Tag Archives: model

Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web

Site seeing – March 2

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Yesterday I focused on David Ballie’s Victorian Railways scratchbuilding site. In keeping with that theme (and who knows March may end up being the month of scratchbuilding and kitbashing – scratchbashing anyone?).

Site 1: Peter’s Model Railroading

In the scratchbashing vein I’m going to point you at Peter’s Model Railroading (link here). Peter is an S Scale modeller and is working with radio control (using DCC chips in the locos). There are articles and how-to articles on a range of topics. Take a look around and enjoy his range of articles on scratchbuilding.

1:43.5 (7mm Scale), Australia, O Scale, Site seeing

Site seeing – February 14 – with a difference

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Site seeing with a difference this St Valentines Day. The family headed for the ocean today to Geelong Victoria. While we were down that way I took the opportunity to visit K & L Model Railways Hobbies & Model Construction Supplies of 81 Ryrie St, Geelong VIC 3220.

All I have to say is – what a surprise. The shop is small, but what it lacks in floor space it more than makes up for in stock. They have a great range of O scale parts, kits and so on.

Had a chat to the owner to the owner this morning and I’ll be back there again once I have a bit more disposable income.

With K & L’s assistance I’ll be building a rake of O scale (7mm:Foot) NSWGR 4 wheel RU Grain wagons (see a photo here: Offsite Photo).

These cars have been on my build list for some times but not being able to find a local source of Brass ‘W’ irons and sprung axle blocks has meant that I’ve had to hold off on the build.

With K & L’s owner assuring me that he can get me everything I need the RU planning process can begin. I expect to build the first body out of styrene, then I’ll cast the remaining bodies before tackling the chassis out of brass section. This will make mounting and securing the ‘W’ irons much easier.

All the best on a lovely ‘cool’ summer Saturday in Ballarat.

Diesel Rail Cars, Manufacturers, Rapido Trains HO, RDC

Rapido trains in releasing a brand new model of the RDC

Introduction

I think that the RDC is a great addition to any layout. For those who model passenger operations anywhere from the late 1950s on, these little beauties fit right in. I believe that even in the USA they’re mostly gone now from day-to-day service.

Rapido’s new RDC-1

Thankfully they’re going to be remade by Rapido. And the work they put into this is amazing. Apparently they’ve scanned the real thing, and then worked off the scans and the blueprints to decide what was as-built, and what was in-service.

These cars also ran as is here in Australia. The Commonwealth Railways bought three of them for service in South Australia. I believe that ComEng (Commonwealth Engineering – Granville NSW) also built a set or two under license for use on the South Coast Daylight trains running from Sydney to Bombaderry (Nowra) and return daily but they never worked right for the NSWGR.

Eventually they had the motors pulled and became loco hauled (which is how I remember them in my youth on runs down the coast).

In chugging around their site I noticed that Rapido will produce units that are painted but unlettered. Hopefully this gets some of the Australian modellers interested.

They’re not cheap at CN$325 (especially with our rapidly sinking currency), however, I just checked and the Canadian Dollar is worth slightly less than ours at the moment (0.97 as of writing) so with shipping I’d expect landed costs to be under AU$375 mark..

Resources

The product information page: http://www.rapidotrains.com/rdc1.html

The versions page showing all the versions being produced: http://www.rapidotrains.com/rdcus.html