Milestone Met: First Operating Session.

Branchline goods trains 695 departs Narrabri for Wee Waa behind a 47 class. Just peeking into view in the background is the Narrabri shunter with a 49 Class EMD.


Well, that's done.

After 18 months of construction, I had the "Pie Night" guys over for a little operating session. It went about as good as could be expected, I guess, considering I'd immediately lost 30% of my "throttle capacity" due to some sort of issue with the radio throttles. This cascaded into tossing my "schedule" out the window, as I was unable to run the trains I'd planned in the sequence desired.

Our group of Norm Bruce, Frank Treadaway, Donovan Furin, Lance Lassen and Randy Nelson showed up anxious to take a throttle and run. Lance brought a throttle, to add to my three, as well as two NSWGR locomotives (allowing me to avoid the ignominity of using some Union Pacific Atlas locomotives to fill out the roster, thank God!). But clearly those 18 months without operating a model railway left me less than familar with the intricacies of EasyDCC and radio throttles. It was easy to run three throttles at a time, but couldn't acquire locomotives when a fourth throttle was turned on.





Randy switches the branchline goods at WeeWaa. Check out that snazzy new Holden--just arrived today from Casula!

Frank assured me that all my worries would vanish if I just opened up my wallet for a couple hundred dollars of software upgrades from CVP. I was hoping he wasn't going to say that! I'm hoping just re-reading the set-up documentation will help alleviate a recurrence. . .

Aside from the radio throttle problems and subsequent schedule snafus, the session went fairly well. Track was clean. No mysterious shorts appeared. The points did their things without derailing equipment. . .even the little S trucks stayed on the rails. These are all encouraging signs. I was honestly sweating the mechanical potential for disaster more than the electronic. Lance bailed me out by bringing along a nice Indian Red 49 Class and a "Red Terror" 44 Class, allowing me to avoid the ignominity of having to roster a pair of Atlas Union Pacific SD24's to fill the loco roster shortfall! And while we didn't have enough throttles to keep everyone running trains all the time, Lance's Aussie Railway Porn videos entertained those without trains to run--they seemed to enjoy, for example, watching the Ardglen Bankers almost as much as running the North-West mail.

I've got aways to go to feel comfortable with the layout. I'm still dealing with coming up with a good system for paperwork and dispatching the trains. And I've still got to more fully develop my roll during these session as Station Master/Controller/Benevolent Dictator.

But, it's a good start. And none of this would be possible, of course, without my fellow Pie Nighters, as well as model railway friends foreign and domestic who've helped me reach this point. I'm excited about what lies ahead.

While Lance and Norm grind away in Narrabri West, Frank, Randy and Donovan enjoy some Aussie Railway Porn Videos. . .

Thanks, Joe!

Only a few hours before my mates stopped by to run trains, a nice-sized box of stuff arrived overseas from Joe Callipari at Casula Hobbies. Joe really helped me out last April by putting together a sizeable order for me to be ready when I popped in his shop to pick up almost more stuff than I could fit into my suitcase. His assistance and service, and good-nature in fielding my inquiries, were much appreciated, and I certainly didn't hesitate last week to turn to Joe and Casula for fill another order. Once again--first rate. And the Casula website has a lot to do with why I turned to Casula in the first place: among the Australian model railroad shops I'm familiar with, the Casula website is the most complete and easiest to use. And that really helps from 10,000 miles away.

Railroading Back in the Day

My work e-mail filter apparently blocked a message from Ray Pilgrim the other day alerting me to a couple of amazing You Tube videos, from around 1974, showing "how it was done" shunting the goods sheds at Darling Harbour--back before it was condos and museums and other tourist attractions.

The movies are here and here.

This really is a wonderful film, not just for the enthusiast of New South Wales railroading, but for fans of railroading in general. Watching the group of 20-something shunters work as a team to bang cars around really reminded me of my own experiences watching railroaders work 30 years ago. That was back when railroading was a "craft" and one didn't come to work carrying a 20 lb. book of rules.

Most appropriate was this quote from one of the shunters, words that ring as true today as they did in 1974: It's okay, the railway will let you break every rule in the book, as long as you get the trains out on time--they'll let you break any bloody rule you want, until something goes wrong, then they'll hit you with the rules!

Thanks, Ray, for passing these links along. Thanks also to the film crew who deemed the daily routine of a shunting crew to be of sufficent interest to record this slice of life for all time. And thanks to the shunters, themselves--looking at their work from a 2010 perspective, it's amazing how loose and wild the work rules were (let along those long Barry Gibb-like hairdos!). No steel-shanked boots? No high visibility vests? No safety visors? No shirts? Oh, I guess thanks also to the railway for allowing the cameras on the property in the first place.

An exercise in daydreaming. . . .

Step off the train, walk up the hill to the pub for a cold one. . .and home is just another block away. . .

Occasionally--more now, I'll admit, than I used to--I'll get in a fit of day-dreaming, wondering "what if?"

What if I won the lottery? Inherited a few million from a long-lost relative? Or I was retired, and had the means to move where I wanted to?

Why not, indeed?

I got to thinking about that little country village of Tarana, in the Central West of New South Wales, maybe three hours west of Sydney in the lush, green rolling hills not too far from Lithgow. To me, it's a place that inspires day-dreaming.



The old country church in Tarana, just a couple blocks from the railway station (real-estate agent photo)

And just maybe. . .does it have to be a daydream? I see a real-estate agent has posted a listing for an old church in Tarana, converted into a country home. For around $500,000, I could make this little dream a reality.



In perfect harmony with its surroundings: Tarana station. . .

How great would that be, to leave all this hustle and bustle here in the states behind? The crazy divisiveness of our political philosophies? The crime and uncertainty and all that other bullshit. Just sell off all our stuff and start off for a new life!

There are worse places to be than Tarana. As long as I could get a good internet connection, I'm sure I'd find a way to make a living there. The landscape is breath-taking, reminiscent of the rolling, oak-studded hills of the Tehachapi Mountains in California. It's far from a busy highway, the narrow two-lane bitumen roads weaving and bobbing across a green lanscape given largely to sheep.

And there's the railway, still a presence in town with its preserved dual-road railway station, footbridge and watertank. The duplicated main track has been reduced to one mainline, and traffic is just a fraction of what it was two decades ago, but the XPT to and from Sydney calls on Tarana daily (eastbound in the afternoon, westbound in the morning), so there's your connection to the greater world. There's shopping in Lithgow nearby, and of course, the legendary horseshoe curves and gunzeling opportunities galore just up the hill in Sodwalls.



Apart from a retired up mainline, Tarana hasn't changed much; the 44 Class on the RTM special might as well be leading the old Central West Express. . .


Why not? indeed. I stood on the footbridge last April as the RTM special blew Alco exhaust in my face, and looked around, and thought, I'm in heaven. I wonder if the rest of the blokes who live here know how good it is?

Retirement is a bit more than 15 years away. . . wonder if that old church will still be on the market?

Off the main roads, a wandering two-lane (if you're lucky) bitumen. . .

Reaching Mancave status. . .

Here's the layout room (click on photo for full-sized view). Plop down for a little telly, or grab a throttle and work the "Yo-yo shunter" at Narrabri West. . .

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Excuse the poor photoshop job here, folks, but I wanted to at least share a panorama of the layout space before I drop off to sleep. It's been a good weekend of work on the layout--I finished the trackwork in Wee Waa and wired that up, tuned up a couple of stubborn points and point mechanisms, cleaned up the workbench and layout room (both really needed it!) and started to put together some train consists for next week's operating session.

So, here's the layout as it exists tonight--no scenery yet, but rolling stock and trackwork and lights and backboards and for the rest of the family, a couch and flatscreen. And, hope you catch that Australian flag. Not sure what'll be on the telly the night we operate. . .a fast clock or Kath and Kim?

All for now. Gotta work in the morning. Rules test, which is a bit of a crock to have it last all day since all but the last hour of it is review and the damned thing's "open book" anyway! Maybe tomorrow I'll get around to vacuuming the dust and accumulated little bits of debris off the layout, and put some quick and temporary wiring on the lower level trackage so we can use that as well.

Not for Lack of Trying. . .

Most of the track is in at WeeWaa; that's a "stand in" Walthers metal building where the goods shed will eventually be placed; to the rear, the location of the S008 silos. In the foreground, the platform is marked out along with the narrow A4 station area.

Bloody'ell! It's been 2 1/2 months since I've posted on this blog. And despite appearances, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, given up modeling, or joined a Monastery. I figured come Thanksgiving holiday, I'd shut down work on the layout til after the first of the year, and that's exactly what happened.

Before Christmas, I did manage to move a couch upstairs and install a 46" flat screen telly on the empty wall in the layout room. And to christen that, I had a dozen friends over to watch train photos. . .we had the usual Kodak Carousel projector for those "old school" photogs whose piccies are actual pieces of film, but it was the first time I'd hosted a photo night where digital images were the majority. And, they look GREAT on the new television--er, monitor. Whatever you want to call it.

Now that the calendar has turned, I'm back after it on the construction end, motivated somewhat by an announced "first" running night later this month. Gulp. Besides the work on the layout that's needed to get it operable for a group of friends, I've got the paperwork and car movement stuff to worry about as well.

So far, the attention to the layout has shifted to the guest/computer room and the WeeWaa portion of the layout. The length of the benchwork is only a little longer than 8' and around 15" in depth; while not exactly huge, it does provide a little space for a running track with loop and a siding for a goods shed/load bank and grain silo. There's a space for a stub siding in front (the remnants of the lead to a branchline loco depot?), which will not be used for livestock loading and a place for the rail motor to lay over between runs to Narrabri. I'm guessing the "branchline train" will be one of the most popular operating positions on running nights.

I got most of the trackwork in this weekend, with point controllers installed and the electricals soldered in. I've got a set of crossovers yet to build and the points for the ex-loco siding, but these will wait til I get PC board ties to complete the job.

Structures and the beginnings of scenic treatments are next on the agenda; I've decided permanent scratchbuilt styrene structures will have to wait for a bit, so i've ordered a few of the LJ models cardstock kits in the meantime. Pretty soon, Post willing, I'll be assembling a couple of the S008 silo kits as well as an A4 skillion station and G3 goods shed for WeeWaa. Platform faces and bumper stops are also ordered.

For now, I'd like to get WeeWaa somewhat complete before going much further on the lower level, where benchwork and backdrop are in place but roadbed and trackwork only temporarily set down. The benefits, right now, are quicker to realize for better operating sessions by having the branchline terminal in place to hold the interest of a crew shunting the little town.


Thanks Shane. . .

A shoutout to the Argyle Eagle, Shane Murphy, for once again opening his layout to several of us to come and operate. Shane's one of the easiest-going cats you'd ever want to meet; he's also got a bit of a screw loose, not that it's a bad thing, and doesn't take the hobby too seriously. An operating session at his layout, which is something like 15 X 90" and double decked, is bound to, at somepoint, feature a freight train with a flatcar hauling King Kong around. Quirky, yep, but it certainly keeps things lively.

While he models mainly the Missouri Pacific/T&P and Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroads, he's not so anal retentive to not allow us visitors the chance to bring our own equipment. . .so for the past couple of years, running at Shane's often has an Aussie flavor courtesy yours truly and Lance Lassen. Two nights ago, we descended on Shane's with more Australian equipment. Lance brought 12 Auscision NSW grain hoppers and new Auscision A and B class bulldogs (in Freight Australia, Southern Short Haul, and CFCLA liveries) and I assembled a 26 car train of RU and BWH's behind a 49 Class and a 442 Jumbo. When I get a video file from a friend of the cross between these two trains, I'll post 'em up. One thing others noticed about the Australian equipment: it usually ran much smoother than the American equipment on the layout. Y'all should be proud!

Test Spin

After fifteen months of on-again, off-again construction, the North-West railroad is an operating reality. I had Lance over to give the railroad a little "test run"--at least the upper level where trackwork is completed. I staged a number of trains, and while I didn't adhere to any sort of timetable operation, I did roughly try to approximate the sequencing of trains through Narrabri consistent with what was running in the late 1970s.

We operated a good assortment of trains, in sequential order:

• Down-bound pick-up goods train which started the session by setting out at Narrabri and descending to the lower level for staging;
• Narrabri shunter, which spotted and pulled wagons at Narrabri West and Narrabri's goods sidings, grain silos, and assembled the branch-line goods train for later departure (kept Lance busy most of the time);
• Down-bound North-West Mail #7, setting out a parcel van at Narrabri (spotted at the Goods Siding by the shunter engine);
• Up-bound Northern Tablelands Express #22 (with 620/720 set standing in for DEB set);
• Extra-grain move off branch from Wee Waa, for the sub-terminal at Narrabri;
• Grain train from Moree up-bound for port at Newcastle;
• Grain train pulled from the sub-terminal at Narrabri, bound for the port at Newcastle;
• Down-bound empty grain from Newcastle, bound for reloading at Narrabri sub-terminal;
• Branchline goods train departing for Wee Waa;
• Down-bound Northern Tablelands Express #21;
• Up-bound North-West Mail #8, picking up parcel van at Narrabri;
• Up-bound Moree-Werris Creek pick-up goods, picking up southbound traffic at Narrabri West.

That's a good number of trains to run in two or three hours. Trains operated between upper-level staging and a passing loop/trailing mainline on the lower level, and a stub-end single track as the branch to Wee Waa. Lance operated the shunting engine, and declared it a good job to operate. All of this was done quite informally, with no paperwork, etc. It was just a way to start to shake out the bugs on the railroad. . .and there were a few:

• I had to rush to get the railroad set up to run, so I hadn't cleaned all the track as well as I should have;
• A couple of points gave the two-axle wagons fits; I'll have to go back and re-check these on the standards gauge;
• One of the 47 class was a bit touchy through some of the trackage, likely a tight-gauge problem on a wheel-set;
• I'll need to make adjustments on a couple of the blue-tooth switch-point controllers, as they were a bit "loose" in fully throwing the points over.

On the whole, it wasn't a bad first session. It gave me an extra kick of motivation to get projects and items I'd been procrastinating on doing finished, and validated (to me at least) that this will be an interesting layout to operate. And that wasn't even with the additonal operating potential of the lower level (a pair of crossing loops, grain silos, goods sidings, etc.) figured into the equation.

I don't know when the first "official" running night will be--with paperwork and all that good stuff to guide the operators in their endeavours--but it shouldn't be too far down the road now.

Freudian Railroad Hobby Cover of the Month. . . .

Sometimes, to paraphrase the great Austrian psychologist, a locomotive is just a locomotive. . . .

Bull Frog point controller and installation notes

A typical installation of a Bull Frog point controller, from Fast Tracks. It's an all-wood structure, laser-cut and glued together (or, you and purchase them pre-assembled). I've cut away a portion of the fulcrum to allow a nylon R/C aircraft clevis to attack the throw-rod to the mechanism. . .

I've just finished installing nearly 40 switch point under-baseboard controllers on the upper level of the Narrabri layout. The majority of the controllers are the New Rail Models Blue Point controllers reviewed in a previous posting. Six are Fast Tracks' offering, the Bull Frog.

I decided to go with the Blue Point units for a couple of reasons:

• Cost: Though Fast Tracks offers the Bull Frog in kit form for $6.00 unassembled, the prospect of assembling more than 50 of these (at a minimum 15 minutes each) made the assembled version more attractive. But the assembled units are $9.00. And the only place you can get these is through Fast Tracks, so no discount there. I found Charleston Digital Trains offering 10 packs of Blue Points for $79.95--20% off list. Their service was first-rate, and delivery was quick--just a couple of days with priority US mail.
• Availability: While I can save a good amount ordering mail order on the Blue Points, a local hobby shop stocks them at 10% off--so if for some reason I need a couple in a hurry, the option is there. That isn't the case with the Bull Frog.
• Length of mechanism throw: Though the controllers only have to move the throw rod on the points five millimeters or so, the length of throw out the front of the layout differs significantly. A "full stroke" of the fascia rod on the Blue Point travels only 5mm. A "full stroke" of the Bull Frog travels 26mm, a big difference when you're considering how far an extended fascia knob will stick out from the layout edge (and, Murphy's law being what it is, snag clothing, etc.). To be fair, it doesn't take the full stroke, though, to move the points a sufficent amount to change a route with the Bull Frog--8mm will do it.

Biggest difference to layout users between the Blue Points and the Bull Frogs is the disparate length of the throwing range. On the left, the Blue Point rod at full extension; on the right, the Bull Frog fully pulled out.


With knobs in place, there's little difference between the two with the mechanisms in the "full forward" position. . .


. .but there's quite a difference when the mechanisms are pulled outward. I'm guessing the Bull Frog knob will be inadvertantly snagged a few times each operating session!

Dimensionally, the Bull Frogs are smaller in height (49.5mm vs. 60mm for the Blue Point), a consideration if you're building a multi-deck layout where a thin profile upper deck is important. Distance from bottom of the baseboard to the center-line of the actuating rod from the fascia of the layout is 43.9mm for the Bull Frog and only 20mm for the Blue Frog--a chief factor in the length of the throw of the unit. The big throwing range results in crazy torque--if your turnout isn't secured to the layout, the Bull Frog will try to move it out of the way!

The big throwing range also makes installation easier than the Blue Point. By comparison, the Blue Point's throwing range is much narrower, so one needs to be much fussier lining up the unit just so when installing it to the underside of the layout baseboard.

I do like the "feel" of the Bull Frog as it throws--it doesn't "snap" over like the Blue Point, as the throwing function is a spring-mounted ball-bearing rolling along a tapered groove to a larger laser-cut detent at each end of the throwing range. The Blue Point uses an off-the-shelf mini electrical switch set inside a plastic casting.

While the Bull Frog is a nice unit, the lower price and shorter throw at the fascia front made the Blue Point the preferred mechanism for my layout.


A typical Blue Point mechanism installed under the layout. It can get busy in there with bus wires and throw-rods!


Additional support to the tube-in-tube is given on long (over 9") runs by simply hot-gluing a short section of L-shaped wood molding in place.

A few notes on installation:

• Tube vs. Rod: Most of the controllers are actuated using tube-in-tube tubing, made for R/C aircraft. It can easily snake around obstacles and allow you to position the throw rod anywhere on the layout front. While a solid, threaded rod is easier to install, the tube-in-tube offers much greater flexibility. Another plus is the physical flexibility of the nylon tube itself: snag it with your belly or a sleeve, and it won't bend out of shape, as is a concern with a metal rod.
• Under-layout support: I've found that tube-in-tube can run around 8" before you want some sort of support between the mechanism and the front of the layout. New Rail will be glad to sell you a stamped metal bracket to hold the mechanism and the tube-in-tube for $7.50 for three. . .I just chopped a 2" long piece of L-shaped wood molding, drilled a hole in it, and hot-glued it to the underside of the layout. Ain't pretty--but it's cheap!
• Pricing the Parts: Buying the mechanism is just the start, of course, of what you'll need to make the installation. You need the clevis to hold the rod or tube to the mechanism, the rod or tube itself, and a knob for the front of the layout. All these parts can be sourced cheaper through your local R/C aircraft store--for instance, I purchased 2-48" tube-in-tube plus hardware to attach it to the mechanism for $6, quite a savings from what New Rail or Fast Tracks is offering.

So, the trackwork on the upper level is just about done. All powered up, point controllers in place, and just about ready to host the first "shake down" operating session, hopefully before the end of the month. It's exciting getting to the point to actually invite friends over to operate trains! Of course, before that happens, there's some tuneup of trackwork, a little troubleshooting here and there, preparing the "operating aids" for the layout (track diagrams, station names on fascia fronts, etc.). There's still lots to do, but getting the point controls checked off the list really moved this project ahead!