CoastalRev's Jamberoo Railway in N Scale

Hi everyone,

Well with our big move to Lithgow set for 9 March, I'm suspending work on the Jamberoo layout. But operations are continuing. In fact, I've been enjoying shunting so much that work has been suspended for ages!

But Michelle (while I was out!) decided to recycle some old 'grass paper' I had from an old HO layout and glued it to one of my corner T-Trak modules.

I wasn't happy about her flat-earth approach to scenery, and all our modules for the time being will represent an urban scene. So I opened some magazines (like Railway Digest) to show her that grass doesn't grow right up to the tracks and there were oodles of photos in the December 2008 issue showing grass... right up to the tracks. Grrrr.

So the story of the module is that the 'inside' of the curve is a railway-owned 'waste land' -- I'll add some high-tension electric poles -- and the 'outside' will be a scrapyard complete with a 53-class boiler (courtesy of an off-cast casting from Phil Badger) and other bits of 'scrap steel'. A corrugated iron fence separates the scrapyard from the (railways-owned) dirt road behind it.

Here's the making of the basic scenery for the corner module in question:

Glenn sieves the dirt (taken from Jamberoo--from the site of a shed being "constructed" next to the Rectory--"constructed" means less progress than my main layout).


More sieving


Tipping the soil into place.



Spreading the soil


Final sprinkles of fine soil


Spraying with a water bottle with some detergent mixed in to act as a wetting agent.


Using an eye-dropper to put a 50/50 water/PVA mix to glue it all down.


The "finished" module... well, once it dries the power lines go up, the stanchions for the railway (it's to be an electric railway) go up, and the corrugated fence goes around the scrapyard--and scrap moves in!

I mentioned Phil Badger before in the context of a boiler I have of his.
He dropped in last Sunday... here he is researching a project by photographing the old school house next door:


Finally, a non-train person Brett stayed with us on Monday night (he is a ministry trainee down the coast at Huski) and he saw how much fun tail-chasing layouts are... NOT!!! He enjoyed shunting on the Jamberoo layout but like me bored easily of the tail-chasing T-Trak modules. But my daughter Zoe loves the T-Trak and can drive them very well (for a 3 year old!).

Well, after Zoe went to bed Brett and I worked out how to get my Tomix Thomas the Tank Engine to jump using the Kato re-railer in reverse as a launch pad... and to get Thomas to return to the tracks and keep running.

I showed it to Zoe this arvo and she was squealing with delight. I'll video it and stick it up on youtube sometime soon.

Labels: scenery, stunts, t-trak, tail-chasing, thomas-the-tank-engine

Hi guys,

Thought it was time to give an aerial overview of our layout--overlaying the trackplan onto a google earth view of the actual town.

You can see that the bowling club and municipal pool are under the station yard--these both were built after the time when our railway line would have been constructed, therefore would not exist in a railway world!

From Jamberoo Rail...

Above: The railway yard and location of Freddos' General Store etc.
Click the image to enlarge it!

From Jamberoo Rail...

Above: The location of the fuel siding. It's a bit exaggerated because I had to stretch the photo to put everything in the right place!

Labels: real_life, scenery

Well folks, today there was no progress on the railway (some of us do actually work for a living!), but I couldn't resist the opportunity for a 'photo shoot' in the railway yard at Jamberoo station.

Usually my locos face with the #1 end facing the buffer stops (ie, the DOWN direction) but I turned them around today.



So lined up we have my three NSW-outline diesels: from left to right, 70xx (still to be painted and numbered), 4421 and 4520.

They each had a lengthy train worked -- and shunted -- properly:


The 45's train came out first and, after running around, shunted into the goods siding out of the way.

The 70's train was next, again it ran around before shunting temporarily up onto the Freddos' siding.



Finally the 44 came out with my remaining Rapido-coupler-equipped stock and ran into the main. I rearranged some of the wagons and put the caboose on the other end before the whole thing was reassembled onto the run-around loop.

70xx's train then came back out of Freddos' siding and reversed onto the main.

I like eye-level shots - we don't look at real trains from afar, do we?

But this shot was taken by a fit young lad climbing up a power pole:


We finished the shoot with a shot of the noses of the locos, lined up, with Alwyn Fredericks' house seen atop the highest point in Macquarie St, Jamberoo.

Labels: rolling_stock, scenery

When 'starting out' in N-scale some 12 months ago, I already owned one piece of N-scale equipment, albeit 1:150 rather than 1:160: the Ibertren 'World Series' Alco, painted locally by someone as 4421. I bought it second hand years ago on the off chance I might some day become an N-scaler and it was a 'grab it when you can' type of deal. I think in the mid 1990s it cost me about $119. I also had a second-hand N-scale US-outline Minitrix caboose... I had dabbled in HOn2 1/2 many moons ago and its chassis was to have been the basis of something for the narrow gauge.

I was aware from my days working part-time at Northside Model Railways in West Pennnat Hills (for the late Darrel Nelson) that N-scale US-outline boxcars were very cheap... so I went onto eBay and bought a few... I think I have about 15 or so now! I've also got two end-platform ('observation platform' carriages from the US and a set of Great Northern 'streamliner' carriages, plus a minitrix set bought off ebay.

So I planned that as soon as I got some of my aussie rollingstock converted to MT couplings, some of this stuff would follow.

So as of today: 10 boxcars using microtrains 1031s plus my 70-class (on the minitrix 0-6-0 diesel shunter chassis) now has microtrains couplings too.



I had a bit of fun shunting my growing micro-trains fleet with the 70 and the 45, before running several special trains to clear the layout:

1. 4520 took several boxcars plus the 3 MT-equipped K wagons + my COR tank wagon to Dunmore
2. 70xx took the remainder of the boxcars.
3. Thomas (now my only decent Rapido-equipped runner!) came and collected the Peco 4-wheel milk tanker and the 3 Rapido-equipped K wagons.

This was so I could build some hills to make the village of Jamberoo more, um, village like.



Despite Jamberoo being on the valley floor - and at the edge of the upstream end of the floodplain, our beloved little village is quite hilly: The main street only ranges from between 25 and 29 metres above sea level - that's not hilly. (The floodplain ranges is about 10-20 metres above sea level). But the highest point of Macquarie St, two streets back from Allowrie, is 60 metres above sea level.



So armed with the calculations of the heights of the various parts of Jamberoo (thanks to google earth!), we cut up some soft foam rubber using our 'spare' electric kitchen knife - a wedding gift I've rescued from being 'donated' to others many times!

This method is one I've never heard of before, but we had heaps of the foam lying around courtesy of a mattress that was 'trimmed' to fit in my daughter's half-size single bed. Once we have a basic form we shall papier mache the landscape.

The pictures show that the heights seem exaggerated; at one level they are: their vertical plane is to scale, but the horizontal plane is compressed. I got this idea on Saturday while sitting in a car on Tate Place (long story; has to do with my job as a minister!). Basically, from the northern end of Tate Place, looking south, one can see the houses in the part of Jamberoo represented by our model railway and they look 'compressed' and almost on top of one another... as they ascend the hill, there is a visual effect that they are closer to each other than they are.

And so we have deliberately compressed the horizontal while maintaining the vertical.



There is much more work to be done yet - but as the State Government says, "still a long way to go but we're heading in the right direction". Unlike the State Government, I expect to deliver.

Labels: micro_trains, progress, rolling_stock, scenery