirt and they
are good to go.
Apart from the usual goods shed, livestock yards and other
buildings on the layout there is not a lot to be constructed. I also don't need
signal boxes and associated signals so another time saver over my previous HO
layout.
When designing the narrow gauge layout I was looking for
standout items. One of the iconic features of the narrow gauge line from
Belgrave to Gembrook is the trestle over Monbulk Creek and is just a few
bends out from Belgrave. Many photographers gather at this spot and many a fine
shot has been taken there. I saw this as a challenge and was on the early list
for inclusion on the layout. The trestles construction has been well covered in
earlier blog entries so if you are interested you can go back and see how this
corner was developed.
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| Shay 12 crosses the trestle bridge |
Adjoining the trestle is the town of Broadwater. It has a
crossing loop, a goods loop and a dead end siding which will eventually have a
livestock loading facility . There is also a private industry siding to add
some operation interest. I haven't even given a thought as to what will be at
this spot yet. The line coming off the trestle turns 90 degrees into Broadwater
and then turns another 90 degrees having traversed across the roller door. This
turn then points the track along the long wall of the shed.
It would have been around the time after I had returned from
Victoria on our first 'rail gunzel weekend' with some mates. One of the trips
we did that weekend was to ride the 'Snow train' from Melbourne out to Moe and
then transfer by coach to the town of Walhalla. My research of the Victorian
narrow gauge lines was well advanced at that stage and I was purchasing every
book and publication and bits of info I
could obtain. I had seen photos of the Thomson River bridge in books and it was
a motley collection of bits and pieces that went into getting the railway line
across the Thomson River.
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| Thomson River bridge Victoria - Bob Taaffe photo |
It soon became apparent that I should try and make a model
of this bridge, so the research began. The line into Walhalla opened on the 3rd
May 1910. Doing the maths this makes the bridge well over 100 years old. The
chances of any plans still existing was unlikely. Making this challenge easier
these days is the invention of the internet and the existence of like minded
forums can generate great results. Questions can be put on line and sometimes
within a few minutes an answer to the question can be obtained. The jewel in
the crown was the fact that plans were available of the Thomson River bridge
and I was kindly sent a copy by a member of the forum. (Sorry forgot your name)
Again almost instant gratification can be had when the plans turned up. There
were around nine pages of plans. Some information was excellent and easy to
read but unfortunately critical measurements were impossible to read. I can
only presume the original scanner did not have access to a decent scanner at
the time or the original plan scanned was not legible. Anyway some is better
than none.
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| The un-readable plan measurements |
Amongst the plans was a plan that laid out the lengths of
each of the spans that were either supported by timber or the concrete piers.
As I was modeling in O scale 1:48 scale a quick total of dimensions came out
with a model around two metres long from end to end. All of this combined with
the fact that in August 2016 I had actually travelled over this bridge by
narrow gauge train and was standing beside the bridge taking as many photos and
measurements as I could in the allotted twenty
minutes that the train was standing at Thomson station.
It was at this stage that I decided I would attempt to make
a model of this bridge for the layout, so in the next blog entry I will detail
how my attempts have been working out.
