Xmas and New Year

I just noticed that I haven't posted since November.

I seem to have been leading a very quiet life since then with some work occurring on my Barra Town layout and almost nothing on my Ga Hong Ha layout.

I've done a little scenery work around the viaduct but apart from a test bridge haven't attacked the viaduct itself yet. Note the farm house ready to be fixed in place. Where the plaster currently stops will be the entrance fence for the farm with a dirt driveway heading to the house. Haven't decided whether it's cattle or sheep yet. Maybe even both.

As well the station platform has been painted with the next task to mask the length of the platform and paint the edge white. I've also marked out the streets with chalk and continue to play around with the location of shops and houses. At some point I'll rustle up some CountryLink station signs and some fencing for the back of the platform. As it's CountryLink I'd better add a yellow line as well so that my N scale passengers don't fall off the edge.

It seems that around Christmas other things get in the way.

I did have a chance to go through some old photos I had found. I took the photos around 45 years ago so I thought I'd better scan them before they got lost again.

Here's one of double heading 3813 and 6042 on a tour I went on.

 And here's another of Alco 40 Class 4011 on the UP Southern Highlands express at Moss Vale.

And your third heritage image for today is 30T class 3090 with a tour train of somwhere in rural NSW hauling Gopher Models FO coaches (only joking they're real of course).

Sorry they're in black and white but that's all I could afford in those days.

The photos are in surprisingly good condition considering how old they are and the lack of care.

Christmas is over and New Year is just about upon us so until next time I'll wish you a Happy NewYear and see you on the other side.

Post Recovery.......

I spent a couple of more days in the hospital than I thought I would. Something to do with doctors not working on the weekend. Did you know that? I certainly didn't.

Anyway not a lot to report with regard to my two layouts, a little scenery here and a little model building there but nothing completed.

I was going through some older photos and came across these photos  I took at the Liverpool exhibition in 2015. Can't name each layout (bad memory) but I think Peter Boorman's layout might be in their somewhere.

   

 Now that I'm 'back on deck' so to speak I will really have to get going on both layouts. Not that I have a time limit, I just don't like the layouts sitting there with nothing happening.

I should have more to report next time.........

Plastered....

I've been slopping a bit of plaster around on the Barra Town layout, so the layout looks a little more than just track on board.

I use a system I've used for many years. I create formers with thick card, then fill the gaps with scrunched up newspaper. I then create a sort of web over the newspaper using masking/packing tape. Finally a skin of paper towels is added using PVA as the glue. When all is dry I add a coat of plaster.

This is a sort of hard shell scenery. I know that this sort of scenery creation is a bit old fashioned and that I'm supposed to use extruded foam, but this is how I like to do it and I'm happy with the results.

I'm also having a go at assembling a "Model Train Buildings" N Scale kit. It's my first laser cut timber kit. I bought it at the Liverpool Exhibition in October. The manufacturer's website is at: Model Train Buildings,  a relatively new Queensland based producer.

This is what you get in the bag (no not the plate).

And this is how far I've got with construction:

I must say the parts fit together very well but there was a problem with warping weatherboard which I believe is not so unusual. Also the kit is pretty basic. There are no gutters or downpipes  and no signs. The instructions are also pretty basic, with no painting guidelines. The image of the completed kit in the instructions is I believe of the HO version, not the N Scale. The windows are different.

I should have the building finished by the next blog so I'll post some images then.

Also I'm trying to prepare a more detailed article for N Scale Modeller magazine and hopefully Graham will find it acceptable.

I'm off to hospital for a couple of days so I probably won't get a lot of modelling done but I'll try to have something more to report on next time.

David

Rain rain go away....

It's day time and dark and pouring with rain outside here in Campbeltown at the moment, so time to post a report.

Not a huge amount of work over the past week. Other things have got in the way.

I have been doing a little scenery work on Barra Town and testing some ideas I have about ballasting and weathering the track.

Also got out some of my N scale houses etc and started lining them up to see which arrangement looks best so that I can start marking the roads.

 The two paper towel tubes are marking where a grain silo might be located, though on the original Coonabarabran this is where a stock yard is/was situated.

This is the pilot model for the grain silo which is planned to be released by new manufacturer Meerkat Models in the not too distant future and displayed at the Liverpool Exhibition in October, so I'm hoping to grab a kit when they're available.

You can access Meerkat facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/MeerkatModels/

Another pleasant surprise at Liverpool was a sneek preview of Gopher Models 44 class.

This is the reverse livery. Phil Badger reckons they'll be available just before Christmas.

There has been little obvious work on my other layout Ga Hong Ha because I've been updating the wiring with my new Aldi soldering Iron as well as working on a couple of pieces of rolling stock. I've been scrachbuilding the same two vehicles for what seems like forever. About time I finished them.

This is a Vietnam Railways 50 foot bogie boxcar I'm working on. Big for metre gauge don't you think! I'm told the Vietnam metre gauge loading gauge is much bigger than some others, a good decision made by the French many years ago.

I've decided to learn how to etch the small parts because my eyes are not as good as they used to be.

The rain seems to have almost stopped and my wife has come home, so I'll see you again next time.

David

"I've been working on the Railroad"

My wife took this photo of me working on the railroad. I'm working on my "Ga Hong Ha" N scale layout.

My wife is from Vietnam. We travel there from Sydney nearly every year and while we're there I usually visit, travel on and admire the Vietnam National Railways (Duong Sat Viet Nam). Unlike most of the railways in Australia, which have been dismembered and in a mad rush to privatise everything, Vietnam Railways is still very much a complete 'railway' in the old sense, it runs passenger and freight trains and is run as a vertically integrated system, even if most of it is metre gauge and even if some parts are partially privatised or at least run as separate units within the overall system.

So it was natural that I attempt to build a layout based on what I saw. Hence my layout "Ga Hong Ha" or Hong Ha Station based on 'Ga Thap Cham' a station near to where my wife's family lives.

After some thought I chose Japanese N scale 1:150 so that I could, as Japanese modellers do, use 9 mm track to represent slightly narrow gauge and so that I could use standard Japanese N Scale models and accessories. I did think of using 6mm track (Z scale) but the rolling stock and chassis were very limited at the time and very expensive.

Photos: 1. Cham Monuments bought in a tourist shop near Phan Rang Station. 2. People's Committee (local Government) building 3. Scratchbuilt "Co-oP Supermarket 4. Ga Hong Ha (Hong Ha Station)  5. Police waiting for a traveller off the Re-unification Express due in from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

If I were starting again I feel that I might try 1:120 (known in NZ as NZ120) sort of TT with 9 mm track which would make it correct and I could still use N Scale chassis and bogies as the New Zealanders do, but I've probably gone too far now.

It's been a long slow process, a lot has to be scratchbuilt but I feel that I'm getting there. I am pretty sure that I have the only relatively complete Vietnamese model railway in the world. There are some modellers in Vietnam but no complete layouts and they tend to model an eclectic assortment of US, British and European prototypes.

The layout is basically a partly folded loop with a main station and yard, Vietnam style It measures about 8 ft by 5 ft (2400 mm x 1500 mm) and it's not designed to be moved though it is made up of several sections. It lives in a spare bedroom along with my small workbench.

My other problem was that I didn't know very much about Vietnam railways so as well as building the layout a lot of research has been required. The result of my research is my website Railways in Vietnam  which has been in existence since 2009.

My locomotives and rolling stock are still very limited, something I need to do something about in the near future.

Of course while I was involved in all this I just didn't have the time to build a NSW layout despite having locomotives and rolling stock to do so.

Now that I have retired I find that I have a bit more time to work on two layouts so my new "Barra Town" is being built in the garage.

It will consist of a station and yard based loosely on the facilities that used to exist at Coonabaraban in NSW.  I was fortunate to find a lot of photos and drawings on the internet as well as two videos so I have a pretty good idea of the "look" despite never having been there.

On the other side of the layout will be a coal mine and facilities.

The layout is being built on a single board 6  ft by 3 ft (1800mm x 900mm), so it arguably isn't too large to transport to an exhibition one day.

Both of my layouts use traditional DC control. I'd like to have a go at DCC one day but it is expensive and I haven't quite grasped the fundamentals yet.

All the track, a mixture of PECO streamline and Setrack is laid on Barra Town and I'm just starting ballasting and a bit of scenery. I'll post some more photos in the next few days to show how it's going.

Until next time...

David

PS: Update: i noticed I uploaded the same two images of Barra Town as in the previous post, I've replaced them with two others.

G'day.....

Welcome to my new blog.

I've been involved in the hobby of model railways off and on for what seems like forever, my first model train being a clockwork set when I was a about 5 or 6 years old.

Currently I am building two layouts, both in N Scale.

The first I have been building for some time and is based on the Railways of Vietnam. It's called "Ga Hong Ha" (Hong Ha Station) and is being built to Japanese N Scale (1:150) standards. This makes the track slightly narrow gauge to represent Vietnamese metre gauge. I culd have used Z scaletrack (6mm) but this would have really restricted the motive power I could use. Why the Railways of Vietnam (Duong Sat Viet Nam)? Because my wife comes from their and I've become quite passionate about the railways of that country.

The second, "Barra Town" is quite new and early in it's life cycle. It will represent a typical NSW country station and town based loosely on Coonabarraban. It's being built in Australian N scale (1:160) so I will have somewhere to run my 48 classes, my Frate-N locomotives and my Aust-N-Rail and Peter Boorman rolling stock.


 Below are a couple of photos of my Vietnamese layout:

 As I said my NSW layout is still just at the beginning but here are a couple of photos to give you an idea of where I'm heading:

 As you can see everything on Barra Town is still a bit of a mess. Lucky I've retired so I've got the time to work on both!

More next time......

David