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Progress on T-Trak...
Hi everyone,
Well with our big move to Lithgow set for 9 March, I'm suspending work on the Jamberoo layout. But operations are continuing. In fact, I've been enjoying shunting so much that work has been suspended for ages!
But Michelle (while I was out!) decided to recycle some old 'grass paper' I had from an old HO layout and glued it to one of my corner T-Trak modules.
I wasn't happy about her flat-earth approach to scenery, and all our modules for the time being will represent an urban scene. So I opened some magazines (like Railway Digest) to show her that grass doesn't grow right up to the tracks and there were oodles of photos in the December 2008 issue showing grass... right up to the tracks. Grrrr.
So the story of the module is that the 'inside' of the curve is a railway-owned 'waste land' -- I'll add some high-tension electric poles -- and the 'outside' will be a scrapyard complete with a 53-class boiler (courtesy of an off-cast casting from Phil Badger) and other bits of 'scrap steel'. A corrugated iron fence separates the scrapyard from the (railways-owned) dirt road behind it.
Here's the making of the basic scenery for the corner module in question:
Glenn sieves the dirt (taken from Jamberoo--from the site of a shed being "constructed" next to the Rectory--"constructed" means less progress than my main layout).
More sieving
Tipping the soil into place.
Spreading the soil
Final sprinkles of fine soil
Spraying with a water bottle with some detergent mixed in to act as a wetting agent.
Using an eye-dropper to put a 50/50 water/PVA mix to glue it all down.
The "finished" module... well, once it dries the power lines go up, the stanchions for the railway (it's to be an electric railway) go up, and the corrugated fence goes around the scrapyard--and scrap moves in!
I mentioned Phil Badger before in the context of a boiler I have of his.
He dropped in last Sunday... here he is researching a project by photographing the old school house next door:
 
Finally, a non-train person Brett stayed with us on Monday night (he is a ministry trainee down the coast at Huski) and he saw how much fun tail-chasing layouts are... NOT!!! He enjoyed shunting on the Jamberoo layout but like me bored easily of the tail-chasing T-Trak modules. But my daughter Zoe loves the T-Trak and can drive them very well (for a 3 year old!).
Well, after Zoe went to bed Brett and I worked out how to get my Tomix Thomas the Tank Engine to jump using the Kato re-railer in reverse as a launch pad... and to get Thomas to return to the tracks and keep running.
I showed it to Zoe this arvo and she was squealing with delight. I'll video it and stick it up on youtube sometime soon.
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T-Trak for Christmas
 While not strictly a Jamberoo railway item of news, Santa brought me some T-Trak module kids from John Rumming's stable and the track kits from Aust-N-Rail. (The track kits were a bit mixed up in the Christmas rush so I'm waiting for the bits to complete the inner curve).
This shows the assembled and partly painted Rumming module kits.
A test run supervised by the nearly-three-years-old Zoe
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The railway is moving... and work has been suspended!
That's right, work has been suspended on the Jamberoo [Model] Railway.
The last piece of work done was to cut the track where the two baseboards join, to enable the baseboards to separate.
That occurred on 20 November.
Then on 23 December the Archbishop of Sydney invited me to become the Rector of Lithgow... so now it's time to pack up and go. Good thing I'd already put the 'break' into the baseboard join!
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We missed the fete!
Well, despite our best intentions, we missed showing Jamberoo at the church fete here in Jamberoo. 4 days in hospital and several weeks in bed following that put paid to any hopes of displaying something... anything!
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Jamberoo from the air
Hi guys,
Thought it was time to give an aerial overview of our layout--overlaying the trackplan onto a google earth view of the actual town.
You can see that the bowling club and municipal pool are under the station yard--these both were built after the time when our railway line would have been constructed, therefore would not exist in a railway world!
Above: The railway yard and location of Freddos' General Store etc.
Click the image to enlarge it!
Above: The location of the fuel siding. It's a bit exaggerated because I had to stretch the photo to put everything in the right place!
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Operations Friday 15 August 2008
Today we had a day of operations (in my lunch break, of course). This was the first time trains had been run 'properly' since the mass conversion of rollingstock to Micro Trains couplers.
The first job was to run the three trains set up for Wednesday's photo shoot back to the staging sidings (aka the 'hidden sidings', 'fiddle yard' or 'Dunmore yard': the fictitious junction with the main line and the rest of the world).
Above: The three trains still in place after the photo shoot on Wednesday night.
70xx led its train out first, followed by 4520 and her train and finally 4421 with the "Rapido-coupled" train.
Above: 70xx leads its train past the dairy siding and onto the embankment above the flood plain.
Above: 70xx leads its train onto the main line at Dunmore and then into the yard.
Above: 4520 departs with its train after the photo shoot. It had to wait at Jamberoo until the 'line clear' notification came from Dunmore.
Above: 4520 passing the dairy siding, viewed from the dairy factory.
4421 kept stalling and needs some workshop attention, we feel!
Above: The currently-unreliable 4421 leads its train of Rapido-coupler-equipped wagons back to Dunmore.
After this, it was time to run the first 'revenue' train with Micro Trains couplings. This train had the following tasks:
- Place three empty boxcars at the dairy siding for loading with Jamberoo's finest butter and skim milk products for shipping to the distributer in Sydney (who, we understand from the history of the Jamberoo dairy factory, would mix the product with output from other local dairy co-ops and market them under the Allowrie brand. Allowrie is an English version of the same word from which we derive Illawarra.)
- Place the loaded oil tanker in the fuel siding for unloading.
- Place a loaded boxcar at the read of Fredericks' General Store for unloading with the finest of General Store dry goods.
- Place an empty cattle wagon at the cattle race on the end of the Goods Siding for loading.
- Place an empty K-Wagon at the Goods Siding for other local output.
- Place two empty K-wagons at the timber siding (formed by the extension of the run-around loop) for loading with timber cut in the Jamberoo Valley.
- Return light engine to Dunmore.
The photos below show this all in action. 4520 was rostered for the run as it was quite a lengthy train.
Above: 4520 sits at Dunmore with its train awaiting permission to enter the main line before taking the branch to Jamberoo. This view is taken from the parallel stretch of the Princes Highway.
Above: Boxcars wait to be shunted into the dairy siding. The tanker (obscured beyond the roof of the dairy factory) needs to have its brakes secured first, then be uncoupled and left on the main line, while the rest of the train draws forwards, the points are changed, and the train sets back onto the dairy siding to drop off these three wagons for loading.
Above: With the tanker uncoupled, the rest of the train draws forward.
Above: The three boxcars are shoved into place on the dairy siding.
Above: The train, viewed from above, shunting the dairy siding.
Above: Having recoupled to the tanker (and released its brakes), it is now shunted into its own siding, blocking busy Allowrie St in the process.
Above: The afternoon school bus from Kiama waits on Allowrie St, on the outskirts of town, for the fuel siding to be shunted.
Above: What's left of the train (ie, that which hasn't been dropped off in the diary and fuel sidings!) arrives at Jamberoo in this scene viewed from Tates Hill, on the other side of Hyam's Creek and the floodplain.
Above: This nifty way of uncoupling Micro Trains couplers uses toothpicks (unused, of course!). This idea came from the Australian_N_Scale yahoogroup, wlthough they suggested the use of skewers. Toothpicks were substituted only because they were in the 'bits box' below the layout!
Above: 4520 runs around its train at Jamberoo Station.
Above: 4520 pushes the two empty K-Wagons into the timber siding to be loaded with the finest output of the region's old-growth rainforests.
Above: 4520 drops the last boxcar at the back of Fredericks' General Store. Freddos' is made from photo paper until we get around to making the real one! It's modelled on the colour scheme of Freddos seen in the 1960s when it was a SCOOP store.
Above: The railway yard with all the wagons positioned for unloading or loading.
Above: 4520, running light, returns to Dunmore. This is not normally a light engine run but as the yeard was previously empty, there were no wagons to return to Dunmore.
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No progress but a photo opportunity
Well folks, today there was no progress on the railway (some of us do actually work for a living!), but I couldn't resist the opportunity for a 'photo shoot' in the railway yard at Jamberoo station.
Usually my locos face with the #1 end facing the buffer stops (ie, the DOWN direction) but I turned them around today.
So lined up we have my three NSW-outline diesels: from left to right, 70xx (still to be painted and numbered), 4421 and 4520.
They each had a lengthy train worked -- and shunted -- properly:
The 45's train came out first and, after running around, shunted into the goods siding out of the way.
The 70's train was next, again it ran around before shunting temporarily up onto the Freddos' siding.
Finally the 44 came out with my remaining Rapido-coupler-equipped stock and ran into the main. I rearranged some of the wagons and put the caboose on the other end before the whole thing was reassembled onto the run-around loop.
70xx's train then came back out of Freddos' siding and reversed onto the main.
I like eye-level shots - we don't look at real trains from afar, do we?
But this shot was taken by a fit young lad climbing up a power pole:
We finished the shoot with a shot of the noses of the locos, lined up, with Alwyn Fredericks' house seen atop the highest point in Macquarie St, Jamberoo.
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