Boggy Creek Bridge Module

It was a busy day today, in addition to Phil bringing back Nowa Nowa all working, Darren dropped off the Boggy Creek bridge module... accompanied by banter about "Rob's layout" being built by everyone else... what else do you expect from a Project Manager!

Darren has done a fantastic job on the module and the bridge... it REALLY capture the feel of the bridge, just need some trees! Over the next few days I will lay the track and ballast it, plus start putting on trees... in fact have already started :)

They layout is coming together nicely just a few days out from its first showing at the Hobsons bay show at Collingwood over Easter. Phil "just" needs to finish off the two fiddle yards... but already we are planing the next few modules... it is addictive!

Points wired and working

Phil has been busy the last few days! Today he dropped off Nowa Nowa with all the points wired up with the DCC Concepts Cobolt point motors, powered by DCC concepts decoders. We set it up and started running trains, great to call up a point on my LENZ system, and throw the switch backwards and forwards... Phil is was worth all your efforts :)

Here is a picture of the wiring underneath, far neater than anything else I've had.. having professionals do your work is always good!

Cheers

Rob

Visit To Nowa Nowa 2011

G'Day all, sorry for the long gap in posts, been real busy with work. However the last week I visited family on the south coast of NSW... a good excuse to go via Nowa Nowa!

I will be post some more pics of the layout as we have a week before its first showing at the "Hobsons Bay " show at Collingwood on the Easter long weekend... we were hoping to get further along, but it will be worth coming to have a look :)

Anyway here are some pics of Nowa Nowa in 2011.

First looking back towards Orbost. On the left is the "New" loading dock, in the centre the track that lead to to back sidings, in the middle distance the old loading dock. The old dock was flat, but the new one has a slight curve back on the wings... I've modelled both as being flat. On the far right is a gap where the long dead end siding off the main goods loop was.

Here is the few back towards Bairnsdale and the Boggy creek bridge. On the hill just to the right of centre was where the original wooden loading ramp was.

Here is a pick of the original wooden ramp. The shot is from the hill on the picture above looking towards the right.

And here is a picture of the footings for the old wooden loader.

Series 3 T samples

What I remember most from my railway inspired youth was the Series 3 T's in Bairnsdale yard. Occasionally (once a week or so) the schoolbus, for reasons unkown, would drive from Paynesville, into Bairnsdale and would drive own the road past the station. I remember seeing the first VLINE T3 as well (this route is now largely blocked from view).

Below are the samples of our next ready to run product, the Series 3 T. I drew the bulk of the artwork in hospital in Jan/Feb 2010, and Peter Boorman finished the artwork off, arranged the etchings and assembled the master. These samples and the master should depart for China on 22 Feb 2011.

A number of these locos are needed on Nowa Nowa!

Boggy Creek Bridge

In my continuing effort to attempt to build a highly detailed layout without doing all of the work :) the construction of Boggy Creek Bridge was contracted out to Darren French... he has not disapointed!

The following are some in progress shots... now to convince him to do the rest of the scenery....

Now is there anyone out there who wants to build me a hundred trees or so?

Cheers

Rob

T3 and P class locos

Well I've been busy back at work the last few weeks and modelling has been quiet limitied, bits here and there... which are now coming together...

First is a sample of my next ready to run locomotive, the Series 3 T class. It will be cast and painted in China over the next few months and will be sold with a Kato NW2 mechanism. First though I have to paint samples and do the artwork for the printers, hence this sample. They colours aren't exactly right, it is more to get the overall feel and placement of artwork.

The model is cast in polyurethane, with brass roof and window surrounds, and I'm asking for wire hand rails to be fitted on the production versions. A VLINE version is also planned.

In addition I've had some orders for P class locos, shown below is a Freight Australia one. The model was assembled by Paul Welshe, painted by me (using a Tamiya spray pack) and decaled by John Smith (a recent convert to trains and N scale). John comes around most Thursdays for a modelling night, his wife and mine bead on another night... a real win win !

Gotta go now, hopefully will get a bit of modelling done over the weekend, 'aveagoodweekend!

Road over Rail Bridge part 1

Over the last three days I've been tackling one of the most challenging structures on Nowa Nowa, the road over rail bridge at the west end of the yard.

Originally it was a two trestle wooden structure. Sometime in the period 1978-1986 it was rebuilt into a concrete structure.

 (this shot from Peter Vincent is one of the few I have of the wooden bridge)

(shots of the concrete bridge are also scare, most people shot from it down into the yard)

I have been thinking long and hard about which version to do. I prefer to model the 1984-1990 period with VR and VLINE... but I couldn't be sure exactly when the bridge was demolished (with possibly the departmental residences demolished in about the same time...). In the end I decided I liked wooden trestles too much :)

With such little photographic evidence it was hard to do the bridge... so I trawled through Mark Bau's excellent site http://www.victorianrailways.net/ in the infrastructure section and came across this plan:

http://www.victorianrailways.net/infastuct/aa_fseries/f270.jpg

I figured that I could adapt it so I drew it out in Corel Draw to scale, and found that the "Piers over 13' and under 21" was spot on!

Here is a JPG of the corel output.

Using the plan I grabbed some Bamboo meat skewers and craft matchsticks and set to work. First I superglued the skewers down.

I used a razor saw to notch the two horizontals (I didn't do the diagonals as pictures of other bridges indicated they weren't cut in much, if at all) and glued (using white glue) the match sticks in.

 I lightly cut in the diagonals with a sharp knife and glued them in.

As you can see I've flipped the one on the left to do the other side.

Here is the final product test fitted to the layout

It needs trimming and painting... and a deck :)