Daily Archives: 26/05/2015

Layouts

More that I thought was lost forever

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One of the main reasons I got into smaller more focused layouts was Blair Koostra. If you don’t know who Blair is, then you are in for a treat. Chris Mears found his new blog (about a Texas lad, modelling outback NSW Australia) as opposed to a NSW Lad, modelling Central Texas!

Follow through Chris’ blog post and visit Blair. Tell him I said hi!

Chris Mears's avatarPrince Street

I remain a very big fan of Blair Kooistra’s website, built to chronicle his work on researching and modeling the Walla Walla Valley Railway. It was among the first sites that I discovered that really focused in on produce traffic on a railway. The more I read his website the more I saw things that felt so familiar. I’ve maintained a link out to his from my website hoping someday it would return (wwvrailway.com). Quite by accident I stumbled across this:
http://northofnarrabri.blogspot.ca/2011_02_01_archive.html

I’ve only just discovered the new blog. The particular link I’ve included above discusses his previous work. I’m looking forward to stepping back from these archives and to seeing what he’s up to now. I still miss his old stuff but I have a feeling he’ll extend that same interest to Australian HO.

(He published some really truly outstanding research on car demand, traffic patterns, and loadings…

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Layouts

Quebec South Shore inspiration

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Chris points out a great blog, where the modeller, Matthieu Lachance, is building a perfect, small and operationally interesting layout, from what he’s seen in his area.

If you’ve not seen this blog before you should go to the link and take a look at his track planning and layout build threads. Very interesting and really well done.

Chris Mears's avatarPrince Street

I was cruising around the ProtoModeler forum and somehow found my way to a blog that introduces itself with these words:

April 1986, CP Rail’s local switcher is busy working on St. Pamphile Spur on Quebec Central Railway’s Chaudière Sub while talks about abandonment are heard…

That’s a pretty easy sales pitch. The blog itself is titled Quebec South Shore. I’m only just starting to reading through the posts and looking forward to learning more about it. You should too:
<http://theendofsteel.blogspot.ca/>

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Exhibition, Layouts, Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web

Sight seeing – May 26 (Albury, NSW)

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Apart from better weather, warmer temperatures, gentler breezes and being in NSW, Albury has nothing on Ballarat. Well except for the better weather, warmer temperatures, gentler breezes, being in NSW and the recent Murray Valley Modellers exhibition that was held last weekend on 22-23 May 2015.

One of the junctions on Town and Country

Image 1: My current favourite exhibition layout – Town and Country

It was a relatively large show, for a country show, with a lot of vendor support from around the region.

Layout’s of note

1. Town and Country – HO scale – Gavin Shuttleworth

Town and country is a fictional HO scale layout of the Victorian railways 1970’s to 1980’s era where the country meets the city with a suburb in between. The structures are either scratch or kit built from timber and styrene while the power is from a mixture of analogue and DCC with computer controlled automation.

I think the best part of the layout is that we have electric heavy rail, running under wires. There’s a lot of pictures for you to see, as I took quite a lot of the layout this time. I only managed to get a few shots in when I first saw the layout at the Geelong West show in January.

You can see all of the photos here [ + Link ] .

Batlow - in HO Scale model form

Image 2: the standard of modelling on Batlow is outstanding

2. Batlow – HO scale – Andy Lawson

Batlow, a small town in the foothills of the snowy mountains is famous for its apples.
Featuring a packing house and cannery as the two main industries as well as the goods
yard this small layout has lots of shunting to be done. This layout depicts the railway
as it was from the mid 1960’s following the days of steam.

Image 3: a track diagram of Batlow (Source NSWRail.net)

The only issue I had was with the control of the layout. It looks like the layout is DC controlled; the lack of DCC and sound really hampered the layout in gaining my vote for best layout.

The shunter (a new model Alco 48 class) shot off from a standing start, screeched to a stop and had all of the problems of those nostalgic layouts I remember from my youth. The modelling however was first rate. As you’ll see in image 4 below.

IMG_0929

Image 4: The packing house

For the Batlow gallery click here [ + Link ]

If you got the chance to go, I’d be interested in finding out what you liked.