Happy New Year !

Not locked in anymore

       One day recently, I took a good look at Station Street, Yea, and it occurred to me that everyone needed a helicopter to get in and out of the place. This would be rather expensive, so I decided proper
road access might be a good idea, to say the least...With a little(actually, a lot of ) tweaking, there was
just enough space to put in a level crossing.
       Also, it was time to tackle the pub, as a warm-up for that scary project - the station. So, I busied
myself over the past few days,  intending to do the lot : The pub, the level crossing and  chain-mesh
 fencing around the tracks. My daughter supplied me with some curtain material, but I had to drive to
Jaycar in Bendigo to get a few brass rods and styrene. The pub, by the way, was largely done by
 gluing scaled-down photo prints onto card stock.
       There is a lot yet to be done around this area. Clearly, for one thing, those sheep need to be kept
off the road. But I am making progress.

  

Mutton Chop

          This being the month of Mo-vember, when we are  all doing our bit for men's cancer research,
I realized that I was unable to grow a m(o)ustache, because I have been wearing a beard since about
1965 - the cool trendsetter that I am...
          Then my mind wandered - it often does these days - and I was thinking 'mutton chops'. From
there it was only a short step for me to go out and buy three of the new Ozrail  L sheep vans,
of which the Victorian Railways had over 1400. They were used for sheep and sometimes pig
transportation, until1986, when those dastardly road transports finally won out.
          These 4-wheelers were quite a sight in the prototype, but for the models before me, the word
cute seems to have been invented. I nevertheless think they are some of the finest r-t-r models ever
produced .... just my opinion, of course. They will do sterling service in the hills of Yea, Cathkin and
Alexandra. Only for another few years though.....

                   There will actually be a sheep loading ramp  at Alexandra, but this location is                                                                more photogenic.

Station Street , Yea

       Yesterday I redid the Station Street area at the Railway Station (being a Grumpy Old Man I
refuse to call it a train station). Anyway, the branch was abandoned before we had ' Train Stations".
So there.

       I redid the photo murals after taking new photos, removed some unsightly power poles and
some  of the more modern trappings around the primary school from after 1978. I also decided to
eliminate one somewhat obscured red brick home next to the church. My apologies to the
people living there, but the strip turned out just a little too long. So sorry, but you don't exist.-
Take it up with the photoshop people...

       I roughly cut the strip along the (very cloudy) sky and after applying the photo mural, which
was made up from six single shots, I painted the sky to match the existing. However, it turned out
that the lighting system, which otherwise was doing a great job in illuminating all my failures,
foibles, as well as the odd success, was now doing its worst in highlighting to the extreme the cut
top edge of the photo backdrop, even though it is made of very thin card. I tried dusting it with sky
blue pastel powder - without success.

       Finally, I thought, if you can't beat them - join them. Yea is surrounded by hills, so why not
make it a range of hills. We really dare not call them mountains around here, so everyone relax.

       For those of you out there, who might ask, why didn't you carefully cut out the whole scenery
and stick it against the existing painted sky, I have to say : Make yourself a nice cup of tea and
have a good lay-down... it will pass.

         Finally I added a footpath made from  thicker card, which turned out to be quite acceptable.

OMG - The Station

     

            Well, I've been putting it off long enough. If I commit myself publicly to building Yea station,
 I won't be able to chicken out.  So there.

        

         For my meagre skills it looks a sizable job. We'll see. There will be no predictions as to completion.



         In the meantime, there are a few more views of things that actually exist.

                        Someone needs to ballast Alexandra Yard - and soon. ....aaaah... and take no      notice of the current position of the water tanks...  :-(

                                      This kiss is a superglue kiss. It has been going for months...

      Waiting for bovine freight. Wrong place though - no stock race...

Cheviot Tunnel - sorry, no bikes allowed...

 

Strolling around .....

What with preparations for a major European holiday and other issues taking up my modelling time,
 it occurred to me that I had not been very active on the layout  recently... although my enthusiasm
had been fired up by Pelle Soeborg's articles in Model Railroader. The realism he achieves
is impressive.

In any case, not having produced much lately, I nevertheless thought it might be a good idea to take a stroll around the layout and take a few snaps.

                                                                       At the Goulburn

Cathkin

        Alexandra yard

Alexandra goods shed (my version)

The Extension

     It  seemed pretty clear early on that some of the 20" radii just wouldn't work so well with the bigger locos, such as the 'B' Class and the 'J' , as well as bogie rolling stock , so an enlargement of the
benchwork was always on the cards - not that I had much room to play with !

     Bogie stock would be kept to a minimum, but the odd item would surely turn up ... In any case, I
decided the peninsula would be extended by some 450 mm and in the aisle, some 150 mm would be
added. All the trackwork in the area would  have to be re-done, which also allowed me to place the
level crossing at Cathkin (road to Alexandra) where it belonged, a little further Down.

Yard trackage not finalized.

 

                   Time for some serious surgery ...

                   Still far from ideal , but now workable.

More Diesel Growl ...

Just sent off my Austrains Y 145 to Mike at DCC Sound , to get him to make it talk... he always does such a good job for me and I don't have the confidence to attempt these things.

The loco, to me, is a beautiful model and although perfectionists have found fault with it to some extent, I very much like the look of it and it runs beautifully and smoothly (on DC). I would expect the same from the new decoder. I am likely to have it back at the Sandown show.

Wednesday, 27th February 2013

For what it's worth, I decided to change the name of my blog to Cathkin from the previous Cathnkin.When I started out on this blog, I thought the play-on-words was reasonably clever (TV comedy show 'Kath'n'Kim').
But because my layout is called Cathkin, as it centres on the place in Victoria , the whole thing was bound to confuse and puzzle..... so, Cathkin it is ! I hope you understand.

Happy Christmas

Basic Coaling Stage

Even though steam passenger traffic to Alexandra ended many years before the close of the line in 1978, some coaling of the 'Ks' and 'Js'  that were heading the excursion trains was necessary. So I decided to give Alexandra yard a very basic coaling stage, probably not very accurate, but to me it looks the part.

The chap sitting there upon the stage is apparently waiting patiently for some shovels to arrive on a mixed goods from Melbourne. A nice long cuppa seems to be in order.....

THE Turntable

Earlier this year I was the happy recipient of a Steam Era Models 'J' Class locomotive, built for me by none other than Frank Kelly... a beautiful piece of work, which goes without saying. To my dismay, however, I had asked a little to much of her, wanting her to go happily around my 20" curves. We had tried the mechanism at an early stage on a sample radius and it seemed to work. The finished loco nevertheless just didn't have any side play in the drivers - which, I guess, is as it should be.

The result of this situation was that the loco had to be sold, which it duly was within 2 hours and it was replaced by Precision Scale Models J 529. She wasn't quite as nice as Frank's masterpiece, but I had to be practical. I  later did the 'J' a good turn and increased the radii to 22" and 22 1/2" respectively.

Well, now there was a 'J' and it had to be turned at Alexandra. So, where to get a VR 53' turntable ? My butterfingers or the lack of skills would never produce one.After a fruitless search, when I nearly gave up, who should come to the rescue but another man of many talents, one Trevor Doran, the well known former proprietor of the 'Bufferstop'. He produced in no time at all a beautiful model that was operated by a little hand crank via an intricate set of gears. I decided on a little artistic, or rather practical licence for my own convenience and requested that the bridge should be a little longer, actually 56', in order to be able to place the loco more easily. I had no problem with this variance from the prototype.

All that was left for me to do was to place the turntable (unprototypically) at the Down end of Alexandra  yard and landscape it. It looks very good to my eyes and I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to Trevor.

                                                                Nearly complete 

                       Alexandra yard will have to be ballasted soon - it just doesn't look the part

  

Alexandra - First Try

I intended the branch to Alexandra not to have Koriella station modelled , it was too short for that.  Apart from dropping the line to  Mansfield down below the baseboard by means of a deep cutting, which then would be suitably camouflaged, the Alexandra track would curve around the end of the peninsula and straighten into the yard of the terminus.

The fact that these radii  (20") would turn out to be too tight for 'B' and 'J' classes was another story. I was now eager to concentrate on Alexandra. Here is the first (unfinished) version of that yard, when I still  had no hope of ever having to accommodate an excursion train that might consist of at the very least  3 'W' coaches and a 'CE'. Thus the rather short Nr.1 road and platform.
.

The platform and Nr. 1 road would eventually be lengthened to accommodate an excursion train consisting of  AW - BW - ABW - CE with a 'J' Class being able to run around.

 
I think for the moment we may have to ignore the fact that no 'B' Class ever went
 to Alexandra

In my version of Alexandra , UP is to the left, when in reality it is to the right. The correct way would have meant putting the station building on the aisle side and again, as in Cathkin, I didn't like to have to look over the top of it. After all .....' it is my ... blah, blah ...'

At this time I also did have no idea whether I would ever have a turntable , or where to put it. It wouldn't be near the yard throat , as in real life - there was no room. It would have to be at the Down end. The station building is a laser-cut kit from Outback Models and a fine kit it is too. There are now some more outbuildings attached at the far end and I think there is only one toilet, but I chose to ignore unimportant (to me) nonsense like that ... 'After all......'

The shed (Bullamakanka , I think) turned out to be too large and would be replaced by an Outback Models one. The water tank (yet unfinished) is the well-known kit, which I managed to make two copies of for Yea.

Recapping so far...

Just a few images of the look of the layout at that stage.

However, some radical things have been happening. More shortly...

 

Cathkin Mark I

I had some difficulty from the beginning with having a loop of any useful size at Cathkin, but I had to work with the space available and pushed on undeterred. At the time I was only thinking of very short goods trains and rail motors. I would never have E carriages making up excursion trains , I thought.

As I mentioned before, I had decided to place the station building to the North of Nr.1  road. The goods shed was placed on the short siding on the South side. The level crossing was put immediately after the down points and the two roads to Alexandra and Mansfield were parting ways past that. It was all very tight. The  crossing signs were put up and and a lot of vegetation put in. The bitumen road making its way towards Alexandra was looking good.. I'd printed out the road signs for the intersection with the road to Mansfield, but haven't made them yet. Anyway, here is Cathkin Mark I. There would, of course, be a  Mark II.  It was inevitable.

   Moving towards Mansfield and Alexandra 

 
Raw scenery with T358 negotiating 20 " radius , going from Alexandra to Cathkin around the penninsula. The road 'to Mansfield' drops into the inside cutting. This whole area would eventually have to be enlarged to accommodate 23" radii.

Early video

Pondering Cathkin.

Cathkin was the junction on the Goulburn Valley Highway where the track split into the Mansfield line continuing in a north - easterly direction and the Alexandra branch going towards the Southeast. There were three roads, one (livestock?) stub and a turntable off the Alexandra road, past the level crossing. I am not at all sure why Cathkin had a turntable, as both Mansfield and Alexandra had one and it seems pretty unlikely that trains regularly terminated at Cathkin. The only reason I can think of is that there could have been direct goods traffic between Mansfield and Alexandra and vice versa, in which case locos may have been turned at Cathkin, but it was never a terminus, as the line was immediately continued to Alexandra Road (Koriella).
Better informed heads than mine may be able to tell me the reason...

Having another look ...

Newsrail photo           

                                                              

(Thank you , Mark Bau)

Now, the thing for me to do was to decide how to deal with Cathkin. There would be no turntable, the only one would be at Alexandra, so the 'J' Class could be turned - should I ever be able to obtain anything that looked remotely like the VR prototype...(I eventually did get J529 from PSM!!)

The next thing that bothered me was the fact that both Cathkin and Alexandra stations were on the aisle (South) side of the layout.I didn't fancy the idea of looking over the top of them. So the decision was made to transfer both stations to the North of the line . In the case of Cathkin, I flipped the whole yard around. putting the goods shed onto the stub track. I also deleted Nr.3 road.

The only thing left to do was to take the Mansfield line, once it was past the level crossing, into a cutting, duly camouflaged, and take it underneath the layout and back all the way to 'Tallarook', 'Homewood' and back into Yea.

                                                      Cathkin diagram source: Mark Bau

Theory is a wonderful thing, but all this would have to be turned into reality.-

Crossing the River ...

One of the projects I was looking forward to were the bridges across the Goulburn at Molesworth, both road and rail. They run fairly close to one another, so I had little trouble placing them in the small amount of space I had. They are entirely scratchbuilt and a good likeness of the real ones, if somewhat shrunk. At first I mistakenly gave the railbridge one pylon to many , five in the river instead of four. Its girders were  at different times painted grey or wagon red. I found a faded wagon red rather attractive.

The river itself was a little bit of a problem, as I had very little space between the top level and the hidden  lower level that carried the return (runaround) track. I had to use a piece of sheetmetal for the riverbed. After the river was painted a muddy grey and two layers of Woodland Scenics water were applied and some fallen trees and debris added, I was quite happy with the result. I will probably add more vegetation along the banks.

The actual backdrop behind the bridges is really quite wooded, but I left it as I had painted it, with distant hills, as it gives the scene more depth.

The track from the bridge around towards Cathkin consists of  a rather tight curve and gives me trouble  once in a while, so this is something I may have to look at again in the future. The same thing applies to the  curve in the opposite corner, leading from the Cheviot Tunnel into Molesworth.

It is time now to bravely move forward to Cathkin...