Product Review

On one of my many trips to Bunnings I finally found the right sort of foam for layout building, extruded (and not expanded) polystyrene. It goes by the name Knaff board. This stuff is about 50mm thick comes in a convenient sized 1200 by 600 (or 4'by 2' for the rest of us) for about $25. I don't know if it comes in larger sizes.

Here we have the wharf and a ship placed on the board. I have a much larger card model to place behind the wharf, which probably needs too be a wee bit higher.

More coal

Following on from the last post, I've been sent some scanned photos from a family holiday to Westport many years ago. In those days health and safety was rather more lax and so we were able to walk up the miners track, taking a detour to Middle Brake (past a "go no further" type sign if memory serves). These photos offer a window back 25 years or so when the remnants of our country's industrial history were just left to decay.

First up, looking up the hill from Conns creak, with the yard crane on the edge of shot to the right. Note the spectacular day which is quite common on the west coast, at least while I've been on holiday there.

Then on to Middle brake, the junction between the lower and upper incline. This photo is of the winding house with the remains of the pistons which were used to control the rate of descent of the loaded wagons. The wire hauling ropes had just been left on site, obviously because they were not worth much. I think that's me in green on the left with Mum on the right. obviously buy the time we had walked up the hill for an hour it was not quite such a sparkling day.

littering the bush along the incline were the remains of runaway wagons that had been left were they fell as it was not worth the effort to recover them.

 

And who is that dashing young man in red?

Coal time

 (With the news of the last week with the seemingly impending demise of solid energy due to the usual combination of mismanagement, incompetence and greed, we step back to look at happier times on the coast. How we can trust people to run this country when they can't even remember where they live escapes me)

I've always had an interest in West coast coal operations, and what red blooded steam nut wouldn't. all those locos which lasted far longer in an isolated area with towering lush scenery and old ramshackle buildings.

There were 2 coal ports on the west coast, Greymouth and Westport. In this post we will have a look at the Westport station and wharves.
First up an overlook of the whole area courtesy of the 4th ed Tramway atlas.

Coal came down from Deniston, Stockton and Seddonville in long rakes of Q hoppers, hauled by a collection of Wb and later Ww locos. The section (untill it was conected in 1943) had a very small number of other wagons but 90% of the rolling stock were Q wagons.

First up the station from 1912. Even for a seemingly remote station its quite big (I suppose there had to be somewhere to put all those wagons). I was interested to see the separation of the wharfs. The goods wharf is on the right, and the lines leading up to the coal staiths, which I think lasted till the early 1920's.

 From the national library collection. More of a promenade than a coal facility.

 From the next section we see the other end of the coal staiths and the second coal loading wharf.
 The track layout is not overly complex compared to the other end of the yard.

And from the even stranger files.....

It appears that the coal wharfs were a prime destination for the well healed.

Hello again.

 Not dead just..... not.....

My it has been a long break hasn't it. I have just really not been in the mood to put finger to keyboard. Maybe I've just run out of things to say.......

 Anyway, just to report I'm still alive, there have been no family crises etc.
Also, the MMW crew will be at the Masterton model railway show this weekend. I'lll be there on Sunday with the track making fired up, just in a slightly larger scale.

And just to add a picture, heres something that wandered through the inbox a while ago (thanks to Michael Kilsby).

 

Birthday time

And i even missed it.

Again its been a long time between posts. A combination of busy at work, a bit of 1:1 scale modeling on an older wooden home (and to think we seriously looked at a 100 year old house) and a general pause in modeling.

So, where am I up to?
Mostly its trying to find a bit of enthusiasm to get on with the wharf. I've come up with a way to actuate the points, but have a bit of a mental block to start with the piles. This is going to be a monumental task to do, and it will be a challenge to get it right. The paper ship I'm using also has a few issues that I will have to fix at some point.

The major problem I have is one of perfectionist block (I think that's what its called). I can have a vision of what I want to achieve, but lacking the skills (or confidence in those skills) to get to that vision means that it doesn't get past the starting post. Or that the order of the steps is crucial, and a lack of confidence in a future step can scuttle the current one.. I guess it might be a hangover from my current professional career. This involves every step being planned in advance, and nothing happens until every step to the final one is visualised. OK its not quite like this, but in chemistry if things go wrong, they can go wrong very fast and people get hurt (or at least have to fill in lots of paperwork discussing what went wrong)

In some ways working on the house has been good for this. I've now learnt to push a small project through till its either finished, or won't leak during winter. I can leave it there and go and do something else. I've also been dabling in another prototype/scale which allows me to build without worrying about whether its prototypical or not (since I'm making it up). Its also nice to be "mostly" working with RTR models for a change.

Hopefully this translates back to NZ120 in the not too distant future.

Wharf III

picked the wharf up tonight and got on with the job I had been avoiding, scribing the planks.
This went better than I had expected and in no time (well about an hour) I had the job done.

I then sanded the edges down, added holes for the point actuation switches to work and then added balsa strips to the edges.

The weights are to try to solve a slight warping problem. when glued to the baseboard it should be fine.

Suggestions

I tend to spend a fair bit of time doodling track plans. All I need is a pen, a bit of paper and an idle 5 minutes and I'm off. Most of my planning tends to be involved with tweaking plans I have already worked on to try to get a better shunting set up. I must admit that some prototypes have me stumped (the standard NZP 3 track goods yard is almost impossible to add interest to, well for me anyway).
 Possibly of more interest is industrial shunting yards. These can have an odd variety of track formations in a small area which add both visual and building interest. 

So, to keep me entertained at work, does anyone have any layout design problems that they would like examined? Scale is not a problem as I've made track in most scales. I may have to reacquaint myself with commercial track work to see what can be fitted into an area. Also the preference for operations/shunting or watching the trains go past.