Model Trains and Things

Working on a railway is a very dangerous affair and there are always safety procedures in place to ensure that railway workers are protected as much as possible from those dangers. What you’re about to see here would never be allowed in most countries but in some poorer countries workers are prepared to take risks just to keep their jobs.

On this electrified mine railway the loco’s pantograph is hand-held

It’s sad to note that Cyril Freezer passed away yesterday. Although many thousands of model railway enthusiasts - including me - never met Cyril personally he was very well known to us and had a great influence on us.

Cyril was the editor of Railway Modeller for many years and the magazine contained much of his work. He was a prolific layout designer and he will be sadly missed.

Now here is an interesting idea that I came across at the Brisbane train show earlier this month … and it was especially interesting for me because I seriously dislike building benchwork.

Modular Train Tables will provide you with a kit to build the benchwork for your layout and then ship it to you in kit form. It seems that all the necessary fittings are supplied and all you have to do is assemble it … all the cutting has been done for you. 

Follow the link to the website and you can place your order online.

Toni and I drove down to Brisbane yesterday to visit the 2009 Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition. We haven’t been to an exhibition in at least eight years so it was interesting to see where the hobby has gone in that time.

There were definitely some very interesting exhibits and the trade stalls were worth visiting too. I’ve posted some of the photos I took at the exhibition here. As you will see most of those are of narrow gauge displays featuring everything from HOn2.5 right through to some very large-scale models.

Here’s one photo you won’t find over there - it’s the O-Aust Kits 32 class - I rate it about a 10 on the drool-worth scale