Additions to the roster, new locomotive 1919 et al

 My most recent post noted my propensity for purchasing additional items of rolling stock and thus compounding the space problems in my staging yards. Well, I succumbed again over the past few weeks.

At the recent Hills Model Railway Exhibition, IDR Models were running a special on its second run of BBW wagons. I purchased a set of three. It is the second set that I have purchased and it now completes my ballast train. They are impressive models from IDR.

The background to the second purchase is a bit more convoluted. The Mount Windeatt branch line which is currently being refurbished, has, in part, been inspired by the Dorrigo branch line in north eastern NSW. With this in mind, I began to consider if a 19 Class locomotive may be a suitable addition to the locomotive roster. Casula Hobbies had released such a model in 2022 and I had assumed that the the run would be sold out by now. However, a check of the website indicated that the 19 Class may still be available. A call to Joe confirmed this and an order was placed. I chose 1919 because of its links with the Dorrigo line.

From various sources, I understand that 1919 was first issued to traffic as A 114 of the A(93) class, becoming 1919 of the (Z)19 class at the NSWGR’s 1924 renumbering scheme. In the 1950s, it was allocated to South Grafton for use on the Dorrigo line during the 1950’s and features in contemporary photographs and recollections of Dorrigo line operations in Ron Preston’s book “Tender into Tank”. It was one of the last steam locomotives in service with the NSWGR. 1919 was withdrawn around 1972/73 when it was based at Darling Harbour and employed on shunting duties. It escaped scrapping and has been preserved. [Glenreagh Memorial Museum's Facebook post 5 Apr 24]

In my alternate history, after finishing on the Dorrigo line, it was reallocated to the Mount Windeatt branch line before ending its days at Darling Harbour. 

1919 is only my second locomotive fitted with sound, and again, I have been very impressed with both the sound and model itself. Hopefully, the short somewhat jerky 'out of the box' video clip gives a reasonable impression of this new addition to the Philip's Creek locomotive roster. I love the occasional sound of the shovel scraping.

 The final addition also came from Casula Hobbies, one of the recently released CX passenger coaches. I opted for one of two Ways and Works versions. I hope that it will be the genesis of  a more extensive Ways and Works train. Again, this is a great model from Casula Hobbies.

All of the new models have received a basic weathering before being pressed into service on the layout.

Although these purchases provide a bit of a distraction, work has continued on the refurbishment of the Mount Windeatt branch line. The branch line itself has been laid and is operational but the alignment for the narrow gauge logging railway continues to be developed.

  

 

Hopefully, there won't be any more temptations crossing my path in the near future - except perhaps a 53 class if it is ever gets manufactured! 

 

Getting the Roof Right

At the recent Modelling the Railways of NSW Conference, I purchased a 4 wheeled lourve van kit from Casula Hobbies. This particular kit was a model of the longer 11ft 6in wheel base version of the LV coded wagons. A few years ago, I had purchased an IDR 10ft wheel base van and the difference between the two versions can be seen in this photo of a wagon from the Oberon Tarana Heritage Railway website (http://othr.com.au/rolling-stock/goods-wagons/  photographer unknown) shows the longer wheel base van sitting on top of a 10ft chassis.

Conceptually, both kits are the same, a cast body and a separate chassis. Details such as handrails can be added to the model. The main difference between the kits was that the Casula kit has a separate CGI roof. I understand that some wagons had the CGI removed but I elected to construct the van with the separate CGI roof.  The Casula kit included two CGI roofs from the GSV that needed to be cut to size, joined and then fixed to the body. My problem with this arrangement was that the battens were in the wrong locations and whole arrangement seemed too thick.

 I decided to create the roof from a commercial CGI product but the main challenge was to determine how this would be fitted to the van body. My research uncovered a few images that led me to deduce that the roof was supported by a number of ribs supporting the CGI sheet sandwiched between thing battens. I fashioned several strips of styrene to match this and fixed the roof to these.

The photos below show a side and end images of the van. The side image appears to be to be a reasonable representation of the prototype and compares reasonably with the IDR model of the10ft version. The photo from the end also seemed to match other photos from the same angle which I had found.

So, thinking it was completed, I started the painting with the usual coat of primer. Concurrently,  I also started to put together a few thoughts for this post. As I went searching for the Oberon Heritage Railway site to get the reference correct, I located a few of Keiran Ryan's photos (http://www.krmodels.com.au/topic01.html ). These clearly showed that I had misinterpreted the support arrangements for the roof with independent brackets used to support the CGI and supporting battens. While the image from the side still seemed to work, the ends should show the individual supports rather than a continuous rib that I had built.  With a few choice words that cannot be printed, the roof came off, the outside ribs were removed and replaced with individual supports under the battens. The final version before painting is shown below.

Fortunately, I was able to correct this error but it makes me wonder how many others have fallen through the cracked. Probably quite a few I suspect!

Postscript. It never rails but it pours! During a visit to the great Epping Model Railway Club exhibition at Thornleigh on the weekend, I purchased an Austrains LV pack on special, so now I have five of these wagons plus the smaller IDR version.