Model Trains and Things

In 1912 the Tasmanian Government Railways went back to Beyer Peacock for some more Garratt type locomotives. This time they weren’t looking for anything like the original L Class they had bought three years earlier – this time they were looking for some 3′ 6″ gauge mainline grunt for both goods and passenger locomotives.

Once again Tasmania led the world for the M class passenger locos Beyer Peacock supplied were the first Garratt mainline express locomotives ever built.

This photo is used with the permission of the National Archives

Two of these handsome 4-4-2+2-4-4 locomotives were built and placed in service on the mainline express and mail trains between Launceston and Hobart. M1 remained in service until 1925 and M2 lasted until 1931.

Beyer Peacock also supplied two mainline goods locomotives – these were the L class and even though they were narrow gauge locomotives they certainly rated some serious tractive effort of 134.3kN (30,171 lb).

Compare those figures to the most up-to-date NSWGR locomotive of the time – the 53 class with a tractive effort of 128.1kN (28,777 lb) and you’ll see that the L class had some serious grunt.

This photo is used with the permission of the National Archives

These 2-6-2+2-6-2 locomotives also worked the mainline from Launceston to Hobart. They lasted in regular service until 1936 but made a brief come-back in the last years of the war.

If you compare both the builders photos of the M and the L class you will see that the centre unit was basically the same for both classes and both classes shared the same boiler pressure.

None of these locomotives were preserved and all wer cut up around 1950/51

Working from home, as I do, has its good points and its bad points. One of the bad points is that I tend to get very lazy about the desk in my office and seldom make any attempt to keep it tidy.

But this week it got all too much for me and I just had to clean it up. While I was doing so I found this:

Lord knows how it got there – and it certainly hasn’t been hiding on my desk since 1988 but there it was and for me it was a blast from the past.

The illustration on the front of the brochure came from James McInerney’s wonderful layout Lambing Flat.

Inside the brochure is a list of presentations that were to be made that day. Those presentations included Researching and Building Richmond (in N Scale) from Phil Badger. Phil Collins talked about modeling mail trains.

Ian Dunn waxed lyrical about the fact that it was always spring inside an air-conditioned train. Keiran Ryan talked about wheat silos and if I remember correctly he also displayed one of his amazing wheat silo models.

Ian Thorpe talked about researching and building goods vehicles and a totally unknown speaker made his one and only appearance as a speaker at Modelling the Railways of NSW conventions when I gave a talk on card order operation – subtitled How to Work No. 52 Pick-up.

These days I can’t remember how I came to select that number for a train but oddly enough only the other day I found the display cards I used in my presentation.

Those conventions were always packed with information and I learned a lot every time I attended.

I thought that this week we might spend some time down in Tasmania. I visited there with the kids and my first wife in the early 1990s and then went back to live there in 1996 – before finally heading to Queensland to get warm in 2004.

Tasmania was definitely a place of contrasts and that was certainly obvious when it came to the railways down there. Some of the most unusual steam locos in Australia ran in Tasmania on both the mainline and the 2′ gauge tramways. They were one of the first states to introduce diesel locomotives; they were one of the first states to introduce 2000 hp mainline locos and yet they persisted with vacuum brakes, couldn’t make a profit and quickly gave up their railways to the Commonwealth when the Federal Government offered to take over.

And it was after the Commonwealth took over that the face of Tasmanian railways  really began to change. Locos from Queensland and South Australia were brought in to ease a shortage of locomotives that had been allowed to develop.

Among the first foreigners to to arrive from the north were the 45 members of the Queensland Railways 1300 class. These English Electric locos originally entered service in 1967 and were rated at 1795 hp. While all the locos were shipped to Tasmania not all entered service but those that did were reclassified as the ZC class.

Here is ZC41 laying over at Hobart in the early 1990s.

These locos had some interesting travels over the years. They went from Queensland to Tasmania and from there some moved on to Africa, Malaysia  and South Australia while others were scrapped and a few more were left in service in Tassie.

The locos that went to South Australia were rebuilt into the MKA class and ran on BHP’s iron ore lines in that state. Some of those that went to Africa and Malaysia came back to Australia where they too were rebuilt into the MKA class and sold to Pacific National for use in Queensland – where they were universally disliked and spent quite some time in storage at Gympie – and now three of them are back in Tasmania.

Contrast the above photo with this one of ZC32 in a rather sad and sorry state at Don River. This loco was originally going to be shipped to Western Australia but the deal for this and two of its sisters fell through.

You’ll find more photos of the ZC class and a short movie clip of them in action on this page of the Tasmanian Railway Index.

Follow this link to find another interesting Australian railway blog. There are some great photos and it’s interesting to read of what goes on behind the camera

Ok, I admit that it’s got nothing to do with trains but it really is a stunning scale model and everything that has gone into this model has been scratchbuilt.

And check out his workshop – most of us would love to have a workshop like this one.

Even if you’ve never scratchbuilt a thing in your life you will still appreciate the work that has gone into this model 

The ABC is reporting that the southbound Ghan hit a truck on a private level crossing late this morning. The truck driver was injured but the crew and passengers on the train were unharmed.

You can read the full story here

I wonder what it will take to wake drivers up to the fact that train lines should be crossed with extreme caution?

There was a time when the steelworks in Newcastle and Port Kembla were hives of industry served by an amazing fleet of industrial locomotives ranging from chunky saddle tank locomotives to unusual diesels that came from various manufacturers.

Today the steelworks and their locomotive fleet are gone. The steelworks in Port Kembla are still in production and the plant is still served by an interesting collection of locomotives but Pacific National now have the contract to operate the industrial network so thinks are likely to change.

Back in 1995 and 1997 things were different though and Brad Peadon shot these photos.

BHP 16 was deep in the steelworks at Port Kembla in October 1995. This loco was the first of 12 English Electric locomotives that began arriving in 1959. They’re powered by a 635kW/850HP EE 8SRKT engine.

Now lets head north to Newcastle and November 1997.

BHP 48 was one of 22 locomotives built by Goninan’s at Broadmeadow. These were introduced in 1960 and used within the plant on various duties. When the Newcastle steelworks closed a number of the locos were offered for sale and BHP 48 was purchased by Manildra Flour Mills.

These days it wears a nice shade of blue and is numbered MM04.

BHP 53 was from the same group as the previous loco. When the steelworks closed this loco was passed to the Richmond Vale Railway where it’s reportedly preserved in an operational condition.

The majority of these locomotives were powered by a Cummins diesel but both 48 and 53 were part of a small group that were powered by a Rolls Royce diesel. Both the Cummins and the Rolls Royce units produce 403kW/540HP.

Lot’s of us have had dreams of becoming a train driver. It seems like a dream job for any model railway enthusiast but is it really as good as we think it is?

Of course there’s the shift work and the time spent in a motel far away from home. And there’s also something else … the almost inevitable day when your train kills someone. Then the dream job becomes a nightmare.

But just how much of a nightmare it becomes is something most of us don’t realise. Follow this link and you’ll have a chance to see how three fatal accidents have had a terrible impact on one American train driver.