Model Trains and Things

Toni and I spent most of Saturday visiting a new client - a local historical museum - out west and on the way back we stopped for a break at Biggenden where I took some photos of the railway station there.

Those photos are still sitting in the camera so I though I’d start the week with this video taken at the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers which was on last weekend too. My thanks to Graham R for putting it up on YouTube.

The steam loco is 1079 and there’s some great stack-talk as she gets stuck into the task of hauling the train. Fortunately 1620 - Queensland’s first Heritage Diesel is there too and if you’ve never heard and English Electric diesel in action then you’ll find this video interesting too.

It’s a Sunday in 1968 or 1969 and we’re standing on the road bridge that spans the railway cutting between Berala and Regents Park. The line is closed for track maintenance and there’s a perway gang had at work.

This interesting piece of machinery and the men around it were just some of the team that was working between Berala and Regents Park that day.

I’m not quite sure what the machine did but it sure did make a lot of noise

I came across the same machine a few years later stowed in a siding at Yerrinbool but there was too much shade to get a decent photograph that day.

Yesterday I posted a couple of photos of railway maintenance vehicles from NSW and here are two more.

This is a photo that I must have looked at hundreds of times over the years and I thought it was one I had taken at the down end of Bathurst yard … I must admit I hadn’t looked too closely at what was on the other side of the tracks or I would have realised that it was nothing like Bathurst.

When I pulled it out of the album to scan it I found that it was actually taken at Cootamundra on the 5th of January 1991 and if the handwriting on the back of the photo is anything to go by it was taken by Lawrence Ryan … not me.

Well moving right along … here’s another maintenance vehicle and this one I knew was taken by Lawrence.

The photo is undated but it was taken in the yard at Clyde. You’ll notice a rail-mounted bus tucked in behind SRS141. While the photo was undated it was probably taken somewhere between 1990 and 1994.

Over on Railpage Australia there’s been a discussion going on about opening the old Picton Loop line to feed commuter traffic down to connect with the mainline. It was started when one member posted a photo of the Rail Evaluation Car - RVX4 - taken at Buxton recently.

It seems that the car couldn’t get over the entire loop line due to vegetation and no one is really planning on reopening the Loop Line for commuter traffic.

Here’s a photo of RVX4 taken in Orange back in September 1989 by Bob Old. The brick building in the background was the Orange District Superintendent’s office … I’m sure that’s a position that’s no longer in existence.

Here’s a similar vehicle that I photographed behind the old Lithgow Railway Station some time around 1977 or early 1978.

There’s been some interesting articles appearing in some of the railway history magazines here in Australia lately. Perhaps the most interesting of all was in the August 2008 issue of Light Railways.

In an article entitled ‘Standard gauge industrial sidings in Sydney: Lower North Shore’ author Jim Longworth discusses several unusual railway sidings. Perhaps the most unusual was the siding into the Pastoral Finance Association Ltd’s meat preservation works at Kirribilli Point.

The rather large works was built right next door to the house that has since become the Sydney home for Australia’s Prime Ministers … and of course it had absolutely no rail access whatsoever.

So how did something that had no rails rate as a railway siding?

Wagons were transferred from Darling Harbour by a flat barge fitted with railway tracks. The loaded barge would be pushed into an unloading bay inside the factory and wagons unloaded.

So if you’re an Australian modeller looking for a prototype railway barge operation then here is the prototype for you.

The July and August editions of the Australian Railway History magazine carry an interesting two-part article on the life of the NSW Railways 70 Class. For some reason odd-looking little shunters have always attracted me and so I’ve always been interested in the 70 class.

It’s good to see that at least one is preserved in operating condition because, even though they weren’t a raging success, they did further the development of diesel hydraulic locomotives in Australia.

The August edition also has a look back at the visit of the Flying Scotsman to Australia. Last year I had the chance to talk to a couple of NSW drivers who were involved with the Scotsman while it was touring that state and it seems all was not sweetness and light between the British and Australian crews.

It seems that the British crew as rather hard to deal with and a jibe that I once saw on a tshirt was fairly close to the truth. The tshirt had an image of the nose of 3801 on the front together with the words “I pushed the Flying Scotsman around Australia”.

Admittedly the Scotsman did have trouble with some of the coal it was fed here in Australia but some of the other problems it seemed to encounter here in Australia were related to issues other than mechanical.

If you’re interested in ususual diesel locomotives then the Voith website is definitely worth looking at. You’ll find the diesel locomotive section here and be sure to scroll down … even if it doesn’t look as though you’re at the bottom of the page because you probably aren’t.