3 lessons for your blogger

School has finally gone back here and it has been a fair while since I have bamboozled everyone with prose and charts so lets get into it...

I mentioned a while ago that I had started Fleabaying the locos I was even less likely to use, now that I had a layout emerging from plywood which centred on Dubbo in the 1960s.  I should acknowledge here that I think so much of the 1960s that I started them in 1958 and end them in 1975.

Over Christmas I took a hard look what is in my 'loco cupboard'. A quick count showed that only 38% of the locos in the cupboard ran regularly through Dubbo during my selected time period.  Of course, I intend keeping a range of locos from outside this period and location because (a) I like them (b) they were gifts or (c) I bought them because I got a new job (the first pay cheque usually went to a loco and a bottle of wine, to help with depression I get when starting new jobs).

My problem was not with steam locos - 83% of my steamers ran to/through Dubbo. But only 34% of my diesels fit the period. And only 44% of my rail motors or railcars called Dubbo home during this modelling period.

Things are better, in relative terms for non-powered rolling stock.  About 59% of my carriage fleet and 72% of my wagons fit the period.

This reflection led to a rather expensive list of 'needs' - items which others might rationally call 'wants' but in my case, are 'needs' because they are nearly essential to life for me.  The obvious candidates are 32s, 50s and 53s, and lots of them.  Then lots more bogie rollingstock too, and airconditioned railcars.  All possible, but really expensive.  So, these needs are what really initiated the great Asset Recycling Program of 2022!

Twin problems emerged - what to invest in, and what to divest in order to have the funds to reinvest.  Here's how I went about it and three lessons I think I have learned.

Thanks to a Railways Quiz booklet from about 1960 I discovered that the NSW Department of Railways owned about 1,000 locos, 3,000 passenger carriages and 25,000 items of goods rollingstock.  

Applying this ratio, I need 25 goods wagons for every loco I own! So I looked at proportions instead. This next graph shows four columns, starting on the left with the 1960 NSW Railways fleet of locos, carriages and wagons. The middle two columns show the same proportions for my entire model collection and that part that is associated with Dubbo in the last dozen years of steam. The right hand column gives me a target of what could reflect realistic operations - I now have a reasonable idea of how much more 'stuff' I need to collect before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

So, first lesson learnt.  Focus less on the noisy end of trains. But before I do, the next two charts helped me focus on what needs to be on the shopping list. They both look at the proportion of locos classes 'out west'.  

I decided to count the loco depot allocations for Bathurst, Orange, Parkes, Dubbo and Nyngan, as these were the depots feeding the majority of Dubbo-bound trains. Cowra and Mudgee were excluded as they are too distant from Dubbo.  I excluded Werris Creek on the basis that I couldn't separate what trains it sent across the Cross-Country Line, but I suspect it only exacerbates the need for standard goods locos. 

These lists are not perfect reflections because they are point in time - western depots could double in size in a good wheat season.  Other locos snuck in regularly - 36s and 38s worked the mails but were not allocated to these five depots for most of the period.

Don't strain your eyes to get the details - the overarching lesson (No. 2) is to boost the number of 32 and 53 class locos on the roster. A Garratt currently on loan may not be returning to its owner too!

A slightly better outcome has been achieved for the diesel fleet, particularly for the latter half of the decade. I suspect a couple more 45 class locos may be in scope (Lesson No. 3).

Next step for me is to go digging for lists of carriage and wagon rolling stock, then perform a similar exercise.  If you don't unsubscribe now, you could be in for another installment!  

If nothing else, I hope this gives you a another way to look at your loco cupboard.

Cheers,
Don