More Southern Aurora Models

Whilst I had my brief stay in the west I managed to progress on the Southern Aurora models a bit more, I managed to get the BCS Lounge car, the MHN Baggage car & PHN Power car reasonably assembled to the same stage, the sides are all basically complete, roofs modified and glued in place but the end have only been done as far as the Structural End, the cosmetic end still have to be made as does the floors & underframes, let alone the interior detailing.

 Side on shot of the BCS

 And a couple of photos of the MHN

And the PHN - I've ended up re-doing the porthole window in the luggage door as this version looked a bit too big when I compared it to photos I had.



I've also included a couple of photos showing the sequence of modifying the roof hatch area to make it more realistic using Ian's method, it not that hard to do and the shortened A/C hatch is certainly noticeable and in my opinion well worth the small extra effort involved.

You can see a square piece of styrene to the top right hand side of the A/C hatch (& also in the roof shots above), these are the pieces under the roof vents as mentioned in Ian's articles and they are pretty easy to do following Ian's instructions, having seen Ian's models with this detail they do make a difference & again a pretty easy thing to do.

At this stage I'm currently working on the remaining sleeping cars (LAN, DAM & NAMs) trying to get them to the same stage as the other cars so I can complete them all together, so far the sides have been assembled, but that's it, roofs etc still to go. The small windows near the ends of the LAN's have been made by 'cutting & shutting' so to speak, the window surrounds from the surplus windows in the end doors and then letting them into holes cut into the sides, Ian's originals where holes that were drilled & filed to the correct size, I mentioned to Ian I thought this might provide a better end result as it would give the small windows a surround like the rest of the windows & I'm certainly happy with the end result as all the windows now have matching surrounds and whilst I am nowhere near glazing yet whilst I was at Coffs Harbour for work back in Nov 2011 I called into the Plastics Factory that was mentioned in the Kamilaroi blog (I think)  to pick up some 20th styrene and and thinking what Ian had said about the CD covers not being the best to work with, asked them if they had any clear plastic I could experiment with, they sold me some 1mm clear poly-carbonate clear sheeting offcut  and as Ian mentions it certainly gives a good finish, it's reasonably easy to cut and finish to size.  Hopefully by the time they're all done they'll look as good as Ian Black's models.

At the moment I'm scratchbuilding some of the underbody detailing bits and pieces, so far the battery box has been made & I'm currently making the "boxes" that hold some of the underbody parts (Air Conditioning gear, Electrical items etc) I figure out it's going to be easier to make one part and then cast up the rest rather than making heaps individually. Since I started to compose this post I have cast some parts up. Some of the castings are shown in the following photos, I should be able to cast enough of these for the number of unit I need (I hope) and whilst it's a slightly messy procedure I do think that making the polyurethane castings is the way to go when one has to make more than a few of the same item.  I use a re-cycled Fridge compressor as a vacuum pump (not the best option but it does the job pretty much) which I use to de-air the rubber when making the moulds and also vacuum or pressure cast the polyurethane when making the castings - I'm pretty happy with the end results, and it's a fairly cheap process using the recycled equipment (vacuum pump etc).

Battery Box Master

Some early castings - electrical cabinet box on the left and Air Conditioning condensor box on the right

Talking about the underframes I purchased some 2BS bogies from Eureka and intend to fit them to some of the Southern Aurora carriages, should make it easy to set them up for interior lighting as they already have the lighting pickups included, now have to setup the modified Lima 2BU lookalike bogies, I think Ian mentions putting brass bearings and running wires from the bearings for electrical connections, sounds like a good idea to me and something I'll experiment with.


The layout has not progressed any further which I'm comfortable with because at this stage I intend to  finish my version of the Southern Aurora which I'm hoping to have done by the end of summer (which is getting closer & closer and I've still got no further - ahh Family commitments - Well Summer officially finished a few days back so I guess I missed that date :-)) so I can then start back on the layout in Autumn (not so hot then and I really want to get the Southern Aurora finished) at which point I hope to start to replace the remaining scratch built point motors with the Servo type of point motors using the TAM Valley decoders, I think I mentioned in a previous post that the old point motors will be pressed into service powering some semaphore signals I've made.

Well that the plan, now to see if it comes to fruition.

That's about it for now, not a lot to show for the time, but for me it's been quite a dramatic year for other reasons, but this year will hopefully be better.

Back Home

 

 

Big ol' jet airliner take me back home (Photo from Jetphoto.net, but it was who I flew with & the type of plane I flew on)

 

Well my brief sojourn in Perth has come to an end all to quick as I had to come back to Sydney unexpectedly, my  wife is very happy (well she is actually the reason I had to come home, but that's a story for another day, maybe) and the kids were delighted to have me home (though not sure if that still holds true :-) but for me my stay in the West came to an end much to quick and unfortunately whilst I did get to sample some of the local delights, I certainly did not see anywhere near what I had intended to, both from a modelling perspective and a general perspective, though it meant I got a chance to go to the AMRA 50th anniversary exhibition held at the E.G Whitlam centre in Liverpool which I had resigned myself to missing out on (costs twice as much to fly at that time as compared to a few weeks earlier, or later, I wonder why that is) the down side is that I had hoped to get to a 'local' exhibition down at Albany which would have been a neat trip for a weekend.

 

Next time, and I hope there will be a next time, I hope to sample more of the local sites which was difficult this time as I was limited to public transport, speaking of which I'm quite impressed with the idea of  some of the suburban lines going down the centre of the freeway.

 

 

As I am a member of the NMRA, I took advantage of that membership to attend a couple of the meetings and meet some of the local members, who made me feel most welcome, and I must make a special mention of Alan Burrough, the Div 4 super who went out of his way to drive me to the meetings, a gesture that was really appreciated & shows the benefits of belonging to an organisation such as the NMRA, or AMRA which also has a national presence. One of the members who hosted a meeting was Phil Knife(MMR), unfortunately he was in the midst of moving and so his layout was stripped bare ready to be moved to its new home (another local Modeller has purchased it I believe), but a sample of Phil's modelling is evident in the following photo of a WAGR 'R' class that Phil scratch built to SN3 1/2 scale, using a mixture of Styrene for the superstructure and Brass/Nickel Silver for the chassis, some really nice modelling.

The other meeting I attended was at Frank Goode's (MMR) place, a sample of his modelling skills is displayed in the following set of photos :

 

And the view one gets when Frank opens up the door to the layout room, rather nifty I think (pardon the sideon view, can't figure it how to import it vertically.

 

I've been told that there is a fairly good contingent of NSW modellers over in the West, unfortunately I did not really get a chance to meet any though I did manage to get to the AMRM clubrooms near Bassendean and saw the Swan View  layout first hand, unfortunately none of the structures were on the layout as they were boxed and put away so as to minimise damages, a very good idea, they also had a range of HO/OO American & British models which were very nice, and a really nice 'O' gauge layout :

 

 

When I knew I was definitely coming home I hired a car for my last weekend, this gave me the opportunity to see a few railway related items I would not have seen otherwise, one was a visit to Whiteman Park where they have a purpose built tourist 2' (I think) narrow gauge railway (Bennett Brooke Railway - www.bbr.org.au ), they do have steam there (including a couple of South African ng15 2-8-2, unfortunately they are under repair but are hopeful of having at least one back & running in the not too distant future) as well as some other smaller steamers, but unfortunately they were restricted to diesel running due to a bushfire which was being mopped up as I was there, so our trusty stead for the day was a Gemco Funkey PW27 (Wyndham). Whilst travelling in the passenger cars I asked the Guard, 'Mal' about the railroad, and whilst telling me about the history of the line he asked where I was from, when I said Sydney & that I was returning home the next day he then contacted the driver, Scott & arranged for me to have a cab ride, so my planned 1/2 hour trip ended up lasting a very pleasant 2 hours, so thank you to Mal & Scott for making this visitor from the east have a great day.

I also went down to Dwellingup to visit the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway (http://www.hothamvalleyrailway.com.au/), I had decided not to go for a ride as I was due to fly out later that afternoon & did not want to take any risks, but I still had a great time looking at the steamer in service (a WAGR 'W' class?) and watching it as it worked its way back up the hillside.

From there I hightailed it back to Perth, there must've been a major accident in the opposite direction because I noticed that the freeway was blocked for at least 7 -8 Km and I remember thinking I'm glad I'm not stuck in that as I could have missed my flight. I then stopped in at the Castledare Miniature Railway (http://www.castledare.com.au/), they only had diesels running but still nice to see.

Quite ironic I travelled all the way to the west coast & still saw a 44, admittedly, a model (& it looked quite nice)

To me, one of the highlights of my stay in the West though was nothing to do with Railways but something that happened a few years ago now and have been wanting to see for many years now, as the PM of the day said, any boss that sacks someone today is a bum, or words to that effect, if that didn't give it away this should:

 

And that fabulous winged keel

 

Australia II, which won the America's cup many years ago, is on display at Freemantle in the Maritime museum, to me well worth seeing, as was the Collins class submarine, HMAS Ovens, that is open for a tour, well worth doing and certainly gives an appreciation for what our submariners go thru to defend us.

I guess I should also mention that I managed to do a bit of modelling as well whilst I was in the west and now I have the Southern Aurora Lounge car (BCS), Diner (RMS), Baggage car (MHN) and Power van (PHN) built to the basic shell stage(sides, structural end and roofs) , that can be a story for the next blog, but those that attended Liverpool on the Saturday would have seen Ian Black's model of the Southern Aurora running around the Waterfall layout & they looked great.

Well that's it for now.

Cheers Alex.

The Golden West

So, what's this photo got to do with the Mudgee Line, quite a bit it turns out, and then again nothing at all. The above photo of a sunset from a beach looking over the ocean is one which I would have thought I might take one day on holidays, but not from a place that I'm working from - why is that, well because I'm based in the Western Sydney area, which is where the Mudgee layout is, but that photo was taken at Scarborough Beach, Perth, Western Australia, just a few K's west of Sydney :-)

A little while ago the company I used to work for made me/my role redundant, unfortunately the only work I could find was based in Perth, the other side of the continent, and I must say though I've only been here for a short while, it is quite a nice place to be, I just hope I get a chance to sample the local modelling scene (Ideas anyone??).

One would think that with redundancy one would have a heap of time to be able to spend on the layout, unfortunately that's not how it's worked out for me, whilst I have been doing a bit of modelling, it's not really been for the Mudgee line (more on that shortly) I have not been able to do anything much on the layout (but I have managed to replace about 2/3rd of the old point motors with the RC Servo based point motors), mainly because of other commitments.

So what have I been doing.

At the last convention at Loftus I saw a demonstration of modifications to the Lima Southern Aurora cars to make them more realistic by a gent named Ian Black, after initial discussions with Ian I decided to have a go at making a 10 car Southern Aurora set, whilst it never ran to Mudgee (except as a preservation tour or three as far as I am aware and even then probably with not all the 'correct' cars) it has been a favourite of mine and I have always wanted to model it, my original intentions was to just have a go at making the power and baggage cars and leave it at that, Allan Brown showed me his models based on the Lima Southern Aurora cars where he lowered the windows to make them more realistic and I thought that would be a good move and discussed with Allan what would be involved in modifying the models, before I started Allan told me about a very good set of models of the Southern Aurora he had seen at the Armidale convention and he thought that whilst there was a fair bit of work involved that they did make up into a very nice set, after seeing Ian's rendition of the Southern Aurora set at the last Loftus convention I decided to have a go. Thus based on Ian's descriptions at the convention and via phone conversations, I have started making my versions based upon Ian's information.

The above photos are of the NAM & RMS, whilst not yet finished (long way to go actually) they have been a lot of fun to get to the stage they are in in the photo, currently I am working on some more LANs, NAMs & DAMs, and have bought some of the models west with me to hopefully continue with.

I'm hoping that whilst I'm working over in Perth that I might be able to do more modelling, time will tell, but if I have anywhere near the amount of free time I think I'll have, I should have the 10 cars finished in about 3 - 4 months.

So whilst the Mudgee line may not be worked on for quite a while from now on, I'm hoping that I will still be able to do some form of modelling in one form or another.

Well that's it for now, so until next time I bid you adieu.

Cheers Alex...

Changing Directions

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that I scratchbuilt my point motors :

using a method shown to me by Allan G., whilst I have been reasonably pleased with the end result, they do have some shortcoming - the main one is that they are not adjustable in their movement - it's all or nothing, and they do not have any DCC functionality, sure I could get a DCC stationary/accessory decoder but that would not have fixed their other limitation of no flexibility in their movement range, and whilst in the main they function OK, there are a few which are noisy, and others which just do not move far enough, leaving a small gap between the point blade and the stock rail which can lead to some rolling stock derailing, so I have been toying with the idea of replacing them with something better for a while now.

I've always been impressed by the servo motor (from the RC hobby) point motors

9G servo mounted in a bracket and actuator fitted ready for under point deployment

they are a very small and compact unit , compare the size of the scratchbuilt unit to the servo based unit in the photo below :

but have thought them to be a bit dear, then whilst at one of the CCWN meeting held at Rowan place (Main South) I noticed that Rowan had some servo motors acting as point motors, when I asked Rowan how he found them he said that the original decoders he got where a bit 'chatty' and figured out close to $100 per four, to me $25 per point is a bit on the dear side, he then mentioned that he had just got a set of decoder/drivers from Tam Valley in the States and found these to be quite good, and reasonably priced (Rowan was using the 'Singlets' at the time).

 Upon investigating the costs I figured out that if I bought the Quad Pic boards and the servo motors in quantity it would figure out to about $10 per point, that includes DCC capability, compared to the $7-$8 it was costing me to scratch build the point motors (with no DCC capabilities) I figured that out to be a good deal, pretty well a no brainer.

A Pair of Quad Pic servo drivers/decoders, these control up to 4 individual servos (or more if paired as crossovers)

I found a good article in the 3rd Quarter, 2009 edition of the free Model Railroad Hobbist EZine http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com  which describes the Tam Valley decoders http://www.tamvalleydepot.com and how to connect the servos to the layout, whilst I did not follow their method to the letter(they recommend using double sided tape to fix the servos to the layout, I prefer to use screws as I think that gives a better fix), it certainly has some good ideas which I have used.

Seeing I had a requirement for more point motors I figured out that I would be better getting these rather than continuing along the scratch building path because they give me flexibility in their movement range, they have DCC inbuilt let alone that fact that it save me time in not having to scratch build any more point motors, I would still have to make the mounting brackets, but that is a fairly quick task which took all of about 2 hours to make sufficient brackets to mount 36 servos. I have made two types of mounting brackets, one is made from a 25mm Plastic angle (about $9.00 for a 2.4M length) which will be used where the point motor is not directly underneath the point as it has slightly more clearance than the other style of bracket :

the other is made from a 'U' shaped piece of plastic moulding  sold at Bunnings as a plastic floor covering cap for about $3 per 2.4M length, this will be used where the point motor is directly below the point,

 

the 'U' type bracket has a channel of about 13mm in width into which a servo fits quite nicely, an end on shot of both types of brackets is below:

You may have noticed that the actuating wire is 'threaded' through the plastic lever, this is quite easy to do as shown in the photo below:

So far I've replaced about a dozen point motors and am very happy with the result to date. As for the scratch built point motors I currently have on the workbench and those currectly in place in the layout that will be replaced with the servo motors, I will probably end up using these replaced point motors to drive the lower quadrant signals I have.

I hope Santa was kind to all (Looks like the Jolly Gent has put down for a set of Euruka BSV's for me:-) and that the New Year is a prosperous and good one.

Well that wraps this little session up, now back to fitting more point motors.

Maldon / Castlemaine

I really should have posted something about this back in August, but didn't really think about it until just recently whilst looking for some photos & came upon some I had taken recently. Mind you it really has nothing to so with the Mudgee line, then again neither has the BGM Vic J that I have to build.

Back in August a mate of mine and I went down to Melbourne for the Caulfield exhibition, the exhibition was worth flying down for & very enjoyable, also picked up one of the NSW BKX car transporter kits from Strath Hobbies (as recently review in AMRM), just have to find the time to put it together amongst all the other stuff I want to do - maybe another retirement project along with the J.


We had 2 days down there so visited the exhibition on the Saturday and then did some travelling on the Sunday, went to Puffing Billy in the morning & saw 2 trains depart, then hightailed it to Maldon to see the Maldon / Castlemaine (Victorian Goldfields Railway) steamer run, we made it too late to  catch the 'J' to Castlemaine but had a great time none the less exploring Maldon station & it's surrounds - especially it's selection of wagons :-.

Maldon township is great - like stepping back in time & has some great old time looking shops etc, unfortunately we did not have much time to explore the area, but we've slated it for a re-visit next time we head down that way.

I had heard that the station itself was burnt down a few years ago & I wasn't really sure what to expect and was very pleasantly suprised to see it had been rebuilt to what I can only assume was it's former glory.

If you get a chance to visit it's well worthwhile a trip and only about an hour or so from Melbourne itself, I know I'll be visiting again and probably staying closer to there so to have more time to explore.

Well that's it for now.

Cheers Alex...

The Roundhouse

A little while ago I started making a roundhouse for one of my station on the lower part of the layout, of which the turntable was described in an earlier post, which is roughly based on what was at Orange - 5 stall saw tooth, the only photo I have is from the Byways series of books - hope the guys don't mind if I include a pic showing what I'm trying to achieve - well worth getting as they have a heap of great information.

Photo from the Byways collection

I made the base from 40 thou (1mm) styrene and some slaters brick siding for the low brick exterior, whilst I'm happy enough with the end result it was a real pain in the proverbial cutting in the pits - and they're still probably not accurate, but they'll do me.

You may notice some metalic pins at the bottom, they are countersunk M3 machine screw which are araldited into the roundhouse base which then go into corresponing holes in the baseboard, washers & nuts are then use to fix in place, hopefully this will keep everying aligned.

About a month or so after I started I attended the Epping/Thornleigh exhibition & saw that Antons/Uneek had released a new kit for a simliar roundhouse, if I had not started on my one I may have bought the kit plus an extra 2 stalls as it would probably have been a quicker option (see Ray P's Bylong blog for some good discussions on it), however as I had already started I simply kept going.

I photocopied & scaled the drawings in Byways as a guide & taped it to a piece of blue insulation foam, covered it in glad wrap so the glue would not stick to the plan & then used drawing pins to help in placing the timbers to make the roundhouse roof trusses & sides - a simple enough jig and worked good enough for the 27 odd roof frames & the 2 sides I had to make.

Foam jig and some of the trusses made assembled into the model

Most of the scale timbers are by Kapler which I bought from Gwydir's, unfortunately I ran out of the roof rafters timber (I used 2 * 3), so bought some from another shop which where marked by the manufacturer as 2 * 3, even worse when I placed them on the roof it became clear that they are actually smaller in size, not by much and hopefully not noticeable when I eventually clad the roof with corrugated iron.

Talking of which I bought a 'corrugated iron maker' from Brunel hobbies whilst down at the Caulfield exhibition, it's basically a 2 piece perspex jig in which  a piece of aluminium is placed in the larger piece & the corresponding piece of the jig is drawn against the aluminium to press in the corrugations:

- only hassel I have is that the aluminum supplied, whilst thicker than alfoil is still fairly thin and thus fragile and also ends up curling a bit, but it can be straightened up quite easily, I experimented with some foil from the seal in the top of Milo tins & I found it too thick for my liking,  my daughter thinks the foils she uses for hairdressing is possibly in between the two, so I'll experiment with that when she gets some next (though I'll probably have to buy it for her -ahh  the joys of being a Dad to an apprentice hair dresser - pitty I don't have much hair for her to practice on :-), I'll update on that little experiment as I get to it - I experimented with the seals on the Alpen Blend chocalate powder last night & found it pretty good - just gotta figure out where to get some from if the haridressing foil is not suitable.

At this stage the roof & supports are pretty well complete, the legs of the frame have a wire pin glued into then and this pin then inserts into a corresponding hole in the base of the roundhouse, hopefully this will make for reasonably accurate alignment :

I've also started on the side wall frames and hope to fit them in the next week or two.After that is the End glass & louvers treatment and then the smoke flues and finally clading of the building with corrugated iron. One thing I do want to do, similar to what Ray P has done for his roundhouse, is to include interior lighting, I have some station lampshades which I am thinking of using along with some SMD LEDs, and it's something I need to allow for before I go much further.

Well I guess it's not much to show for the length of time since the last update, but there it is. Hopefully the next update will be a bit sooner than this one was.