The best news I've heard all year, and a tiny amount of actual modelling

First things first, I bought the Rav4 I was looking for a few weeks ago and now have a trusty steed to much more comfortably lug my trains to and from exhibitions and the all-too-frequent house moves. That's one less hurdle out of the way.

Now for the big news:

Image credit: On Track Models

Just before the AMRA's Liverpool Exhibition, On Track Models announced the release of NSW Supplementary Interurban cars. I grabbed a few photos of my own from the OTM display case at the exhibition yesterday.

I reckon every modeller has their obsession loco/carriage/structure/prototypical aspect which they've read more about than the rest of their hobby out of a genuine interest or curiosity in that special topic. For me, the obsession is Supplementary Interurban cars. These are an absolute must-have for me, and typify the passenger stock of the NSW railways of the late 1970s era I model. Having read extensively and collected just about every photo of the cars that pops up on the internet and in Facebook groups, I've noticed a small error in the production sample of MFH2705. The prototype MFH2705 had a double letterboard (runs horizontally along the carriage side below the roofline and above the top of the windows), whereas the OTM version of MFA2705 has a single letterboard, which is typical of all of the other cars with the exception of the original MFH2703. If it's present in the production run, a mistake like that would be a deal breaker for some modellers. Yet for a production run to make money, I expect that the number of body variations per carriage type would need to be minimal to be worth doing at all. For me, everything else about the car is fantastic. It's even liveried in the post-Granville numbering it wore when it was paired with MFA2706 into Set 10C. Given that the rest of the MFHs had single letterboards (again, excluding the original MFH2703), I suspect this was a small corner to cut to get the project into production. And personally, I'd rather buy a 'close enough' car that I can take to the cutting board if the inaccuracy becomes too much to bear, than build one myself from scratch.

So, I've already ordered two packs from the good gentlemen at OTM. They are going to look fantastic running around behind Auscision's soon-to-be-released 85, and my existing 46's. Word on the street is that these cars are 6-8 weeks away, so definitely here before Christmas!

Partly to maintain to myself that I can still produce a model if I want to, and partly because seeing OTM's upcoming cars has inspired me, I've resumed building MFA2706 with the aim of having it ready to join the fleet when the other supplementary cars arrive. So far I've removed the excess length added to protect the castings from shrinkage during production, and am currently sizing it up to get the right length to fit on a Lima chassis. I've bought 2CA bogies from Auscision to put under the car to represent how it looked after returning to service following the Granville disaster.

  

Other news from the exhibition relevant to this blog was the announcement from SDS models of the release of the series 1 and series 2 ICX container vans. These normally carried a refrigerated RACE container, or milktainers, which has prompted me to write to Road & Rail Resin to obtain another couple of milktainers.

It's almost warm enough to start spraying primer and painting again, so probably a good time to finish my existing ICX kits and the milktainers for them before the end of the year too.

There were also painted samples of SDS' upcoming 81 class. It's missing number boards and a cab, but it's going to look great in front of the Southern Aurora cars.

Until next time!

Cheers,
Ben

Chullora Industrial update and some more weathering

 Chullora Industrial

A few months ago a put up a post about the next layout I want to build, Chullora Industrial and included an initial track plan. I wasn't quite happy with that version in that the loco had to leave the scene to shunt most of the sidings, so I lengthened the layout out to 175cm and moved the set of points for the rear-most siding further into the layout to overcome this. Here's the revised plan:



I also moved the fiddle yard to attach at a 90-degree angle while at home, both because it wouldn't fit in the room otherwise, and because I wanted a bit of a longer run before ending in the fiddle yard again.

Although I've got a standard-sized bedroom to work with, the limiting factor for the dimensions of the layout is getting it all into the back of a Toyota Rav4 in one piece. Which brings me to where we're going next for this layout concept; pulling up to double reds with the slim chance of calling on. First hurdle: buying said Toyota Rav4. (I needed a new car, this just happens to be the type I can get trains or two mountain bikes into with ease). That problem will be surmounted before the end of September, but finding a new car over the last month or so really flattened the bow-wave of motivation that had until recently driven me to purchase new LED lighting and points for the layout over the last few months.

The second hurdle has been the confirmation that my job is moving me back to Sydney, and that my wife's job is simultaneously sending her north on a secondment for half of next year. We just can't win! Having lived apart this year due to my work we'd largely put our plans for buying a house on hold, but with the prospect of being just as unsettled for the next 12 months we figure "why wait?" So now we're actively house-hunting. And yes, one of the key criteria for me is having enough rooms in the house to sufficiently accommodate train room, as well as a family. Priorities.

So, with a house comes an opportunity to put our roots down for a while and stay in one spot. It also means being somewhere long enough to build a layout where I can finally both run trains in a loop as well as shunt!

For now, Rozelle Street will remain the primary layout, and continues to meet my needs for running trains, and provides a nice photo backdrop for my new stuff and weathered trains as they leave the workbench.

More weathering

Weathering and building kits is probably what you're going to see most on here for at least the next six months, but the benefit is that after that time the fleet of weathered gear will be that much larger.

Speaking of which, I've started to play around with weathering S wagons using the crushed pastel method:

As well as starting to weather a Eureka HGM:

I had the opportunity to run them around on Allan Brown's "Bullinga" layout recently too. It was quite satisfying to watch the trains run further than 1.4m!

Above all though, the layout building pause gives me the chance to finally start on some meat wagons. Like I said I would, years ago.

Until next time!
Cheers,
Ben