Railfest 2008 — Sunday October 12th

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ARG’s 3107 (ex-L258)

The date for RailFest 2008 has been announced — Sunday 12th October. Mark it in your diaries. The image above was taken at RailFest 2004 and shows ARG’s loco number 3107 (ex-L258) — one of a number of locos visiting the museum on that day for RailFest. More pictures from past RailFests can be found in the gallery.

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In sad news, our condolences are passed on to long time past member Ray Cooper on the death of his wife Margaret after an extended illness.

Image: ARG’s 3107 (ex-L258) with another Alco at RailFest 2004 (Brian Seaton)

Hard Work — Soft Light

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3km bridge at Hotham Valley Railway following heavy rains at the end of May.

The Railway Museum will be exhibiting selected photographic prints by WA photographer Kevin Scott taken for the new book 48 months, 48 minutes — building the Perth to Mandurah railway. The exhibition will be on display Sunday afternoons from 29th June 2008 for a limited time only. This book, and others about the new line, is on sale at the museum. [Hard Work — Soft Light Photographic Exhibition Flyer]

The official opening of the photographic exhibition will be on Sunday 29th June at 3pm. Kevin Scott will be at the museum to open the exhibition and speak about this project — get your copy of the book signed by the photographer!

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AMRA have started sending the Branchline newsletter electronically to us, instead of by post, so I’ll upload them to this website from now on rather than printing them out: AMRA Branchline — June 2008. One advantage of getting it electronically is that all the pictures are in colour!

This edition contains the wrap up from the Model Railway Show as well as an interesting snippet about sound equipped DCC locos. The issue of excessive noise levels in the club rooms as a result of the constant throbbing of sound equipped diesel locos, or the chuffing of steamers, has come up on a couple of occasions in our club. AMRA have obviously had the same issue as their committee has decided that sound equipped locos may only be run (with the sound on) in their clubrooms for a 10 minute period following each hour (i.e. from ‘o’clock’ to ‘ten past’, one sixth of the time).

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Remember the devastating bushfires around Dwellingup at the beginning of 2007? Thousands of hectares of bush were burnt out, and the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway was severely affected as every one of their timber trestle bridges was destroyed — as well as many drainage culverts and thousands of wooden sleepers. Restoration and rebuilding of the railway is proceeding well, and I was delighted to discover progress is being documented and photographed on-line on the news pages on their web site.

A link to the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway has been added to the links page.

Image: The rebuilt 3km bridge on the Hotham Valley Tourist Railway after heavy rains at the beginning of June 2008 (from the HVTR web site).

Calling for Nominations for Committee

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It’s that time of year again — less than four weeks until the AGM. So that means we need nominations for committee positions. Download the Committee Nomination Form 2008, complete it and get it back to the Secretary by Wednesday 25th June 2008.

The membership list on the members page has been updated with our recent new members, so be sure to grab a copy and update your records. The club now has over 40 members — first time for a while!

Also in news, the Albany Model Railway Association are holding the Albany Hobby Expo again this year over the middle weekend of the October school holidays. The N‑Scale boys at the club are keen to exhibit and are planning to take down Weepy Junction — with a new station module and hidden fiddle yard. The image above is of a test track plan — using a plastic lid as a turntable substitute!

Image: Weepy Junction new station module — embyonic form

“Arid Australia” at the 2008 Perth Model Railway Show

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Iron-ore cars

72 photographs of “Arid Australia” at the 2008 Perth Model Railway Show are now available as a Picasa web photo album in the gallery. (This is the first time I have used a Picasa web photo album on this site so please let me know if you experience any problems with it.)

Several (informal) attempts were made to break the world record for longest model train over the weekend with varying degrees of success. The best attempt occurred on the final day of the show when a 902 car train was assembled by joining five sections of 180 cars, each hauled by one locomotive (with one extra set of two cars on the end, with the end of train marker). The resulting consist travelled a distance of around 50 feet without interruption — the best of the day.

Whilst this train was long enough and technically travelled far enough for it to reclaim the world record, it was less than what the “Arid Australia” crew were actually hoping for. In their eyes it isn’t a proper train unless it does at least one complete circuit of the layout without derailment or outside assistance. Sadly they were unable to achieve that goal.

“Arid Australia” is now planning to travel to the Sydney Model Railway Exhibition at the beginning of October where they plan to break the world record properly (with a bit of luck)!

Image: Some of the 1100 iron-ore cars stacked in the holding sidings.

Perth Model Railway Show 2008

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The annual Model Railway Show run by AMRA(WA) is on again for all three days of this Foundation Day long weekend (31st May — 2nd June). We are participating again in this year’s show by helping run the mighty “Arid Australia” layout — a truly massive layout capable of running immense length iron-ore trains with multiple locos and nearly one thousand wagons. (The “Arid Australia” group is not a part of the WAMRC, but all of it’s members are also members of the WAMRC — so it is closely linked.)

12 years ago at the same exhibition (on 3rd June 1996), “Arid Australia” set an official Guinness World Record for the longest model train consisting of 650 iron ore wagons and 4 locomotives. They lost the record on 27th November 2005 when Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany made an 887 car train with three locomotives.

This year, all the stops have been pulled out to try to win the record back. The layout has been extended (to allow for longer trains), double tracked (to allow other trains to run while the record attempt is set up — which takes a long time), converted to DCC (for better power control and distribution), and every owner of a significant number of HO scale iron-ore cars in the Perth area has been approached to see if they can be borrowed for the weekend. They have nearly 1,100 cars available and enough space on the layout to run a train of 900–950 cars. Can it be done? Come on down to the show and find out for yourself!

Image: The WAMRC N‑Scale layout “Maple Deutshe” on display at the Model Railway Show in 2005

“Spirit of the West” halts

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Spirit of the West

I learnt some sad news yesterday — the “Spirit of the West” restaurant train has ceased running. I was told that yesterday was the final day, although their web site says the final run is next Saturday 31st May. This is disappointing news as it was a great experience. I have been on the train twice myself (once for lunch, and once for dinner) and thoroughly enjoyed it both times.

Speaking to Ian Studham at the Rail Museum, I got a little more information about what has happened. Last year South Spur Rail (the originators of the “Spirit of the West”), was sold to Coote Industrial Group, a publicly listed company. Coote announced at the time they would continue to run the restaurant train for a year to see how well it fitted in to their business profile. Now a year later it appears it doesn’t fit well enough for them to continue with it.

I understand the train did make a small profit, but speculation is that it wasn’t enough of a profit to make it worthwhile the hassle of having to maintain the extra rail safety case for carriage of passengers, and all the associated extra public liability insurance it entails. Not to mention all the extra staff and services that need to be maintained that are not used anywhere else in their business.

At this stage the carriages and infrastructure are being held on to by Coote. I suppose there is a possibility they could sell it as a self contained business, but if that doesn’t eventuate then RHWA is going to have to find some more space at the rail museum to store the Federation coaches that belong to them. The tentative plan at this stage is that the two sidings immediately to the north of the Goninans access line will be converted to dual gauge and made part of the museum by creating a gated pedestrian level crossing over the Goninans access line. Obviously a lot of work, and it will entail a fair amount of knock on effects — for example dual gauge points are bigger so the access road will need to be relocated as it is already nearly too narrow where it passes near the narrow gauge point leading to the back sidings.

So all in all, the end of an era, but then again the only thing that is constant is change itself. Especially in the rail industry in Perth!

Image: The interior of the Spirit of the West restaurant train

At the Club… BHP bubbles

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BHP Iron Ore new \

Spotted at the club was this model of BHP Iron Ore’s new “bubble” livery. I remember when the new BHP Billiton company logo was unveiled, a TV comedian commented that it looked like a “Teletubby had too much Fanta and threw up”. I think this new livery captures the essence of that very nicely!

DZ125IN N-Scale decoder

Garry W. brought in a DZ125IN DCC decoder from Digitrax. This is a 1 Amp basic decoder which he was able to buy (in bulk) from the US for A$25 (including freight) to his door. It is ridiculously small and is shown here next to a 5 cent piece for comparison.

Peter O. working on scenery Rowan B. wandering around the clubrooms carrying a big stick.

Also spotted were Peter O. doing some more scenery work on the first finger (green shirt, green jacket, green paint, hmmm — I see a trend here), and for some inexplicable reason Rowan B. was wandering around the club rooms carrying a big stick. Notice the resilience of youth — it was a cold evening (everyone was wearing jeans and jackets), yet here Rowan is wearing shorts and a T‑shirt.

Unfortunately that was all I saw as I then got stuck in a committee meeting for an hour and three quarters (yes — I timed it) ahead of the general meeting next week. By the time that had finished everyone had gone home!