Saturday, October 30, 2010

What's Been Happening?

Another drought of posts from Bylong it seems but what has been happening?

Well, a few things that I didn't seem to think were worth talking about but maybe if I put them all together?

I just finished another hand held video of a train moving over the main line as an experiment in working out good angles, etc. I like it but the sound coming from the locos does get a bit boring but then I suppose it would be if you were driving them. There is a cycling noise coming from 4434 which has an Alco v251 12 cylinder Soundtraxx Tsunami but not from 4530 which has an older Alco Soundtraxx DSD decoder. The 45 also sounds more 'rounded' even though it has the 8 bit decoder compared with the 16 bit Tsunami. I put this down to the use of a good quality oval speaker in the fuel tank of the 45 as against the supplied Trainorama speaker in the 44. I think that the cycling sound is because I had been playing with the reverb settings, I must check. Also the horn that can be heard as they start out of Wollar has a vibration which is a wire running across the speaker front. I have to open up the 44 to fix this and we all know what an interesting job that is.

Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and decided to do the scenery around the flour mill at Wollar that is situated between Wollar and the branch junction. I think I managed a reasonable transition to the backscene although the general impression is too much green (it is supposed to be set in the spring of 1965 so it's probably not that bad).

I now have a 3 foot section (sorry, no metric this is 1965 remember) between the flour mill and Wollar station which is a drawbridge section used to enter the layout from the house. Part of one of the hinges can be seen in the lower right of the above photo. There are two hinges and they will be an interesting challenge to scenic and keep operating as they stick up above the baseboard by about 1 1/2 inches. Anyway, the Wollar loop ends on this section of the layout about half way across and I have decided to add a level crossing after the point with some shops and small industries on either side of the road and crossing. I dug into my collection of kits last night and think I have come up with some interesting possibilities but you will have to wait, don't hold your breath.

I went to a 90th birthday party last Sunday for my great aunt who is the last of five sisters and three brothers who came to Sydney from Werris Creek in the late 1930's. Needless to say there was some railway connection.

My wife Chris has been doing family history for the last 25 years or so and a few years back we called into Werris Creek station museum before it was done up and in the books and various documents on display were some records showing details of the workers including family members. To my astonishment she has since found something like 10 or so that have worked for the NSWGR down the years.

I had a great-great grandmother Gatekeeper at Turanville a few miles south of Scone in 1884.
Turanville Level Crossing 2005

Another female Gatekeeper at Limbri north of Tamworth in the 1890's.
Site of Limbri Station 2005

My great grandfather worked in the yards at Werris Creek and my grandmother was a RRR girl in Sydney until she retired. There was also a ganger and earlier generations lived and worked at West Tamworth.

Werris Creek Station 2005
I have memories of watching trains from the verandah of my great grandfather's house at Wiley Park, a nice old federation home (the reason that our present home is a modern federation interpretation). Incidently, the family house is still in Dewhurst St Werris Creek in really good condition.
Cartwright house (1920/30's) - Dewhurst St Werris Creek 2005
Chris could certainly tell me about all the others but I won't bore you here. I guess I was wondering if there is a genetic effect, no not really, it was those trains from the verandah and my great grandfather taking me down to the tracks to watch the trains.

It all makes it all the more interesting when I work on and operate on Ron C's Werris Creek layout, I feel a very strong connection.


What's next?

Yesterday I picked up copies of Train Hobbies Steam Locomotive Depots - NSW Part 2 and Country Branch Lines - NSW Part 3 for Cooma, Bombala, Canberra and Captain's Flat at Berg's and a nice quiet read with a coffee will go down well.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Liverpool Exhibition

The Liverpool exhibition has came and gone again and I found it to be very inspiring. I normally go twice but this time we had to go to a wedding at Robertson on the Sunday and my daughter's birthday on the Monday, however the one visit still gave me a boost.

I arrived at about 1:45pm and left at 5:00pm having only made about one complete trip around all the exhibits due to stopping and chatting.

I also managed to take a few photos, something I usually give a miss as exhibitions are not the best for trying to take photos ( for some reason the trains keep moving). I also hate the use of perspex as it makes photographing very difficult. I had some nice shots of Time and Patience  and Central that I can't use because of the reflections of flourescents lights over the models beyond the perspex, grrrr!!!!

Here are a few shots that I like.

Ross Balderson's Central Station 1958.


Museum Station
Wallerawang

Time and Patience




Waterfall





I damaged the bank account with some book purchases but had to leave a lot of other interesting stuff behind.

All in all, a good exhibition.