well, having had the chance to digest the contents of the 2 local magazines I buy, I can sit back and produce some digestive rumblings.
Railfan: A nice picture of a mock up of the New Wellington electric units. these do look cool. Theres a large collection of pictures of various preserved locos and railcars running on the otago cnetral. some excellent landscape stuff that does inspire one to attempt to model the area (which in some places looks like a moon scape). A great colour section on 88 seat railcars which has almost tempted me to get another one (rumours I've heard suggest this may be avalaible again sooner rather than later) apart from the fact I have no money (well, its already pre spoken for).
John Agnew continues what seems to be a comprehensive discussion on NZR passenger cars. I wasn't sure about this series to start with, but I can see now that its building into a fantastic modelers research tool. I can't wait to get to the more modern cars and I can start building some of them.
Finally theres a bit on bridge buildng which has tempted me to start thinking about craven 40 ton cranes with acompanying wagons. this would look cool sitting on a siding or as part of a special work train.
The Journal; Hmmm, what to say. I'm still not sure about the current content here. 9 pages are devoted to a bush tramway layout which is OK, but not mind shattering (I've seen it at a couple of exhibitions and it is a nice layout, but...). A plan or overview would have been nice. a plan page thingy for a ZAT and an archbar bogie. The various anoying moderlers group pages, which seem to be getting even more waffly (and could soon rival this blog). Theres a 2 page write up on Ian rice coming to the convention and a book review, but this could have been 1/2 a page without a stack of waffle again. theres aalso an article on another method of steam locomotive suspension which took me 3 readinsg to sort out. A diagram would have made everything so clear (and sending me to the original article from a now defunt magazine thats 20 years old is rather usless quite honestly).
The one thing that did get the creative juices flowing was graham Dredges article on building a shunting donkey with DCC operated kadee couplers. I just looked at it and thought, 'my that is an odd way of doing it' (being polite of course). I've done some bench tests today and think I can make a version that just uses magnets rather than a solenoid/spring direct drive. If I can find some small coils I should be able to fit it behind the headstock of a locomotive and do the same job on a modified microtrains coupler. More news of this as it comes to hand.
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8 comments:
Had a quick skim through the journal but not many articles of particular interest. I thought there was going to be an NZ120 booklet thingy with the latest journal ?
if you do a search on trademe for "rare earth magnets" there are quite a range listed.even a trader in nelson! might be useful for your uncoupler project.
I haven't seen either in my local newsagent, though I did pick up the NZ rail observer.
ok i am going to stick my neck out here .
Is anyone doing nz120 articles for the journal after all they need them sent in before they can print them .
Going to go back under my rock now .
5 months and waiting.....
ok point taken
Do we really need to have them published in print format, what about NZ120.org or the motorised dandruff site, I think most of us read these sites, I only buy the journal when i see it, I don't subscribe.
Good to see that the wagon plan in Journal #368 was also reproduced with a 1:120 scale drawing.
I will check with the Managing Editor to find out when Rhys' piece will be published - I know there are a couple more NZ120 articles with the Journal production team too.
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