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For all your Rurr Valley Railway News............ long after it happens.... 3rd Edition
1st May 2004
3rd/7th May 2004
Its finally cool enough to do some work in the garden and I spent a pleasant day clearing the right-of-way, doing minor adjustments and temporarily test fitting the partly built Possum Point engine shed into its final location in preparation for a special running day on Friday 7th. The Run Day was for Ian Millard, who was visiting from Port Macquarie and local, David Peterson, both fellow members of the new "serious" model railway Yahoo group, Railway_Modellers_Forum
The new shed
is based on the Mt Lyell shed that still stands at Regatta Point at Strahan.
The basic plywood shell has been constructed and it will be detailed and
clad in corrugated iron as opportunity allows.
Comparison of the photo above with the photo of Possum Point below shows that there are certain similarities between the two!
Once the loco shed is completed the next project will have to be a new, larger, station building to balance the bulk of the engine shed. Despite the shed being quite small in prototype terms, (56ft x 28ft), it is quite a large building in model terms and is known around here as "the Doghouse"! Drawings for a new station building based on Regatta Point have already been "roughed out" and the building should appear sometime in the next decade........ More Rollingstock...... Having sold off some surplus HO kits on Ebay I was able to finance some new acquisitions recently. A new loco and gondola/open wagon have been acquired via American Ebay and I am very pleased with them.
I eventually got one, (about $200 Aust airmailed out here) and it is quite a nice looking loco and I would judge it about 98% of a Bachmann 10th Anniversary 4-6-0 in running ability. It appears to be based quite heavily on Bachmann components, though whether they are "genuine" or "copies" I can't say...... It has 2" driving wheels and a 2 5/8" x 2 3/8" wheelbase. Boiler centreline is about 4" and overall height is 8 1/4", width over cab armrests is 5" and length, tip of pilot to rear of tender buffer beam, is 29". The chimney will have to replaced with something smaller, as it is too tall to fit under the tunnel on the middle road, even with the top "red bit" removed. To my eyes it is 1:20 proportions (it makes a Bachmann 4-6-0 look small.....) and as it runs quite well I am prepared to forgive it its outlandish appearance! It won't remain in these somewhat garish colours for long though, a nice coat of "loco black" should get it looking respectable........ As it comes
it looks very "American logging" though with a suitable flanged chimney
and some alterations to the cab and tender it could look somewhat reminiscent
of the Wellington & Manawatu Railway locomotives in New Zealand.........
I am looking, long term, at converting it to a Tasmanian Ds 2-6-4T, which
were originally NZR Wfs until four were sold to the TGR in 1939 and another
four in 1944. Two ended up on the Mt Lyell Railway, so one
would certainly fit in!
Along with
the loco came a gondola, which is very obviously a Bachmann "clone", which
I am going to convert to a facsimile of one of the Mt Lyell/EBR G wagons.
The Gs were large bogie open wagons of similar, (though not identical, even within each railway), appearance used by both the Mt Lyell and the Emu Bay Railways. They featured either one or three drop doors on each side, depending, it seems, on period. There is, however, an intriguing photo (see below) that appeared in the December 2003 Australian Railway Enthusiast showing EBR wagon G7 in the goods yard at Farrell that shows three doors on one side and one on the other!
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