Ruminations and reflections

There has been some weird stuff going on in the blogger-sphere around these parts.  

And I am not talking about the odd (very odd) person who offers a range of personal services to my few readers, by commenting on posts about wheat loading at Eumungerie in 1931 and providing a link to a place on the Internet that gives wheat lumpers a completely different connotation.

No, I am talking about the stuff that happens when you write a post and then it disappears, completely, into the Bermuda Triangle of blogs. If this cost goes through, and it is looking promising, it will be attempt Number 3. And that is a shame, because the last two attempts had vastly superior prose.

Colin's thoughtful comments on my last post actually put me back quite a bit.  And its certainly not your fault Colin - your observations made me sit and think, neither of which are my strong points.  The 'essence' - yes, that is what I am after, the essence of a location or a geographic area.

I will get back to the month of ruminations in a minute but part of my thinking has been given to the girth of my layout.  I am very fortunate, Dubbo is not a stretched-out location.  Most of the yard is crammed into 760 metres between the eastern (Fitzroy Street) and western (Darling Street) level crossings.  And I do have plenty of space, as Colin noted.  It means that longitudinally, I only have to compress about 10% to get everything in.

But what about width? Dubbo's railway precinct is also bounded by Talbragar Street on the southern (town) side and Erskine Street on the northern side.  I had paid almost no attention to the width of Dubbo - it was just what I could fit in on an 800mm wide board.

The 'width' of the real Dubbo yard is about 270 metres, but I had limited myself to 125 metres stretching from the dock sidings in the south, to the second or third up siding in the north.  It turns out, that what I am trying to model requires about a 1400mm wide board, and I am giving myself about 60% of that width.  

The compression issue is more acute once you factor in the things that can't be compressed, like station platforms, loco shed, water tanks and coal stages.  Sure, you can nip a few millimetres of each but so many of the NSWGR's pieces of infrastructure were just plain squat and sturdy. 

So that is why 'essence' is back on the table.  

For me, the essence of Dubbo is hearing wheezy, clapped out 30Ts roughly shunt four-wheelers into each other, and the smells of oil, steam and BSVs drying out in the sun.  This latter smell will last with me until death. Hope the others do too.

But I am modelling sight, not sound or smell.  Although DCC Smell might be an innovation which should be pursued.  So, for sight, this is why I haven't been blogging much this past month. 

I have spent many hours scrolling through all the family photos of Dubbo, plus others I have collected along the way.  Thanks to several Facebook groups, and generous participants in those groups, a simple word search of 'Dubbo' uncovers the most amazing treasury of photographs.  Mid-way through this I was lucky enough to 'win' an eBay auction held by an esteemed reader of this blog.  My 'prize' was a bound set of Roundhouse magazines from the early 1980s when the quality of writing and photography was well beyond what you should ever expect from a fanzine.  And the last article in the volume - Dubbo!!!!

I even started charting where most of the memorable steam-era photographs were taken.  It gave me a result not unlike a dogs breakfast. Don't try to read too closely - the green arrows going everywhere give the flavour.

The green arrows have helped me identify the bits of Dubbo that are important to me, which resulted in another scribbly diagram. It left me with what I call the Five Cones of Interest.  Of course, this should be of little interest to anyone other than me, but here you go for posterity.  The dark blue dots are where a person would be standing to view the 'cone'.

The Five Cones now means that I am much more interested in getting five key (for me) spots on the layout just right, not the whole thing.  Sure, I would like the whole thing to smell of Dubbo, but until someone 3D prints a 57 class boiler just so I can tip it on its end and point it skyward, it will be missing from this layout.

Anyway, the Five Cones has led me to better understand that the essence of a location can be found in just a few angles.  One of the important for me is Cone 3, standing on the eastern end of Dubbo platform, looking across to the loco shed.  Here's a snap of 3144T and 3203 being prepared for a tour on 10 April 1966, which apparently was a bright, sunny day.

All of a sudden the task  isn't as big as it once was.  To get something I might be happy with will involve:

* finishing off my loco shed to a crappy standard (good at that)

* dropping a commercially available water column and yard lights in at the right spots

* figuring out what the wagon on the ground is (is it a KKG?) and replicating

* knocking up a couple of very plain fibro huts.

And of course, I will be modelling this scene 10 minutes after the locos have been put back into the shed for the night, so I don't have to clean any loco wheels.

So, for me, until scratch and sniff sheep wagons come onto the market, the essence of Dubbo will be my Five Cones.

Now, who reckons that is a KKG on the ground?  Maybe it was the culprit for all those smells over 50 years ago?

And very finally, on behalf of the many more readers that the Essence blog has, Colin, we are all eagerly waiting for Moblayne to rise!

How I got to the end of the line...

I had been intending to update this blog last Christmas, then in the New Year, and now we are on our way to Easter. Anyway, happy new year!!!!

For once I can explain that lack of blogging progress has been largely due to real progress in track laying, relaying and general model railway work.  And about time, say readers and critics.  

I think I left this blog last October after the first train had rolled from Coalbaggie Creek (Eumungerie) down the hill into a nascent Macquarie (Dubbo).  Coalbaggie Creek is only aan interim station on the branch -- there needs to be an end! So the fettlers have worked hard over the Christmas break, such that the terminus of the branch line has now been reached and laid out. 

The scene in the following photograph is a testament to this Yuletide industry... the right of the photo as viewed shows Macquarie rising from the swamp that the real Dubbo was built upon, the far wall carries a slimmed down mirror-image of Troy Junction, the long run on the left (where the silo is located) is Coalbaggie Creek which then leads to a 180 degree curve to bring the branch line into the centre of the photo, where the terminus lies.  And the terminus is the subject of this post.

It is great modelling something like Eumungerie, a place of many firm and infirm railway memories for me.  My problem with my childhood railway memories is that I don't ever remember visiting anywhere further along the branch line. In fact, I don't think I got to Coonamble until the mid-1990s and the State Rail wrecking ball had beaten me there, well and truly.  The wrecking ball makes things easier to model, but less atmospheric than what they probably were in 1968.  And 1968 is where my modelling head is.

It gets even worse.  There aren't many photos around of Gilgandra, Gular and Coonamble in the heady mid-1960s and those that are, from my opinion, aren't deeply inspiring.  Coonamble looks thin, washed out, stretched-out, laid on dirt and near barbaric.  It was, or at least the facilities were.  Gilgandra is more interesting, with a triangle to turn locos, but it isn't a terminus.  Neither Coonamble or Gilgandra have atmosphere suggesting a quirky, interesting, healthy rail system. Apologies to those with a better view of these locations - my mind is not closed to revising my bleak assessment upwards.

Until late last year this lack of atmosphere was a bit depressing, but I hadn't thought too much about it.  I had even dreamed up a compromise - a little bit of Gilgandra (with McLeods Flour Mill, mainly) and a little more Coonamble (a primitive loco depot, barracks, a fuel siding). It was to be call Gilgamble. Yeh, nah.

And then came the announcement that Coolah's railway was to celebrate its century in 2021.  I ignored the obvious - how can you celebrate a century of railway when at least 25 of those years involved nothing running on the line?  And my usual generous source forwarded the sorts of papers one needs to start thinking about just how interesting Coolah was/is.

Coolah has some emotional attachment - my great grandfather was the station master there for a few years after leaving Eumungerie.  And Coolah, like Coonamble and Warren and a few other places, was never meant to be the final 'end of the line', although that was the way things turned out.  Coolah was worth another look.  And in taking that look I could only see cute stuff - it is compressed, there is a skyline, it is four tracks wide, has a compact loco depot and is close to town (so a public house would not look out of place), noice concrete pre-fab buildings.

So out of all of this, Pilliga has been (re)born.  I say reborn as I have previously modelled a very small, fictional branch line terminus by that name, and I have a perfectly good station sign board kicking around in one box or another.  

This Pilliga owes more to Coolah for its creation than Coonamble.  But it will have something similar to Gilgandra's flour mill and pub, Coonamble's loco depot, fuel siding and pub, and Coolah's four-track yard with a low timber platform opposing the station platform (and pub).  And the freedom of a fictional terminus removes the need for a difficult rebuilding of a Rail Central station building into an Ac4 version. Then I can have a Railway Institute building, a local sawmill, a street to include all of those little shops I seemed to collect from West Ryde, and it goes on.  Even a park with a shay plinthed on it (maybe). And another pub. 

And of course near to none of this exists at the moment - it is all plywood central. So lets not look too closely at this photo, which shows how little exists.  But at least it exists.

Over the course of 2021 I hope to add to Pilliga, blog-post-by-blog post.  There may be breaking news about my soldering skills, given my new fangled fangler.  And news about the Country Killing Works at Troy Junction, and pubs being built in Macquarie/Dubbo.  In fact, I may even entertain you readers with how I have laid and relaid about 75% of Macquarie's yard, up to four times already.  It is an amazing, iterative process, tracklaying, my style.

Onto Easter!

Great works: large and small

With the 2020/21 NSW grain crop forecast at 14.8 million tonnes, including 10.8 million tonnes of wheat, there is action on the Coonamble branchline for the first time in approximately two years. 

The NSW Train Tracker Facebook page has carried reports of 8236, 48138 and 48162 working 8830 to Coonamble from Parkes on 1 October for loading. The previous mention had been on 7 July with 8049 on 8M47 railset working to Armatree. (Thank you Mr Lloyd for  both reports). So, it seems the rust will be knocked off these rails once more.

There has been a similar amount of activity on the scaled-down version of the branchline that lives in my shed.

A mid-week track possession, coinciding with the contracted electrical engineer turning up and not just eating the produce of the district, saw lots of activity in the Troy Junction to Talbragar section of the line.  Followers of the HO version will recall that trains were running at Eumungerie in August, but the lack of a bridge over the Talbragar River meant that they were not able to get back to civilisation.  This was remedied this week with the on-site erection of a Peter Boorman Workshops Howe truss rail bridge, of the fashion which graced the real railway from its opening until 1981 or so. The approaches and the trestles are from Walker Models.

I had been hoping to get at least a single Howe truss span in the space but a snappy design decision allowed me to squeeze in a second span.  Will go into that in a later post. Installation has been worrying me sick, but I finally got stuck in with the foam packing from 157 Ikea packages. There was a bit of cursing but it all turned out OK, for a novice. The result is below - 3108T, of the Wombat variety, coasts across the bridge under a 10 mph speed restriction.

There is plenty of detailing work still to come on the bridge, but before that can occur it was necesary to convince the travelling public of the safety of the bridge.  So, earlier that day the real test had been undertaken with flying colours. 

Many readers will be aware that the Sydney Harbour Bridge was stacked with sotred standard goods locos prior to opening in the 1930s, while the Hawkesbury river bridge was load tested with near-new 38 class locos in the the 1940s. The two following photos from NSW State Records records these events.

With these precedents in mind, 3065T towed four stored Wombat 30Ts onto the bridge and it didn't sink!

While all these shenanigans were going on, the electrical branch was hard at work (or cursing like they were hard at work). The result was impressive, power feeds, droppers, cable saddles nailed upside down, it went on. Around 3pm yesterday we had the first through train from Dubbo to Eumungerie. And it ran without fault! 

We are now running trains and not just shunting the yard, just in time for the harvest season.

Cheers

Don

Trains seen running

Yes, it is no big deal in the world's scheme of things but with a big thanks to some imported labour, trains are now moving along parts of the Coonamble line once more. 

A concentrated day and a half, interspersed with 58 tea-breaks, has produced something resembling a 'train room'. This panorama snap shows what will be Dubbo to the right, Eumungerie along the left wall and the photographer is standing (in the 4 foot) somewhere near Curban.  The saw table is about where the terminus, based on Coonamble, will be.

There is a lot of track laying still to happen, but contractors have managed to lay pioneer standard lines through the Eumungerie yard. Here is a short clip of what is believed to be 3065T with a HG on a speed trial through the platform road. 

[** Edit: apologies if this video doesn't load - the one mouse left working for Blogger.com is on a work-to-rule] Anyway, shortly after this video was taken, a permanent speed limit of 15 scale miles per hour was applied to this section of track owing to its condition.

An even bigger surprise arrived later today in the form of an 82 class light engine.

After local crews threatened to drive it off the end board at speed, it/they were sent back to Metro.

Disturbed by the lack of ballast, amenities and even a backdrop, crews have banned further operations until management authorises further capital expenditure to redress these shortcomings.

Your scribe will report further progress, if it occurs.

Don.

Getting down to the 1 in 87

My last few posts have concentrated on stuff which is scaled 12 inches to the foot, but this one will head into the realm of HO scale modelling.  I am still a few weeks away from getting the final go ahead to use my new shed for its intended purpose, but this has given me time to get in a complete frizz about what to build.  And to work myself partway out.

When I got the keys in May, two things struck me - how big it was, and how small it was.  It was bigger than I had in my mind, which made me think I should probably do more with it than fill it up with model trains.  Then I realised how small it was when I started thinking about clearances and how things would go with cars and trailers and the rubbish a family accumulates.

As I have crawled around on my knees, blocking up little spider/snake holes and the like, I came to one of two basic types of plans.  The first is more 'authentic' to the layout of Dubbo, Eumungerie and the like, but limits scope for operating the layout other than out to the Coonamble branch.  

The alternative plan eats up a fair bit more car space, so it will just have to go outside (as if it wasn't anyway). This alternative involves a mirror reverse of Troy Junction, so the locals will be scratching their heads.  But it also means I can run more prototypical trains west of Dubbo to Bourke and Parkes (via Narromine), as well as east to Werris Creek.  In fact, trains will head off to Werris Creek and return via Narromine to Dubbo (how magical is that?).  

Plan B also gives me the option of a long loop which, if I can power it adequately, will end up being the thing I use more than ever as descend into being a lazy old coot.

So, Plan B it is. I dug out a copy of the 1962 Western Division Working Timetable. I was a bit gobsmacked by how much traffic went through Dubbo in those days. Six days a week it was between 32 and 37 mandatory trains.  Then of course there was all the grain, stock extras, shunting trips to Troy Junction and banking east of town.  That sealed it for me - Plan B it has to be.  How else am I going to justify owning all this stuff if all I do is run the Sunday timetable (8 trains)?

So, the surveyors are in.  First board is up and I am competing with constructors on the east coast who are very much better baseboard builders than this little old broken down public servant.  here is the first board for posterity!

There has been some off-site progress too.  It remains unpainted and unweathered and yet to sink into the Talbragar River, but my rendition/interpretation of the infamous Talbragar Bridge is ready for all of these things, plus rails. Next time it is photographed hopefully it will look a bit more like its inspiration.

 And finally, I bit the bullet on Dubbo's coal tower.  I have bought and built the kit version (of Orange - don't look too close). Dubbo's version was a bit taller, with a timber collar around the top of the bin.  I have also cheated with the stairs. They are ring-in plastic stairs which probably don't look as authentic as the stairs in the kit, but I don't have the skill, time or patience to construct according to the maker's instructions.  It too still requires a final coat of paint, dull-coating, some lights and a few other things, but I am happy with the result. So happy, this afternoon I evicted the little spiders who had taken up residence in the tower between coats of paint.

So that is about where things stand.  Now the mornings aren't averaging minus four and the torrents have subsided, I might even get out the shed!

Cheers,

Don

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Demise of Eumungerie's station part 27...

Been doing a little bit of sleuthing, and of course the answer was under my nose all the time... well, in the attic anyway.

I think I have already mentioned on this blog that the whole world got a bit sadder on Monday, 22 September 1975, when passenger rail services were withdrawn from the Coonamble line.

Following that old saying, the trial separation worked and ended up in a divorce case, nine months after the cessation of rail services occurred the station at Eumungerie was formally closed. Along with 23 other similar stations across the state, the doors were closed on Monday, 24 June 1976.

What I was really after in my hunt was the disappearance of the main station building.  I had a clue, as the NSW Railway Digest recorded that on 24 May 1978 tenders closed for the purchase, demolition and removal of the station building (excluding the station manager's office, staff hut and lamp room) and the shortening of the platform to 16 metres at Eumungerie.

I will stop the story right here to explain that the 'station manager's office, staff hut and lamp room' was not some three-roomed, grand edifice. It was the 18 x 12 southern platform building, described in various publications since as a small windowless room.  This is incorrect too - there were two windows in the rear of the building where the station manager, staff polisher and lamp cleaner all took in the morning sun.  Actually, that is all made up, except for the window bit.  Here is a photo from 1980. Mighty fine windows.

Anyway, I knew the tender date but not the actual demolition date.  Then I rediscovered a pile of papers I had purchased from the ARHS Bookshop some time ago.  In it was an annotated diagram of the standard post-1926 Eumungerie layout.

Well dang me! Mr Observant had failed to read the scribble, which is blown up in the next photo.

Yep, it says 'Building demolished, Length platform reduced 12-7-78...'.  I have my answer. I can also now pin a trip I did to Eumungerie to a couple of days after 12 July 1978, as I picked through the still warm ashes and rubble of the building.  Missed it by that much!

Not sure what I would have done if I had been there on the day that the building was pushed over and torched.  As a hot headed 15 year old I would like to think I would have thrown myself in front of the dozer, but I doubt it.  Dozers are big.

It does clear up one thing though.  I had been troubled by a (false) memory that wheat trains were operating through Eumungerie without guards vans prior to the demolition of the station.  Don't know how I came up with it. Guards vans got the ' demolition and removal' order about seven years later. Sleuthing over and mystery resolved, file 154123 says so.

Cheers,

Don