This is supposedly the largest model railway in the World. Who knows it is huge and here are some photos to give an impression of the layout.
This is the server controlling the electrics.
The DCC Control room would shame many real life railways (they let women run the trains!!!)
I am not sure whether this is weathered but the detail is quite exquisite.
Especially when you consider the size of the layout (this is the Swiss Section).
Some of you may know that over the last two years I have been doing some work on the former Sunny Corner mining site. Last week I was on site doing some archaeological recording prior to remediation works. While recording the lower edge of the earthworks forming the Open Roasting Pit (where the ore was roasted to make it more suitable for smelting) I came across these remains.
Care full examination revealed these to be two timbers held apart by metal rod on top of a metal frame with a bit of rail that again keeps the rails apart at a set gauge.
Here is a detail of the metal frame with the rail “in situ”.
Not much is known about how the open roasting pits worked but from the remains it seems that a small tramway network was used to move the ore and presumably firewood around.
Not much has survived since c1889 when the Mine closed. Presumably all the good bits were salvaged for reuse elsewhere while these pieces were thrown over the edge to rust.
Because I had a sub-metre GPS with me, I can tell you that the remains are located at
Northing 6303672.578
Easting 769197.279
GPS_Height 1095.101
I imagine that this form of tramway construction would have allowed the easy realignment of the tramway during the process of roasting the ore.
SDS Models released a 3 pack of MC Cattle wagons at the Epping exhibition. These were introduced from 1974 when the Victorian Railways trialled several WAGR 20' cattle containers. This trial was successful and the Railways placed an order for 50 MC Cattle containers with Loadmaster at Woodend. The versatility of this design meant the cattle containers could be loaded individually onto four wheeled flat wagons like KQ and KMQ or loaded in threes on longer FQF bogie flat wagons. From my perspective this versatility is what attracted me to the models as they could mix in with my SEM “M” wagons on a branch line.
Side view (above), corner and roof (below().
They are quite light at 6g. You can slip a modellers knife in the slides and remove the bottom to add weight/cattle. A bit of weathering and they are good to go.
Yes, we did the MS –Walk on the 6th. Fortunately the threatened rain only emerged in the afternoon well after we had go home. Team Alistair consisted on myself, Jane, cousin Nic and his wife Jude and sister in law Margaret and her daughter Lou and of course our very own Alistair.
My GPS said we’d done just over11 km, not bad for a 9km walk! More importantly MS-Australia got over $3000 from Team Alistair.
The services that MS-Australia supply, such as lots of advice, for the newly diagnosed, for families and on on-going research (every few months a “cure” is reported and these are often explained in realistic terms by MS Australia’s doctors) are really important to MS sufferers.
I remember being told that when Dad was diagnosed there really wasn't any support and he was left to stoically suffer as befitted someone with an “incurable” disease. Nowadays there is so much more in the way of support and guidance from initial diagnosis to support for various therapies and living with MS.
So to all who supported Team Alistair – a big thank you, it’s a great cause you have supported!
As you may know Jane and I are supporters of MS Australia. Multiple Sclerosis has touched our lives and through this we realise the importance of having a support organisation such as MS Australia to those with MS and their family and carers.
MS Australia has an Annual fun run and walk on the 6th June. Jane and I and another have formed “Team Alistair” (you can guess who the other is) to do the 9km walk (or trot in Alistair’s case). We are looking for sponsorship for our team or better still people to walk with us.
You can join in by going to the MS Walk page at http://www.mswalk.org.au/nsw/about/chip-timing.asp and either elect to donate or walk our team is “Team Alistair” which you can find by entering Team Alistair in the search engine on the page. We are the ones with the cute picture of Alistair!
If you want to join us on the walk, which starts at 10:00am, you need to register first
Donations are tax deductable.
This is our third MS Walk and we are looking forward to it especially watching Alistair trying to steal sausages at the end of walk Sausage sizzle!
As an outback town Broken Hill is reckoned to be not all that far away and from a South Australian perspective maybe it isn't, but from Sydney it is a long drive and for the organisers of the 2010 Outback and Beyond Conference is has also been a long 18 months or so. So here we all are ICOMITES and TICHS waiting for the Conference proper to start.
To get here I forsook the plane and the train for my car and the back roads of NSW. I decided on the route through Cowra, West Wyalong, Rankin Springs, Hillston and Ivanhoe. Leaving at 6:30 I got to Ivanhoe by 5:30. Ivanhoe was quite desolate so I decided to push on to Menindee some 200k by dirt. I stayed the night at the Menindee Caravan Park.
The landscape from West Wyalong onwards was essentially flat with the odd range of hills. We had been promised plagues of locusts and while swarms were not obvious there were enough locusts to force several window cleaning stops. The locusts are a sign of the good rains we’ve been having this year.
Another sign is the flooded Menindee Lakes refilling from Queensland flood waters from the Darling River.
After driving around Menindee i headed west towards Broken Hill. About half way Stephens Creek in encountered and after that the first sign of my destination – the Barrier Silver fields could be seen.
The title of this post refers to the opening of an insurance claim regarding a burning bed and serves to point out the inevitable consequences of things not being right at the start.
I refer to my Steam Era Models IA “Tommy Bent” wagon. as a case in point. I think the kit was bought for me by Jane in 2004 when I was housebound with a broken foot. She made the trek to Toms in West Ryde and bought me some kits (much to the surprise of the Toms crew).
Now the kit is basically the short 4 wheel underframe from the M wagon kit and a new “box” to go on it. However, you do have to trim the M wagon underframe to fit the “box” as a bit projects on each side.
Now as I look at the IA wagon in 2010 I see misaligned sides, gaps filled with body putty which has got everywhere obscuring the interior details of the wagon all stemming from the indisputable fact that I didn't cut the body square!
All the fitting and fiddling stems from my neglect of this basic task.
The model is salvageable, after all the wagons did look quite battered and distorted by the ‘60s, and with something to go in the interior the odd blobs of putty will be hidden.
Still I should learn to cut straight!
