Mads Phikamphon has been working hard building a global model train price comparison web site and contacted us for a list of local model railway shops (available on our Links page).
He has added all the Perth shops to his web site and now has 37 shops across Australia (and 700+ globally)! Check out his useful web site here: https://www.modeltrainprices.com/ https://www.modelprices.com/
FYI and reading pleasure, a whole heap of new links have been added to the Links Page. Lots of great resources and information there!
Where did these new links come from? I’m glad you asked.
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I’d never seen this fantastic sketch of WA railways before when it popped up in a group on Facebook (“Railage Sketch and Freight Diagram of Western Australia”, 3rd Edition, 1922, H.E.C. Robinson Ltd.).
It’s not a map as such, more a schematic sketch of the railway routes, but importantly shows the name of every ‘station’ in the state at the time and mileage to Perth (or other centre). It’s a great resource for the club as we use WA station names on our main HO layout — deliberately picking one station starting with every letter of the alphabet to end up with 26 locations on the layout. (We had to stretch the rule about with ‘X’ — no stations in WA start with ‘X’! Instead we used the WA town name ‘Xantippe’ which was never served by the railways.)
This is another example from the wonderful free online resource that is Trove from the National Library of Australia: https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/26359059
That image above is quite low resolution — good enough to make out most of the names. The full, high-resolution version is a whopping 576 Mbyte image available from Trove (see link above) which is quite difficult to download or view even with a fast computer and good internet link. I have created a high resolution PDF version which is a much more manageable 13.2 Mbytes: nla.obj-233482959.pdf
Is this the future of Model Railway Clubs — an activity you do in seclusion and only interact with others on the Internet?
PHOTO: A Bockholt model of a JA Maffei Munchen 96 class freight locomotive. (ABC News: Alyssa Betts)
A secret collection of model trains that needed its own house in southern New South Wales and came with a staff bound by confidentiality agreements is being documented at the Workshops Rail Museum, west of Brisbane. Read the full story on ABC News.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016–12-28/model-train-collection-worth-‘millions’-donated-to/8151582
Haskell Co. have pictures of the L‑Class in production in multiple liveries on their Facebook page — and even have the boxes ready. Shipping looks to be just around the corner! Here are a sample of some of the photos — visit their Facebook page for lots more.
Northlandz Model Railroad in New Jersey, USA — one of the largest (possibly the largest) model railroad in the world — has teamed up with Sony to showcase one of their new cameras. The results are truly astonishing!
To explore for yourself, click on this link: http://www.separate–together.com/ or the picture above.
Image: Still from the “Separate Together” film by Sony of Northlandz Model Railroad
The ‘Miniatur Wunderland’ in Hamburg (Germany) has been open for six years and this year opened a working model airport. To celebrate they have put together a great HD promotional video — enjoy!
Their YouTube channel is available here: MiWuLa TV
What do you do if you are a typographer and stumble across an N‑Scale train set in your grandmother’s basement? Make a font using it of course!
Click on the picture above to go to the creator’s web site and see some pretty pictures. 🙂
Paul H sends greetings from the other side of the planet. He reports that he is going to a Model Railroad exhibition every weekend somewhere or another that is as big as the one we get here once a year! Oh — and he is sick of having to dig his car out of the snow every morning. 🙂
Paul also found the picture above of a scratch built coking plant in 1:32 scale on the internet. Read all about it (including loads more pictures) here: http://modeltrainsweathered.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=441. He reckons it would make a good project for our G‑Scale group! 🙂