Model Trains and Things

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.

If you’re into DCC control for your model railroad … which I’m not … yeah I know, Luddites have nothing on me … you should head over to the website of a new DCC supplier here in Australia.

RailCon Model Railway Control make their own gear and they have some very interesting modules for sale including 2 and three aspect signal controls. Follow the link and you’ll see all they have to offer.

Marklin - the German manufacturer of fine model trains - has filed for insolvency (something close to bankruptcy in most parts of the world) after being unable to repay a 50 million euro loan that fell due in January.

The company now hopes that the insolvency regulators will allow Marklin to restructure and emerge even stronger than ever.

That’s sad news for a company about to celebrate its 150th anniversary.

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.

Perhaps the most remote railway line in Australia is the Comalco line at Weipa on Cape York Pennisula. The line is only 19.5km in length but it’s used to haul some heavy loads of bauxite … and other things too.

Unfortunately photos of the line are a little rare but here are two photos taken earlier this year  around 2000 - 2001 (see comments below) that I came across on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krustymokester/2243709798/in/set-72157594378293048/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krustymokester/2243710628/in/set-72157594378293048/

that you might find interesting

 If you’re interested in disused railway tunnels then the May 2008 issue of Australian Railway History (it’s out in the newsagents as the moment) has a very interesting article on the old tunnels at Glenbrook, west of Penrith, Clarence east of Lithgow and  at Marrangaroo, west of Lithgow.

Both localities were used to store mustard gas and other chemical weapons that the RAAF had imported from England in the form of bombs in the early part of World War II.

The article is of particular interest to me because my first wife’s father was in the RAAF during and after the war and was stationed at both localities.

He has since passed away but I can clearly remember him telling my wife and I of the time he and several other stores personnel were actually gassed at Glenbrook and were rushed to hospital.

He was then moved to Marrangaroo and was there when the Japanese midget submarines attaced Sydney Harbour. Evidently the attack caused such a panic that the Marrangaroo depot … which housed a lot of munitions not just mustard gas … received instructions to evacuate all the munitions from the depot and hide them in the rough country behind the depot.

And that was very rough country indeed … evidently at times the trucks transporting the munitions into that country had to be winched up steep inclines. Such was the rush to clear everything out of the depot that no one kept accurate records of where various loads of munitions were dumped and when it came time to recover the hidden bombs etc. not everything could be found.

My father-in-law was very clear about the fact that quite a few of the chemical warfare weapons were never recovered because no one could remember where they had been hidden.

So the bombs are still out there and the area where the munitions depot once stood has become much more populated than it once was.

To read more about Australia’s involvement with chemical weapons go to Chemical Warfare in Australia 

If you’ve been bitten by the narrow gauge bug then here’s a gallery of photos from the West Lancs Light Railway that is definitley worth seeing.

Back in the 1930’s it was not uncommon for quite large amounts of gold to be carried south from Alice Springs to Adelaide on the Ghan. The gold would be delivered to train just before departure time and locked in a safe in the Guard’s compartment.

In 1935 one such shipment - weighting about 34kg - went missing from the train’s safe and, despite a thorough investigation, no one was ever charged over the missing gold and it was never recovered. There are some who believe that the gold never actually made it back to civilization and that whoever removed it from the safe buried it near the track in what was then a very remote part of Australia.

Now two Territorians are setting out to find the gold and you can read more about them here.