North East Victoria Railway

[Melbournesparks]

As always I have been lurking but not posting! After I returned from the UK Alexander and I had a quiet run at home. Once again my terrible infrastructure limited speed limits but we had a good time anyway
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As always the Steam railcar began an intensive passenger service using the BBL as a trailer. The power and running time of this unit is a sight to behold and its always welcome at the NEVR to deputise for the dreaded DP railcar

The DP is actually a cool unit and probably the first of its type to be modeled in 1:24. This was the first time these two Tasmanian (or at least Tasmanian inspired in the case of the SP) railcars have met.

[invicta280]

I like these models. The DP is an interesting beast. Never seen these before. Is it based on a Tasmanian prototype?

[Lonsdaler]

Glad you made it home safe n sound. Your green Chilean HC looks as though it's been dropped at some point, looking at the bend in the running plate. I hope you can return it to running order

[Old Man Aaron]

Glad you made it home safe n sound. Your green Chilean HC looks as though it's been dropped at some point, looking at the bend in the running plate. I hope you can return it to running order

The footplate is made that way, to accommodate the inclined cylinders.


Great photos!

[FWLR]

Nice colours on them.

[Lonsdaler]

Glad you made it home safe n sound. Your green Chilean HC looks as though it's been dropped at some point, looking at the bend in the running plate. I hope you can return it to running order

The footplate is made that way, to accommodate the inclined cylinders.


Great photos!

Ah, understood. Never seen that before!

[Tropic Blunder]

Quite a big month just passed with Great Southern Steamup which meant that there was of course a flurry of activity to finish last minute projects!

It all started after last years choice to run a lashup of 3d printed Australian prototype carriages behind some large modern image diesels which were surprisingly well recieved. This left us of course scratching our heads about how to push the envelope even further for this year and the theme of "Live Electric" was born! Of course this isn't too much of a problem for Alexander (Melbournesparks) who uses 40v overhead at home but for me practically this meant I was going to be building some sort of trailer. The choice of prototype was a bit of a no brainer. Alexander has a roster of Melbourne trams and we had both built broad gauge rollingstock previously so it was a no brainer to build a set of Melbourne Surburban Electrics.

I'll leave the details of the Tait M car and the Swingdoor M and D cars to Alexander to explain in his own thread but my own contribution was the T car which was built to a running state in 4 very crammed nights (and it shows!) Alexander very kindly contributed massively to the build as well by mounting the bogies and couplers as I was rostered on the big stuff the day before GSSU

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The 4 car set in all its glory! The T car is still missing glazing and the bogies were being held together with wire as they got broken in transit. The T car is also working quite well hiding the 18V tool battery thats powering the M cars while they're away from the wires. If you look close enough you can see the crocodile clip sending power to the pantograph

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The Tait was later seen towing a mixed goods train of Queensland, Tasmanian and Western Australian wagons

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This was because I'd purchased this...

Of course having owned an array of various secondhand live steam locomotives that had all ended quite poorly I thought the easiest thing to do to avoid stress was to purchase a brand new locomotive, which I would then have to run while I continued faffing around with fixing my Aster shay, If only I'd known! As soon as it was lit the locomotive immediately had a blocked jet and after quite a lot of fiddling it was discovered that it simply wouldn't run without the smokebox door open or the fire would go out.

After some troubleshooting It was decided that there was a good chance that the factory had fitted the wrong size gas jet but thanks to the support and advice of David Fletcher it did manage to cut quite a few laps solo and with a few wagons hooked on.

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Bringing the wagons wasnt a complete waste of time as they ended up getting a good workout behind stalwart Cockatoo Creek Tramway Locomotive; Robin.It trundled around happily for over half an hour with them looking quite nice. Overall GSSU was a great experience and it was great to meet and briefly chat to so many inspirational builders. This will probably be my last GSSU for a while though as I find it quite stressful particularly running a manual loco. Predominantly building and modelling diesels and RC steam locos means that I don't really have that much in common with most people there!

There was a brief twilight run at a mates house where the suburban set continued to put in Stirling work and the Mabel even managed to run for another 60 minutes!

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Rounding the embankment. To me if you close your eyes juuuuuuuuust right it almost looks like its coming onto the approaches to Flinders street viaduct

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The Mabel Pulling the goods train.

I have to hand it to the team at Accucraft they've produced a beautiful model here. nice big boiler, gauge glass with drain, water top up valve, big gas tank and nice fine regulator. Support for 1:24 scale live steam models that are roughly Australian outline is non-existent so when I saw the preproduction model I was quite excited as it looks like it had quite a lot of potential this particular Mabel will become an NEVR Baldwin Surburban tank. Think Unitah Railway 0-6-2 but as a 2-6-2 and NA styling. Dimensions have been compared and a second one is being acquired to become a well loved Geelong narrow gauge saddle tank which will be a whole adventure on its own!

[Mitch stack]

Good time was had at GSSU, thanks for the loan of the wagons, robin ran like a charm, looking forward to getting my Mabel and running it with yours ! Great read, enjoyed it a lot.

[Old Man Aaron]

Lots of developments, that's for sure. Love the new rollingstock, and I'm glad to hear you've finally got a kettle that works.

[Tropic Blunder]

Must be just about time for the Bi-Yearly update so will put some words to the page

After years of neglect the upper end of the line past Marysville was officially abandoned and the track removed. some of the other infrastructure has so far remained in place but the majority has been removed. the original 1:20 gradient with its hairpin curves was a realistic solution to the steeply graded yard but also caused a lot of headaches with maintenance as the bridges and track settled. add in one or two vehicles rolling over the bridge and it was decided to just can the lot.

The new yard at Marysville was to become the terminus but the neighbours fence which is just over 5 years old has already rotted out at the post pulling the layout and the other fence the boards run through with it! So I'm forced to pull up the piece of track I've just finished to rebuild it, again!
this and some significant settling at Badger creek has meant that services are suspended permanently along the entire line apart from some minor shunting at Port Melbourne to test wagons.

So with that and other distractions (my On30 stuff has been taking up a lot of time)
The long suffering NEVR Climax has received a makeover. Originally bought to tide me over until I'd built more steam engines to replace it. its been one of the only continuous engines on the roster. Seeing as the other steam engines haven't materialised and I can't see any in the near future I thought it should get some work to bring it up to scratch

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My friend David Price (DavidP on this forum) is an accomplished On30 modeller and having successfully corrupted him to the dark side he's started bashing/converting lovely 3 foot models based on Australian logging prototypes. With the bar well and truly set I had to try and at least get the Climax to the point where it wouldn't be so embarrassing next to his lovely 3 truck shay.

It's still waiting on a Log load for the bunker but some light chalk weathering and blacking out the white lines has improved its looks already. A new chimney, body mounted couplers and a crew (Ill replace these with some Andian models ones) has improved it to no end.

The 3d printer farm has also been upgraded with the two Cocoon I3 copies replaced by a new Bambu P1S after being impressed by how well Melbournesparks's unit was performing
CC51 is the first wagon built in ABS and I have to say its a different world compared to my PLA stock.

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I've got two other CC's and some other wagons in PLA but as time permits ill be replacing them with new build ABS units as they just don't compete.

Another Stalwart of the old NEVR was a WAGR R wagon that I printed when I was still figuring my methods out which unfortunately ended up being quite fragile. I've always missed this wagon and after the great success of the CC on the new printer I thought I'd give the R wagon another shot

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[Tropic Blunder]

Cont'd

Cleaning up prints and models that were getting thrown out my long suffering QR A van finally got the chop, the body was underthickness when I printed it originally and I had just come to terms with the constant warping in the walls anytime it was outside. eventually it cracked the glue and disintegrated and was put in storage. The body was toast but the frame was still usable so its been donated to my dad who's now recycled it under a WAGR horsebox that was also a dud print (a lot of the bad prints that I throw away seem to magically reappear in his bits box!)
The bodys not right, the frames slightly wide and its very coarse but hes happy and thats what the hobby is about!

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The other long running thorn in my side is an older Aster shay. I purchased this as a "for repair" engine and after some good advice and lots of help from David Fletcher and Alexander (Melbouresparks who very kindly looked into why it wasn't running for me) its finally stripped right down ready for new seals and gaskets.

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The Accucraft Mabel is also still disassembled while I fit RC to it. Lesson learned on that one just spend the extra money and buy RC from factory!

[Mitch stack]

Glad to see progress on the shay front, look forward to having a shay Day Sometime Soon!!
Love your Climax, looks very australian with the stack youve made for it!

[Old Man Aaron]

Certainly keeping busy!

[Tropic Blunder]

Still pottering away. The dreaded GSSU/Selby steamup double combo is fast approaching and any rollingstock that I'll be taking needs to be getting further along. I've also been carrying out a wholesale replacement of previous PLA printed rollingstock as it just doesn't stand up to the standard of where I want it to be at.


ABS W class built using Leon Kernans thingiverse files. still needs lights, handrails, glazing and couplings but I'm in desperate need of a small diesel shunter as the DH is out of traffic! its got a Bachmann Industrial Mogul chassis under it temporarily but it'll eventually get a homebuilt chassis so I can put this under a future Beyer Peacock build.

New goods wagons to replace some of my PLA prints. The L wagon is a James Mcculloch Print off thingiverse scaled up. The two QR wagons are also off thingiverse and the SAR brake is my own Design


Freelance Cattle truck based on some NG South Australian designs but in timber. designed to fit on a QR 14' underframe for my Dad as a fathers day present. there are now 2 in the fleet


Leon K ZC scaled up to 1:24 and TGR AAR car. I have another and a BBL part built to finish by my deadlines!


And finally TGR M class using files by Leon Kernan Modified to have correct thickness parts and to be printable in 1:24. currently sitting on a big hauler chassis this one has will get a new printed chassis using the big hauler bits.




Finally I saw a youtube video on smoothing concrete which is what I need to figure out before I pour any more around the place. It suggested using Cubitron Disks to smooth it after the pour so I thought I'd try it out on the Port Melbourne platform. I just used a 80 grit flappy disk on a battery grinder with the garden hose trickling over it to keep the dust supressed and it worked a treat!

[ge_rik]

Really like the design of that cattle truck.

Rik

[BertieB]

The wagons look really good — and the ‘TGR M’ class is fantastic. Wow.

[Andrew]

Loving your work, as always - so full of character!

Thanks for the photos!

Andrew.

[Tropic Blunder]

Thanks everyone always nice to read especially given the high quality of all your models!

Just got back from a week touring South Australia and looking at the remaining narrow gauge relics. I got plenty of pictures and references for future models so looking forward to working through those once the current batch of passenger stock is complete (the NEVR has always seemed to suffer from a chronic shortage of passenger stock)

That said before I left for Pichi Richi the ZC (big EE diesel) took a plunge down the back stairs of the house when I was on my way to lay down some base coats. Now I've basically got to reassemble it again

[drewzero1]

That said before I left for Pichi Richi the ZC (big EE diesel) took a plunge down the back stairs of the house when I was on my way to lay down some base coats. Now I've basically got to reassemble it again

I'm sorry to hear my locos aren't the only ones that suffer from gravity-related injuries!

Your trip sounds fun though. Reference photos are always a treat!

[Tropic Blunder]

The railway is desperately in the throes of the Pre GSSU build streak that happens every year but am currently I am sitting in a hotel in South England unable to work on any projects and other then some of Grants incredible boat posts none of my Australian compatriots are posting and I have an itch that needs to be scratched
A month or two ago the ESET hosted some visitors (A pair of Victorian tramway modellers normally known for their ON30 efforts) and another from Tasmania who works on the famous rack railway with a long family history involved in preservation. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the interlopers other then a few shots of Davids Shay but hopefully Alexander can post some of his excellent shots from the two days

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The newly blacked out Climax crosses the ESET's gorgeous bridge on its way to grasslands. This area gets quite lush in winter compared to summer!

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Tolmie Timber companies 3 truck shay descends down the beginning of the escarpment. despite doubts about it being able to negotiate the tight reverse curves and limited loading gauge it actually performed superbly.

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The NEVR's trusty DE dragging a long train of Tasmanian and WAGR wagons towards the depot. The biscuit load seen in the first wagon is a regular load on the ESET. return trips can take over 20 minutes depending on traffic levels and food and drinks must be carried by the crew!