Once again, work has got in the way of my hobby and Toni and I have been been working long hours every day for weeks but I’m grabbing 5 minutes now just to point you in the direction of a new website that’s out there and definitely worth going back to.
Scott Perry who is a very active member of the On30 Conspiracy list has started work on a new layout and his new website will take you through it’s construction. Scott has some very innovative ideas on layout design and even now … while he’s still in the baseboard construction period … there’s plenty to think about.
Back on February 21 I took a run over to Maryborough to have a look at what was out in the open at the EDI/Walkers plant and there I found 8306.
Pacific National will be moving into the Queensland coal transport market … perhaps as soon as the last quarter of this year … and they’re having two classes of electric locomotives built to handle that traffic. Once class is being built in Germany and the 83 class is being built at the EDI plant in Maryborough - the same place that built the PN class diesels for Pacific National.
This photo was taken from a public street … that’s where most of the EDI products receive their finishing touches.
From the EDI plant I headed over to Maryborough West and found two more EDI/Walkers products in the yard there.
The loco nearest the camera is 3532 a rebuild of one of the original classes of electric loco that QR had built when they introduced electrification to the north coast line. 3532 was waiting to head north where it will spend its working life hauling coal trains.
Behind the 35 class is Pacific National’s 8304 and off to the left is a the Maryborough West shunter - a 1720 class that was so decrepit looking that you couldn’t read it’s number from either side or from either end.
About every three months Toni and I have to go to Rockhampton so we drive up and back along the Bruce Highwayand. tThe best part of the trip would have to be the section north of Mount Larcombe right through to Rockhampton because that’s where the Bruce Highway parallels the main north coast railway line.
That’s also the section that was subject to duplication work a few years back so that it could cope with the large number of coal trains coming in from the west and heading down to Gladstone to unload. Queensland Rail runs some very long coal trains along this section and you will nearly always see two locos on the front of the train and one or two locos cut in at about the halfway point in the train.
It’s quite an impressive site to see one of these fully laden coal trains thundering along and I was surprised to read today that Queensland Rail limits the speed of these coal trains to 80km/h. It was surprising because we sure weren’t doing 80km/h when we were trying to keep up with this fully laden train on the last trip
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.
I was stationed in Orange in New South Wales for eight years from 1988 to when I resigned in 1996. During that time a group of live steamers got together and, by the time I left Orange, had established neat running area in Anson Street just on the outskirts of the shopping centre.
The group is still in existence and the track is still in place and becomes a hive of activity on operating days. These photos were taken during one such operating session last year by one of my sons who still lives in Orange.
Photo courtesy of John Livesey
Not everyone goes to run their live steamers on an operating day. Some come along to show off the work that has gone into their latest creation and get some input from other club members. Here are two members casting a critical eye over a partially built NSWGR C30T.
Barry Potter is well known as a loco builder in live steam circles and he has built a number of NSWGR 50 class steam locos for various people. It’s quite possible that 5035 and 5037 are products of his workshop.
Photo courtesy of John Livesey
Photo courtesy of John Livesey
The 36 class were one THE mainline passenger loco of the NSWGR before being bumped to lesser duties following the introduction of the 38 class and diesels such as the 40 class, 42 class, 43 class and 44 class. Here we see a model of the last of the 36 class sitting in the yard area.
Photo courtesy of John Livesey
3807 was one of the first non-streamlined 38 class locomotives. I’m not sure if it ever In real life it never carried the green paint scheme shown here (although 3813 and 3830 carried this scheme) but when you built a beautiful working model like this you’re entitled to paint it any colour you choose. (I’m not sure where my brain was when I wrote the first part of that sentence) All members of the 38 class carried a similar green livery at some stage of their working lives.
In a fit of madness a couple of weeks ago I thought that I might have been able to get back to a near-normal lifestyle as our business began to slow just a little. At the same time the scratchbuilding bug bit and along came the latest copy of Narrow Gauge Down Under.
In the magazine was an article on scratchbuilding a four-wheel Class A Climax and it caught my eye. One of those in On30 would look very good running on my yet-to-be-built layout.
Now the Climax is a fairly open locomotive and fitting a motor to such a beast is a bit of a challenge. The author of the article built his with the motor hidden inside the vertical boiler and I was thinking along those lines until I came across this.
This is a plan of a new drive system - called the Gurzeler - from the Hollywood Foundry here in Australia. The Hollywood Foundry has a number of drive systems available for model locos at prices that are very reasonable and a visit to their website is not to be missed.
This particular drive system is designed to provide the minimum outline size possible above the floor and the belt drive … something that’s not very common these days … allows for “considerable latitude in your design as the spacing between motor and the translator is not critical, as it would be with gears”.
It certainly looks interesting and one day I may actually get to build the loco and install a drive like this one … but I’m not holding my breath. The slowdown that I mentioned lasted all of 48 hours and now we’re back to working at well-beyond full capacity so the dreams of building and running an A Class Climax have been filed away for another day.
If you love the sound of an EMD diesel working hard and you’ve got a soft spot for the old Victorian B class - those locos that Americans think of as double-ended F class then here’s another treat for you. B65 and B61 are working a special passenger train north towards Sydney to position it for a tour on New Year’s Eve.
On a more personal note, for those of you who have been wondering what had happened to me and why I’ve been missing from here for the last month let me give you the short answer … nothing happened to me except for a huge amount of work.
Sadly that huge amount of work is going to continue well into the future … when you’re as good at what you do as Toni and I are you’re always going to be in demand … even in a recession. However, I do promise to try and get in here a bit more frequently than I have been lately.
It’s hard to believe but there are mainline locos that are over 50 years old and still putting in some heavy haulage on Australian mainlines. The survivors of the old Victorian Railways B class are examples of those locos with the first of the class being introduced in 1952.
Originally built for broad gauge work within Australia these EMD locos were built in Australia by Clyde and were based on EMD’s famous F diesel design. The Bs differed from the standard F body by having cabs at either end of the loco.
Today the Bs are running on the standard gauge and have travelled well beyond the Victorian border. Here we see three of the class teamed up with an S class loco moving a spoil train through Hawkesbury River.
Turn up the volume and listen to these old locos roar!
The Australian Railroad Group … aka ARG … has ceased operations in NSW. At time, if you lived any of the eastern states of Australia the ARG played a major role in your diet despite the fact that you may have never even seen one of their locos.
ARG’s impact on your diet was due to their involvement with the Manildra Group … the biggest provider of flour in Australia. Wherever the Manildra Group had a factory in New South Wales the ARG would be there bringing in the raw materials and hauling out the finished products.
But now ARG has lost the Manildra Group’s contract and the last ARG train ran on November 22. With nothing to haul on this side of the continent ARG are returning their 31/L class and a number of their 22 class diesels to Western Australia. Other members of the 22 class will be used by QRNational but sadly the L class have left the east coast.
Fortunately for us east coasters they’re still around on YouTube and here’s one clip that really highlights the beautiful sound of an L/31 class diesel hard at work.
When I finished the School Certificate at the end of 1966 I had a few months off before I started work with the old Postmaster General’s Department in 1967 so my parents suggested that I head up to Coonabarabran in the north-west of New South Wales to work on my uncle’s farm up there. For a kid who had hardly been out of the city it was an interesting time.
The fact that my uncle’s farm was within easy walking distance of the railway station made it even more interesting. At that time there was a daily (except Sunday) mail train in both directions - an extension of the Mudgee Mail - and a goods train that ran at least three times a week as far as I know.
I took quite a few photos at the railway station while I was there but most of them have either been lost or were of such poor quality I now wonder why I ever kept them. However here are two photos that are worth looking at from interesting summer back in 1966/67.
The first photo shows a C30T shunting the yard
The second shows a damaged C30T (note the damage to the front of the cylinder) that had collided with a vehicle on the level crossing on the down side of the yard. (Coonabarabran wasn’t the end of the line and most trains continued on to Gwabegar)
The collision happened before I arrived in Coonabarabran and from memory the loco was left stowed on the siding for quite some time. I’m not sure when the loco was finally moved from Coonabarabran but I have a suspicion that it was withdrawn from service after the accident and never steamed again.
And just to try and explain the class coding for these locomotives. The New South Wales Government Railways rebuilt a number of suburban C30 class tank locomotives into branch-line tender locomotives when the Sydney suburban network was electrified. The department decided to keep the basic code for the loco but added a suffix of ‘T’ to signify ‘tender’.
