Contract out your fencing

Fences are a fact of life in both urban and rural environments and in my quest to 'model the ordinary', they are certainly a feature that should be included as part of the scenery. Several of my earlier posts have discussed some aspects AND the frustrations of modelling fences.

As I mentioned previously, the tedious nature of the task, particularly when building a standard barb wire fence quickly dents the enthusiasm. Consequently, the task frequently gets put in the 'too hard' or 'lower priority' basket. To overcome this, I decided to call in some extra help and engaged a fencing contractor, Paddy's Fences to finish the task.

While I had been contemplating this solution for a while, it all fell into place when I found some castings of barbed wire coils manufactured by Model Train Buildings  (www.modeltrainbuildings.com.au ) at the recent Forestville Exhibition. The figures came from  second hand stalls at other exhibitions and the Holden ute was purchased a few years ago.





The contractor's name acknowledges a recent visit to the layout by an eight year old great nephew. While he seemed to enjoy running the trains, he definitely enjoyed playing with the red ute. Paddy's favourite ute became the workhorse for Paddy's Fences.

I haven't recorded the time spent building this little cameo but it is definitely a lot less than would have been expended running and tensioning all of the 'wire' myself!

A Waste of Time?

We enjoy most activities associated with this hobby - we wouldn't be involved in model railways if we didn't. When it comes to layout construction jobs, most people have strengths and weaknesses, and, as such, are better at some tasks than others. For me, I am happiest adding the finishing details rather than the basic work required to construct the baseboard, lay the track and install the wiring. While I am capable enough to complete these activities, they are something that must be done rather than something that can be enjoyed. For me, wiring is a particular chore. However, over the past week or two, I have come across a scenery construction task that is almost as bad and it too involves wire. I am talking about fence building.

This was a job that kept sliding down the 'to do' list until I ran out of excuses for not doing it. In NSW, most rural areas, by the 1960s, had well established fences. I had constructed a few around specific buildings, one particular house and the water treatment plant. However, the glaring omission was a fence between the rail easement and the Philip's Creek village. I had previously purchased a few packets of the Kerroby Models wire fences to provide the fence posts and, in my late father's workshop, I found some very light gauge wire. This was very very old wire that had cloth rather than plastic insulation. In fact, the wire is that old that I suspect that my father may have acquired it from his father who used to work in the NSW Railways Electric Car Workshops at Chullora in the 1930s to 1950s. So another convoluted reason why I should stop procrastinating.

The fence line with the bottom three wire strands fitting - and barely visible!

So I was set! The fence posts were painted and then planted, and then the problems started. Threading the wire through the holes in the fence post was quite a challenge. When I was young, my mother would often ask me to thread a needle for her because "my eyes were younger than her's". Well, now, my eyes are not so young anymore, and I have no children left at home to ask. Even with my strongest set of reading glasses, it has proved to be a challenge particularly as each post is spaced about 50mm apart and there are five holes per post. I have ended up using a torch to backlight each post to give a better view of the holes.

Another view of the fence - the Royal Hotel has suffered a bit during construction

The other challenge has been working around the urban encroachment of Philip's Creek. Some smaller items could be moved but power poles and the Royal Hotel have caused more than a few problems, and there has been some minor damage to both.

At the time of writing, this section of fence is only 60% completed and I'm beginning to think that I have wasted my time. There are still quite a few metres of fencing to finish. Maybe, I should have just planted the fence posts to create an optical line and let people's imagination do the rest. Certainly, the wire is barely visible in the accompanying photos. This probably means the gauge of the wire is about right but this activity has convinced me never to attempt power and telegraph line reticulation!!

However, not wishing to close on a negative note, I have added a few photos of the latest additions to the Philip's Creek roster, the recently weathered 36 class (that sound like a contradiction of terms) and the four completed CCHs.