The End of the year 2012

Well its the penultimate day of 2012 and I wonder whether I have finally found a suitable trackplan which I have currently deployed and borrowed heavily from Dimboola in Western Victoria.  I guess time will tell.  Here are some more photos.

Wishing you all a prosperous 2013.

My legs hurt

Spent alot of time today in the shed making some minor changes to the track work which is a continuation of the changes I began last week.  Spent alot of time standing which leads to sore legs!  Anyway, here's hoping the effort is worthwhile.

Here are some photos - hope you enjoy them.

S311 brings in a mixed goods from Melbourne whilst the yard pilot looks on from the Dock Road.

A VLX and GY are shunted to what will be the Goods Shed in "bas relief"

Some Sightings

A Grain train gets marshalled.  This will followed the 'jet' to Melbourne which is expected to arrive shortly.

A few minutes later, an Adelaide to Melbourne 'jet' arrives and stops for a crew change.  Plenty of Horsepower in the form of a C and B class locomotives.  Once the jet has cleared the section, the grain working will follow.

Some Photos

Here are some photos of the new track plan and layout taking shape.  I wont say what location the layout is based on, except to say that it is in Western Victoria and has a branch line.  See if you can guess by looking at the photos what the location the layout is based on.  

Major changes to layout.

Major changes to layout.


Like warmed-up cabbage served at each repast, The repetition kills the wretch at last.  Juvenal

• Undergone some changes to track design and operational elements.  
• Staging yards have been mostly eliminated.  Using said space to add extra scenery and shunting possibilities.
• Layout based on a country station in Victoria.
• Shunting still major focal point.
• Previous layout idea was good but became too repetitious and monotonous,
• Plus lack of scenery added significantly to a mundane look and feel.

Departing Freighter Takes Road 5

Here we see a freighter destined to North East locations take Road 5 of the yard.

Brisbane Show Day Public Holiday

Two ex Victorian locomotives visited Brisbane this morning on train number 2MB7.   Under a beautiful, clear blue-sky Brisbane day, I snapped the following :

T for Trip Train

An arrival into the yard sees a T class up front.  The T class loco has been detached from the rest of the train and now have picked up loading for "Melbourne Yard".  Here we see the T leaving the yard.

Two Departures

Having enough loading for the North East and Western Lines, a B and T Class was dispatched from Dynon.  Once at the yard, they were separated and coupled to their respective trains, the B assigned to the Western Goods due to the larger loading and the T class to the NE goods.  Here we see them both on their way.

Some more ballasting and point modification (Take 2!)

I am now at a stage where I am satisfied with the track layout.  I have begun ballasting the yard.  I have used Woodland Scenics very fine grey ballast (code is B75) to depict the ballast used at yards.  I will be airbrushing the ballast with a rusty colour as currently the ballast looks too "new".

I am pretty happy how it has come out, especially the rust of the rails against the grey ballast.  I think I will also use the air-brush to do the rail sides and at the same time the ballast.

With the points, the modification I made previously unfortunately caused more issues than anything else, especially for my small wheel base locos, such as the Y and T.  I have now gone back and re-soldered the jumper wires as was provided by Peco.  I am not sure how secure the soldering is straight out of the factory, so anyhow I have re-soldered the jumpers under the frog to the four points that I stuffed.

Modification to Peco Code 75 Electrofrog Points

Since I will not be power routing the frogs on my points, I made some minor adjustments.

First thing that needs to be done is add jumpers from the point rails to the stock rails.
Second, remove the Peco wiring directly under the frog.
Third, for longevitiy of the connection, replace the current Peco jumpers and solder new jumpers

See photo of the modifications carried out.
One doesn't need to power route your frogs nowadays given the high quality of our modern model locos.

Let me know what your thoughts on this modification are.
Thanks

Schematic Diagram of Track Plan

Here is a schematic diagram of the track plan of my layout. Being a shunting layout, you can see there is quite a bit of track. However, I added two additional tracks to make it look and feel like a major yard. This enables me to have plenty of shunting-centric operation with a smallish footprint. However, I do sacrifice operating on those lovely scenic layouts I have visited and seen. As usual trackplan subject to chance without notice LOL.

Happy Easter Everyone. I thought I would share with you some photos of my layout. The first and second photos show a goods train coming into the yard. This train will be broken up and the wagons will be shunted to the respective departure tracks.

Bye now

The World Is Yours

I came across a fantastic piece written by Linn Westcott which I thought I had to share with you all. The biggest impression was Westcott stating "avoid the cliche" with your model railway. No doubt you too will go away all that more wiser after reading this article.

Beautiful weekend to be outdoors

With the Southern Spirit making her way down south from Acacia Ridge on Saturday, I ventured down to the Border Ranges with a friend early morning. The scenery is just spectacular. We managed to film the XPT which was a bonus as it was running late. Following the XPT was a Melbourne Bound Freighter and finally the Southern Spirit. Just too good an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and hence no time to be in the shed railway modelling!

Satisfactory Tarps at Last!

At last I have found a satisfactory way to create tarps for my GYs and other open wagons. I was quite impressed with the way these tarps came out, compared to my previous and first attempt using tissue paper and white glue. A chance encounter with Ben at one of Craig's running session together with a tip from Ray Pilgram from his site on how to create tarps, I found the receipe to create tarps which looked quiet good to me. Some photos below. Special thanks to Ray as he suggested in his blog that he uses wrapping paper which I found to be the key. I painted the tarps using a Humbrol green. If anyone is interested, I can suggest the Humbrol Number I used. a

Time for a Departure

Now that there is enough loading for northern destinations, we see a train depart for these destinations. The extra T Classes are used for loco balancing on this occasion. All the loading on this train have come from previous trains (and if required may be some empty wagons from the yard itself), which have been shunted onto the road for "Northern" destinations. The locos were serviced at the depot, marshalled together, ran light engine to the yard, and attached to the train on the appropriate departure track.

Small Goods Arrives

Here is a video showing a small goods train coming into the yard and terminating. The wagons will then be shunted either to the respective destination tracks or on the yard tracks as empties for temporary storage. The loco is then seen heading to the depot.