Coleraine Junction again

I blogged about Coleraine Junction in December 2012 and since then nothing much has happened. I have been gradually been amassing information – historical and mapping.

For example here is the site on the 1942 inch to the mile map.

I have also been looking at the Working Time Tables that cover Coleraine Junction. There are three lines – one little used line to Penshurst and Warrnambool, the branch to Coleraine and the main line to Portland and Mount Gambier. In addition as the depot for Hamilton was situated at Coleraine Junction there would be light engines going to and from Hamilton. When you put all that together Coleraine Junction would have been quite a busy box.   

Last weekend (June 2015) I was in the area for a workshop and arranged with Jane to spend some time at the site of Coleraine Junction. Of course it is heavily altered and there is little original fabric left except for some culverts and concrete facing but i was able to get a feel for the setting of the signal box. To do this I took about 100 photos and made field plans and sketches.

This is the site of the signal box taken from the (new) bridge looking roughly south east. The signal box was roughly where the bush is growing. The open flat area above was the site of a Departmental Residence.

This is the view from the Coleraine branch looking towards the junction. The trees would form a useful block behind the track and in front of the sky.

Looking north at Coleraine Junction from the Penshurst line, note the trees, landscape and a culvert in the mid-ground. 

This is only a selection of the 100 odd images but it does help crystallise some design elements. The embankment and cutting and bridge would at the Hamilton end would form one end. The Departmental residence, fence and trees would form one side  and more trees could be used with modelling license to screen tracks and the loco depot.

This layout would not be a shunting layout but one with a passage of trains through the junction  (accompanied by the appropriate bell codes of course) which would allow for a display of a collection of rolling stock and locomotives.

I am now going to look for a good quality aerial image and then try and sketch out a design.

(Note this post was written around the time that Google disabled Live Writers functionality and Microsoft did nothing, now it seems to be fixed).

The Eiffel Tower at night

 

We were in Paris in Auguest-September 2015 and on our last day we did the Eiffel Tower. We chose the late afternoon/evening to start our climb with the result that we were at the top (after 720 steps) as the setting sun picked out the surounding suburbs. We stopped for dinner on the way down and then we climbed down the steps through the lit structure of the tower which gave this amazing effect of mechano gone wild. The light picks out the detail of this amazing structure.

Live Writer is back

Hopefully this post will mean that Live Writer is back.

Google’s pain in the arse

I use Liver Writer for this blog. Imagine my surprise having written my first blog for 12 months to find that about a week ago Google changed some settings and locked out everyone (and there are a lot of people using this program) using Live Writer.

What a complete and under pain in the arse.

A different view

Going to tech workshops is a bit like getting fundamentalist religion; people preach at you, show you a shining new future and you go away raving about it to your slightly bored friends (or at least I think that's what happens I’s an Anglican we rarely get that excited).

So to the tech day run by United Positioning Group the Australian distributor of all things Trimble. I actually like hearing about new items and the fun that can be had with point clouds even if I am the only non-surveyor in the room. So coming down from the mountain let me tell you about the fun I had with the UAV’s. 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or as they are called by the ignorant are drones but they offer a cheap and effective way to quickly obtain aerial imagery and contours by combining GPS technology and cameras to produce digital surface models and orthophoto mosaics in visible light (default camera) or composite infrared light (CIR camera). Trimble offers two the small UX 5 and the X100. Typically they are black and look rather like Thunderbird 2.

Paul Standen UPG’s National Geospatial Manager has been introducing this technology and working through the rules with CASA so that they can operate legally and within safe parameters. This involved licencing the owners of the UAV’s and the operators.

Last years demonstration was aborted due to bad weather this year the clouds parted and Paul offered to pop down to Parramatta Park for a demo. I was keen and with Paul and three others we headed off. “I have a project in Parramatta Park” I ventured, great said Paul I’ll fly that.

Parramatta Park, I should explain, was part of the area that post-contact settlers were moved to in 1789 when it began to be apparent that the sandy soils around Sydney Cove were not suitable to agriculture. Exploration along the Parramatta River found a suitable site at “the Crescent” and a farming community of convicts was quickly established there. Parramatta Park  contains evidence of this early farming activity.

The time from arriving at the site, finding a car park and setting up for a flight was between 15-20min.

This is what the area looked like a grassy field with limited surface visibility.

The flying is autonomous that it once it is set up the plane will fly its route automatically and land once done. You don't “fly” the UAV you plan the mission by putting in some parameters and safety options and launch the plane. The UAV flew the mission in 9 minutes.

After retrieving the plan and packing up we went on our way and Paul downloaded that date and processed it in about 30min and had it in a Dropbox file for sharing. I was probably still on the train home.

What did we see -

Well us, and

A series of intriguing marks -  clearly a structure of some sort; various paths and drains and crop marks.

and of course contours

I could take Paul’s images and drop them directly into ArcGIS as they were geo-referenced and then overlay some historic aerial over them and do all the other GIS type things.

How cool was that – quick. easy with little set up time and processing time – the costs are well within the budget of an EIS or larger Heritage Assessment. With one flight we saw things which are not readily visible on the standard aerial such as Google Earth.

I have seen the flight Brothers and Sisters , I have seen the flight.

Shale Oil Works at Newnes

Newnes, in the Wolgan Valley, was the site of a large scale shale oil production facility which operated between 1906 and 1937. The plant exploited deposits of oil shale or torbanite which were exposed in the sides of the Wolgan Valley associated with coal deposits. The deep valley exposes over 300m of Narrabeen group sediments and underneath this are the Illawarra Coal Measures which had a mixture of coal seams and a seam of oil shale about 60m below the start of the Illawarra Coal measures (i.e. c360m below the top of the valley sides). This seam is found in the Wolgan Valley and in the neighbouring Capertee Valley where the Glen Davis shale oil works were found.

Looking into the Wolgan Valley

Although there was some earlier mining and exploration in the Valley, it was not until 1906 when the Commonwealth Oil Corporation began operations that the shale oil began to be commercially exploited. The Commonwealth Oil Corporation bought the New South Wales Shale Oil Company in 1906 who seem to have had some works erected at Newnes and moved its operations from its site at Torbane and erected an elaborate works and a 51 km long tramway from the Main Western Line at Clarence. The company erected a larger plant at Newnes in 1907-09 with the shale being treated at its Hartley Vale plant from 1906 –1909.

From the start the project was plagued by labour issues (one strike lasted seven months) and lack of capital. There was also the question of imports of “foreign oil” which the company wanted “tariff protection” from. There were also technical problems with the retorts when they were finally completed in July 1911.

Solving the technical problems and continuous industrial problems put an end to the Commonwealth Oil Company as it simply ran out of capital. However the receivers under the technical leadership of Mr John Fell modified the retorts and production slowly was resumed in late 1915.

Production continued until 1922 when the the works closed again this time for good.

The coke ovens of which there were 90 were a success supplying metallurgical quality coke to the Great Cobar refining works and the Hoskins steel works at Lithgow .

This is the remains of the Paraffin sheds (quite what they did I haven't discovered as yet). This was clearly a substantial structure with a reinforced concrete floor.

These are retaining walls around the site of the retorts. the retorts were removed and re-erected at the Glen Davis site.

These are remains of the Naptha plant

The site is owned by NPWS and there is a walking trail and interpretation provided. Here we see members of the Institution of Engineers, Heritage Section reading the sign!!

In company with other industrial heritage enthusiasts I inspected the site on the 23rd March 2013 and the site plan shows our track. There is quite a bit to see and lots to understand about the processes on the site. It was a bit difficult to take it all in on one visit especially as it rained just as we got to the site.

Paperclips and photocopies

I have a vast number of photocopies articles probably close to 3000. They have been accumulated over the years while I studied and researched and now seem to form an important and valuable resource. If I was to replace them at todays vastly over inflated prices (especially since most authors got nothing from their original publication) – working at $30.00 per article the value is c$90,000!

But they take up a lot of room, a whole four draw filing cabinet in fact. I have lugged the filing cabinet around with me since Mum bought it for me in 1976. There are also various boxes of notes and copies from my thesis in the garage.

Several months ago I decided to convert the copies into PDF’s. I either use my own scanner or the Libraries free scanner which has a document feeder and can be persuaded to email the PDF’s to my computer (although some emails disappear). On my computer they are saved to a temporary file. Using Lucion Technologies File Centre 7 (Nuances Paper Port was tried but the demonstration version crashed so many times I gave up) I am able to straighten rotate and OCR the files and save them into by folder for Photocopies.

From there Mendeley, which is a free bibliographic database, takes over. Mendeley views the new files and attempts to give them a preliminary record which I manually have to edit and add  details to. Mendeley’s speciality is searching and organising PDF’s which it does a reasonably good job of doing. It is not as sophisticated as End Note but its interface is so much better it’s really easy to add data and save it.

I have managed to clear a draw (the top one as I didn't want the cabinet to become unbalanced.

What is interesting to me the qualities of the paperclips I have used. There are two basic types the metal ones and the plastic coated metal ones. What was surprising is that copies from my thesis – say 12-15 years old, with the metal paperclips often exhibited signs of rust where as plastic coated paperclips are untouched and are being recycled.

I am not sure about the mechanism for corrosion as the copies seem to be dry and stored in a dry place. Could it be the coating on the metal paperclips?

Anyway one moral of this project is always use plastic coated metal paperclips.