New Blog Check it out!

Hi all,
A good mate of mine has started a blog. Best check it out. He does some nice work and his layout will be superb.
http://grenfallg.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/brief-overview/


Cheers
Ian

Get In Before EBay

Hi all,

I have a couple brass models for sale. They belong to a friend. Was not sure if anybody was interested before they go on EBay.

They are: Classic Brass Models JHG Brake van. Brand New, mint condition. Boxed $180.00

Mansfield Hobbies 4-8-4 4-8-4 AD60 Class Garrett. Again, Mint condition, basically brand new. I have tested the loco. As expeded runs perfectly. Very nice model indeed. It did need a light oil, though I have only done the axle boxes so as not to get the motion oily for painting. $1800.00. (there is one on EBay for $2300..........!)
Both the above are unpainted. Boxes are in perfect condition. I can supply photos if need be.
iphemist@dodo.com.au

Ian

Moving the Riverina to the Hunter Valley.

Once or twice a week I religiously check my blog reading list for new posts from my favourite bloggers and am quite often disappointed by those who have not posted. I am then reminded of the fact that I have not posted myself. Again, seriously late at posting but better late than never. So what I have been up to over the past four months? Not a great deal as far as I am concerned. I have not done what I should have.........

Late last year I decided to start a Modelling day at my place with a few fellow modelers. Six of us get together once a month to actually do some modeling rather than talk about doing it. Now that my railway room is finished and ready for a layout, I set up some benches so as the guys can set out their work and if need be leave it till next time. One of the modelers, Alan Tarrant, who recently moved from Sydney to the area, has a beautiful exhibition layout ‘Bullenbung Creek’. Al was working on the silo for the layout at the modeling day but soon realised that he needed the layout to position some of the items on the silo. Over the course of the day the conversation come up about the construction of Muswellbrook. I have so much work built up for customers and friends that I cannot realistically start on the layout for 12 months or so. Al suggested setting Bullenbung creek up in the train room till I was ready to start on the layout. This provided Al with the layout on hand to complete his silo and till he builds his own room, it allowed me to use it for testing the many locos I have to build.......OK and to play trains! The very next modelling day the layout was transported to my place and set up in the train room. The layout ‘Bullenbung Creek’ is based on the line form Uranquinty to Kywong in the Riverina. About half way along the line is Belfrayden witch the layout is based on. Alan explained that the water tank and bridge (actually called Bullenbung Creek on the prototype) is farther apart than that modelled. So, like my blog posting says, the Riverina has moved to the Hunter valley.......Well for now anyhow. Here is a video of some trains running on Bullenbung Creek and also a shot showing the layout in the train room.

The modelling days have provided me with a chance to do some modelling for myself. Try and get some of my own kits done instead of building stuff for others. At the Liverpool exhibition this year I purchased one of Bergs Luffing crane kits. Yes I know they didn’t run at Muswellbrook but surly I can have one model that didn’t. I was also told that they are quite difficult to assemble and get running. In all the time I have been around and attending exhibitions I have never seen one actually run! I decided to use the modeling days........and a few others, to build up the crane. The assembly of the chassis is generally straight forward. I assembled the chassis on the assembly Jig, as explained in Australian Journal of Railway Modelling no 7, the same as what was done with the 57 project I posted about some time ago. This ensures all is straight, all the wheels touch the track and also allows the correct location of the coupling rods without unnecessarily filing out the coupling rods. The Walschaerts valve gear would have to be the most frustrating. Most of the bronze valve gear castings are held to the sprues with quite bulky amounts of brass and careful removal and lots of filing was needed. Just about all these parts need to be pinned with brass pins and soldered in place so as they can move about. Quite difficult to achieve as they are quite small to handle. Remember that the whole loco is about the length of an S wagon (see photos below). After lots of F’s and C’s I managed to get the valve gear assembled and working. The footplate and boiler assembly also tests ones patients. The boiler is made of three white metal castings with brass sheet wrappers for the boiler. The brass wrappers need to be firstly rolled to half round then soldered to the white metal sections. This boiler assembly is then attached to the footplate followed by the jib assembly and finally side tanks and cab. At this stage I have the model basically assembled. Just a few more pipes etc to add. I have fitted at this stage a TCS M1. It runs very well and am quite happy with the result. I have had shit put on me for not fitting sound........I’m still working on that! But it’s way too small for a speaker and decoder! I intend to base this engine on 1052 in lined green livery.


Completed Boiler assembly.



Footplate ready for Boiler



Jib and side tanks ready for the footplate



Completed chassis with full working Walchaerts valve gear.



View showing cab details.



Assebled loco less cab and a few pipes, Shows the size compared to an S wagon. I could fit the sound to the S wagon and permanently couple the wagon.

 Outside of the modelling days its work as usual. I have been working on several projects at once to try and get some jobs finished. I managed to finish off a couple review items for AMRM that I had been working on before Christmas. You will have to check out the next issue for the latest one. I have two more to do that I am currently working on. Again, you will have to wait for coming issues of the mag to check these out. I have several loco kits to build for both friends and customers. I have assembled the chassis for a 30T; again this was done on the assembly jig to ensure everything is true and correct. I don’t have pics of it as yet......Pretty boring really. I have progressed further on the 2^nd loco in the order of jobs, a branchline ROD. The ROD kits are quite good however I will be replacing the direct drive motor with a gearbox and motor from High Level Kits in the UK. I have managed to get the tender assembled ready for paint before installing the sound decoder and I have the chassis done at the stage of fitting the crossheads and connecting rods. Again the chassis was built up on the jig requiring just small movement of the bearings to correctly position the coupling rods.



Here is the ROD at its current stage ready for crossheads and conecting rods.



On the AndIan Models front, things have slowed a little. We were hoping to have our four wheel water gin project ready for the Armidale convention however there were some complications with getting the last etch samples of the underframe witch put the release date further behind. There were another couple issues that arose that has still stalled the kit being released. The same issue has also stalled the revised BLV kits. Our supplier of the brass castings for both the BLV, Water Gin and not to mention the turret tender project has let us down suppling the required parts. This has forced us to dump this option and get these parts produced ourselves. As a trial, we assigned John Dersch to master and cast the brake cylinder for the water gin along with also casting in brass the axlebox with spring details, turret filler hatch and valve tap detail (from our own masters) for the gin with very pleasing results. We have now decided to have John cast the Turton Buffers for the BLV and straight buffers for the water gin from our own masters. As of today I received from Andrew the Rapid prototyped masters for both types of buffers. I will critique these before sending them to John for casting. We will also be going down this road with all the required details for the Turret tender project that many are wanting......Including myself. We have now 50 odd sets of the new multi piece BLV bodies done ready for the kits along with the same amount of water gin tanks. The casting process of the one piece BLV body proved quite costly and little difficult to cast when trying to keep fine quality of the body. So the body was re mastered into a multi piece body.  



Here is the remastered BLV body. Just a little more work for the modeler.

I have also managed to build up a sample of our 36’ riveted tank wagon underframe which we have had etched. This is looking very nice indeed. We have made several trips to Dorrigo to measure and photograph MOA 141 and the bogie acid tank wagon SUL 22 both of which have generally the same underframe and will be available as kits from us in the future. We are undecided what method we will adopt for the riveted tank. We will either make a brass master to have cast or supply the modeller with a custom decal from Archer decals for the rivets. We will be using Gwydir Valley filler hatch and tank anchor castings for the MOA tank, well at this stage anyways. There are some small details missing from the domes. The acid tank parts will need to be mastered.

Below are the shots of the water Gin at its current stage. Prety much complete. Just waiting on buffers.

You will see in the pics the brass details cast by John.





During my spare time, Ha! , I blew the dust of the Mike McCormack LFX boxes and managed to get the 2^nd set of bogies finished. I have noticed a few other bloggers have started on theirs and didn’t want to be left behind. Will try and keep moving forward with these on the modelling days especially once the Luffing crane is finished . I need to get both the LFX cars built up to painting stage so I can paint the two together.

Last weekend our Exhibition layout group held our anual open day at the local showgrounds with great sucsess. Both days the crouds were unreal. Most of the day it was four deep of people trying to get a look at the displays. Along with our own layout we had Alans Bullenbung Creek on display along with member Bill Baggets U-Drive shunting layout. Bills Layout proved very popular with the kids allowing them to get hands on experience at shunting the cars into the industries. We also had memeber Alan Harris do some trackwork demonstrations on his modular layout he is building. The day was very succesfull indeed. We also had great fun putting shit on a Friend of Alans, Ben Small. Ben came up from Sydney for a holiday staying with Alan for a week and was a great help running Bullenbung Creek at the open day. Ben is the Layout Manager for the Epping Clubs Thornleigh Exhibition and seems very knologable with the NSWGR passenger cars. He has also been experimenting with the correct valve or chuff timing for a 57 using a soundtraxx decoder and custom cam chuff kit. His sample of the cam sounds terrific and sounds more authentic than the modified soundtraxx cam. Wednesday this week we took Ben to the Dorrigo Railway Museum for a bit of a look. Keith allowed us to show him around the museum. Ben was pretty much like a kid in a lolly shop. We had trouble containing the drewel! We had a great week with Ben and look forward to catching up again soon.......Maybe we will see some completed models Ben? 


Bullenbung Creek at the Open Day.



Heres Bill with crounds of people waiting for a go at the U-Drive layout.



And of course the clubs Big layout.



Hope you all had a great Christmas and all the best for a great modelling new year.

Ian                   

Three years of digging, finally I struck GOLD!

My research of the Muswellbrook to Merriwa branch started approximately three years ago now and I have in those few years come across many types of research material relating to the line. For me Photographic research is priority for building the layout. I am not all that interested in finding out who was the station master on Friday 5th June 1958 and what train ran through early that day and caught the station master having a pee in the gents! Photographic information is best to capture the accurate prototype of what was what. Most of the line has been well documented in many of the books etc including a fantastic article by Peter Attenborough in Byways of Steam. I have also managed to source material through the Australian Railway Historical Society. Once most of the major holes were filled I try and source items of interest to fill the gaps of what needs to be modelled. Some of these included the station building at Sandy Hollow, The coal loader (serviced by road vehicles) at Muswellbrook and the freezing works at Denman and many more. The railway historical society helped with the coal loader at Muswellbrook along with many other points of interest even some fellow bloggers including Ian Millard helped with the station building at Sandy Hollow along with some fantastic details of Merriwa yard.
The most frustrating to find anything of has been the old freezing works at Denman. There is just a single photo in Byways (number 10 page 72) that shows just the corner of the building and its quality is poor and would realy be of no use for modelling. I begun trying to find material through the Denman Historical Society, Muswellbrook Historical Society, ARHS, NSW state archives, Newcastle Regional Library and the NSW state library, without any luck.
I am always asking people I talk to about the line and if they have or know where I can get info from, one of these is one of our members here in Coffs Harbour, Jim Sowter. Jim comes from Denman and had mentioned a few people I should contact. One of which was a chap that collects farm machinery and general 'old stuff' and was thought to be a bit of a historian. As it turned out he had nothing but I was told to get onto a certain fellow who lives in the old mangers house of the freezing works. When I rang and asked about the freezing works I got the 'I remember the old freezing works' line from the old fella. Lucky I had an hour free! After 15 minutes or so he finally said that he may have some old plans of another Butter factory in Denman that may be of use. He also said that they were somewhere in is roof that was basically full of s#*t! I left it at that and thought that I would never here from him again. Lo and behold several weeks later he rang back, "I found some info on the freezing works for you". " I have eight colour slides of the freezing works, one of every angle around the building". WOW! I literally fell of the chair. GOLD!
He kindly agreed to send me the slides so I could scan them in. He also gave me permission to post them up here and show you all.
The freezing works he tells me opened in the 1930's and was used as a butter factory for many years. It was also used to process wild Rabbits caught by the locals through the great depression. It also produced Lucerne pellets in later years before it was abandoned some time in 1970. The rail siding to the freezing works was removed in 1980 to make way for rebuilding of the line for the Ulan coal project. It was originally thought that the building was of timber weatherboard but the photos tell a different story. Unfortunately a couple were taken out of focus. Note also the cream shed at the rear of the building. This will make a great model on the layout some day. I hope your blown away like I was.

Thanks Garry for the slides. Much appreciated.

Ian

  

Fastracks Jig. NSWGR No.6 Code 55

Hi All,
I spoke to Warren from Gwydir Valley Models at the Thornleigh show about seeing if we can have made a Fastracks Jig for a code 55 No.6 with NSWGR cantered sleeper profiles. He thinks that to make it viable he would need to have orders for about 8 of the Jigs. I bought from Warren a No.7 NSWGR jig in code 70 for my mainline and at the time was prepared to hand build all my branch points. This would save a lot of work if a jig was available. I am also going to look into making a detailed frog casting through AndIan models that could be slotted into the points once built. The jigs would be in the NMRA standard profile. So my question is, how many of you would be interested in buying a jig? You could get together with a few friends and share it around. I am unsure at this stage of the pricing but would be similar to the Code 70 jig @ $300. Post a comment if you are interested and I will pass on the interest to Warren. I have two on the list already.

Cheers
Ian

Wrapping up a few things

OK, so as usual I have not posted for a while and the usual excuses......Been to busy, and being a one finger typer, just could not have been bothered. Thought it was about time my finger was given a workout on the keyboard and let you all know what I have been up to. Will try and wrap up a few of the projects I have been working on and fill you in on anything new.

The 57 is now finished. I had a few issues getting the chuff right and also getting a decent sound out of it. At first I used a standard Tsunami K class and a modified soundtraxx cam disk to give the six segments for the chuff. I soon found that the K class sound has a distinctive fourth beat to its chuff sound even when a six lobe cam disk is used. Gerry Hopkins filled me in on his secret for getting the chuff right. Below is a diagram of how a 16 lobe soundtraxx cam disk can be modified and coupled with a Logging Tsunami gets the chuff pretty close to the 3 beat 57. The logging decoder sound doesn't seem to have that prominent fourth beat. I am not all that fussed with the whistle but hey, Better than nothing. I managed to get a very 'short' video while at Brisbane of the 57 running, the camera battery went flat!. It doesn't pull much either witch is strange for such a big engine. I have added a large weight to the boiler witch helps but is still not great. My guess its the nickel plated drivging wheels are too slipery. I am really happy with the weathering as well and will be sorry to see it go to the customer.

Unfortunately I have not really touched the Mike McCormack LFX since the last posting. I have managed to finish off the assembly of the underframe witch prety much complets the assembly of No1. LFX. I have also started on the Bogie's of the second. I had planned on having these for Epping but as you read on you will see other things have taken over and the few issues with the 57 slowed it a little as well. Here is a current shot of the LFX. Pretty much ready for paint. Waiting on the screw couplings and buffer springing components and will need to fit window frames after painting.

As I have mentioned in the last posting, AndIan Models will be attending its first show as a trade stand at the upcoming Epping Model Railway Clubs Thornleigh Exhibition over the June long weekend. We are also helping Alan Tarrant with his exhibition layout. Our small stand will be next to the layout so we can help Alan run trains and man the trade stand as well.
 I have been working on completing one of the BLV's using the body and underframe from the test shot castings. I had this at the Brissy show to show off and was well received. The below shot shows the unpainted and painted sample. It was assembled with no decals and the roof brackets were made with flat brass bar rather than the brass etchings that will come with the kit. I have also left off the turnbuckles as I did not have these at this stage. We now have all the components for 50 wagons that will be available at the show. We have also started the second run as I am sure all 50 will sell at Epping so don't worry if you cant make it to the show. We will take orders after Epping. The price of the BLV's have been set @ $70 each. The brass bogies and wheels makes the kit more expensive than we had hoped but its a really nice model when complete.

I decided to make up a small diorama for the show as well. I made this upo for two reasons, one is so that I could display the AndIan models products, and to act as a nice scene for when I take photos, like the ones above. I made the diorama about 600mm x 400mm approx with a section of handlaid code 55 track down the middle and detailed with the AndIan Models two lever ground frame, roding chairs, compensator's, cranks etc. and one of Gwydir Valleys semaphore signals. All this set around some basic scenery using static grass, much like Bowen Creek. I also decided to try and make both the signal and lever frame work. I ended up getting a 'Bouncer' servo kit form the UK. This makes the signal pause part way through its movement and bounce when at the end of its movement. See video here, and pictures below.

We also received the sample of our water Gin Body that we had 3D printed and only today I got the trial etch for the ladder. I will have this at Epping also. For those of you on the mailing list, keep an eye out for the next bulletin. We are announcing two new projects that will soon be under development.

Lastly, I have now finished off all the small jobs with the house and after a little tidy up is ready for final council inspection, probably after Epping show. This will then mean I can start looking at filling in windows and planning to get started on some bench work. Along with this I am going to need to get back into finishing off getting my much loved Cooper S back on the road. A few months back I had finished rebuilding its Motor and with all that was going on never got around to fitting it back into the car. Looking forward to that.

Hoo roo and see you at Epping.

Ian

Swap Or Sell

Quick post here. Thought I would give you guys first go at this. I have a Bergs Brass Z26 that I no longer want. I bought this when I first gained interest in NSWGR modelling but as I now have changed my interest to Muswellbrook I no longer need it.(they never ran into Muswellbrook) Thought that it would be better where it can be used.
When I bought it, it was in Mint factory painted condition (I ussume they factory painted these as it was Bloody good) It had never been run. All I have done was added weathering, Brass numbers etc and test run a couple times around a friends layout. Runs perfect. I have the original box as well.
Ultimately I would love to swap it for a Traxx 30T with a bogie tender. Would need to be in similar condition, unpainted would be fine. I am however happy to sell it. $800. I have seen these sell for about this. See pics below.
Email me if you are interested. iphemist@dodo.com.au.

Cheers

Ian