Rainy day... dream away....

Welcome back.....

Plenty of work going on on my Barra Town layout this week. Roads and scenery have made some advances with more to come. As well I've been trying to make some sort of sense of the various unmade and partially completed kits I've collected over the years. I didn't know I had so many!

I suppose at some stage I will have to make some decisions about the 'era' the layout is meant to represent. At the moment the layout could be anything from the 1960's to present day. It's a real 'transition' layout, but I probably need to narrow it down a bit. Why is this important? Well it has a lot do with colour schemes, rolling stock codes (three letter codes or four letter codes for freight for example) and even things like, is it a CountryLink station with appropriate signs, or is it earlier NSW railways with the older signage? Anyway it's my layout so I suppose I can run whatever I like even if  that includes a Southern Pacific SD9 with a string of boxcars!

You might notice that I still haven't ballasted a lot of the track, particularly in the yard. This is because I want the ballast to appear on top of the ground rather than have plaster on top. I also want to do a little 'fine tuning' of the track before I finally apply the ballast. For example I've discovered that  a small part of the platform is too far onto the track, so wide rolling stock scrapes the edge. This will need to be fixed before the ballast is laid. Another issue is the backroad at the station. The track I used was poor quality 'leftover' track. I intend to replace it and the point which also seems to have  a problem. It's also much easier to solder track wiring when there's no ballast to get in the way.

You also might be wondering why I rarely show the other side of the layout. Currently it has a coal mine complex left over from a previous layout. I'm in the process of deciding whether it should be replaced with a wheat silo. The idea is to use that side as a makeup track as well so having a coal mine makes this a bit awkward because the mine building is over the sidings rather than beside them. Anyway I seem to have more grain hoppers than coal anyway.

As you can see there's a lot more work to be done.

Here's something to look at while you're waiting for the work to be completed:

 I took this photo yesterday at Campbelltown Station of a four car K set operating on the Blacktown Yoyo. These trains are often non airconditioned and overcrowded, so hot and uncomfortable particularly in summer. 45 degrees in one of these sets is no joke. Sydney Trains seems uninterested in putting on an 8 car set. Anyone who has caught this train, particularly coming back from Parramatta to Campbelltown in the afternoon peak will know what I mean. And of course they don't run at all on weekends. Did we do something wrong? You get the feeling that the powers that be aren't all that interested.

Your heritage photos this week consists of 900 class railmotor on the Up Canberra Service (Canberra-Monaro Express) in the 1980's in candy colours, and 6042 hauling passenger cars on a tour in the later 1960's.

There was always a bit of a disagreement as to how you actually said "Canberra-Monaro". I remember once listening to a station announcement naming the "Canbra/CanbErra- MonAIRo/MonAro" Express as the next train due. Two bob each way?

And from my Vietnam Railways archives:

141-206 on a plinth outside Da Nang Station. These 2-8-2 locomotives were built in China as direct copies of earlier French locomotives during the 1960s.

Well that's your lot for today. I hope you got something out of my ramblings.

Until next time.