We have been away for the weekend to the Hunter Valley.
This represents some of the dichotomy I find in my life in Australia (is that the right word, Mark?): I love the Australian way of life, the culture, the society, the opportunities. Yet I miss some of my memories of the atmosphere of events in England – string quartets playing Schubert in stately homes, elegant gourmet occasions in beautiful surroundings, like our wonderful meal the first time we went to l’Enclume restaurant in Carmel,a few years ago – see my entry dated 24th August 2013).
Perhaps such occasions/opportunities are to be found in Australia, it is just that they are fewer and further between.
Margan Winery is a Hunter Valley business producing absolutely world-class Chardonnay and other varieties. Even that sentence alone shows some of the difference between “New World” wines and the traditional producers from France (and to a lesser extent Italy, Spain, etc.). Here in the New World of wines, they are known by the grape varieties,rather than the “terroir” – the area where they are grown. It is much more straightforward and easy to understand. Anyway once a year the winery has a “launch” of their premier wines, with a lunchtime event to celebrate the latest “vintage” – vintage being the time when the grapes are harvested.
The Hunter Valley is a lovely area of NSW. It was the first area away from Botany Bay to be occupied by the white settlers, and they named the settlement after a coal producing area of England – Newcastle. Even to this day the coal mines compete with the local farmers and vine-growers for influence over planning decisions.
The southern and eastern area of the valley (where we were) is very much wine country, though.
We stayed with some friends at a local rented property.
It had a truly lovely outlook, as seen here.
From this house it was short drive to the winery, where we met with a crowd (150?) of like-minded people.
Margan grow their own market-gardening produce as well as the grapes. How on earth do they stop the local wildlife from eating it all, I wonder?
The food was excellent, and wines a good match….
Sue and I had a very good weekend away from our work, and were forced to buy lots of bottles of fine wine from Margan
As more sandstone arrives at the site of our new house, a few reflections on it in general.
As you can see, the sandstone comes in multiple different colours, or perhaps just multiple shades of brown, from nearly white to very deep brown.
This was one of the choices we had to make at the quarry: any colour? Dark? Light? In the end we asked for anything except the really dark-coloured blocks.
A lot more arrived today.
The decisions aren’t just about colour, though. We also had to decide upon the face (“rock face”, or “Hydrosplit”) and whether we had “Quoins”, which are the corner pieces. If you have these (as we will have) they are the corner pieces which stand out a little, alternating short and long sides as you go up or down the corners.
These are the quoins, waiting to be used.
The walls have just begun to go up, and Michael Edwards is worried about how much we like the sandstone.
We are actually very happy with it.
Here is the first view that we will get about what the house will look like when we finally move in.
I realise that the model railway which I have built in our cellar is almost entirely only for my own amusement and satisfaction. I had originally aimed that our two sons would develop an interest in models, railways in particular (though I also tried cars, boats and a hovercraft). They being Australian boys, though, their interests turned to outdoor games. Actually, in the long term this is almost certainly much better of course: both Andrew and Nick still play hockey/cricket/football. On the other hand, the only other person whom I know to be an interested reader about my models is brother John, so this page is dedicated to him. John has been kind enough to appear enthusiastic about my achievements, and although he only actually sees my railway once every few years (when he visits Australia), he has maintained an interest. A modeller-by-proxy, perhaps?
Mark outlined on his page the origins of the family interest in railways, and I will write a little about model railways. When Mark and I were small, our Dad bought us railway engines for “00” gauge, and I can remember installing a floor in our attic of the house in Woolton, Liverpool, which was largely done so that we could have an “00”-gauge railway up there. Such a railway was built, and we spent many hours up there subsequently. There were echos of this thirty years later when I paved our cellar in Mount Riverview NSW for very similar reasons. Mark (and Dad, I think) were mostly interested in simply seeing the trains run around, with lovely rolling stock (engines, wagons and coaches), timetables and operating schedules. I, however, was always more interested in the details of the models and the scenery/surroundings. I was later bought a smaller scale as my own railway in 3mm-to-the-foot or “TT” scale. John was later started in 2mm or “N” scale.
My interest in detailed model construction led to the construction of model locomotives in “00” scale/gauge, but this proved conceptually unsatisfactory because for obscure commercial reasons the manufacturers of ready-to-run models had created this anomaly: 4mm scale on 16.5mm track: the wrong scale:gauge combination – in 4mm the gauge should be 18.95mm. Originally the 16.5mm gauge track was made for “H0” scale (3.5mm), which is correct. “H0” in half “0-gauge”, you see. I hated the idea of spending hours making a model when I knew that the gauge would be all wrong …
That, combined with the greater detail available in 7mm scale led me to want to build in 0-gauge. Moving to Australia, and having two boys as children, gave me the excuse to get going. So I paved the cellar, and set off in 7mm scale, 32mm gauge. I laid a 4m circle of track on shelves in the cellar. My protestations that my 0-gauge railway was built for the small boys’ benefit was rather undermined by Sue seeing the sticker on the outside of one of the model kits, saying “This is a scale model, not suitable for children under the age of 14” !!! Anyway, I persisted, but has any reader noticed the problem? It took me a rather embarrassing length of time to realise, but the scale:gauge combination is still wrong and the gauge should be 33mm !!!!
33mm gauge/7mm scale is called ScaleSeven. I joined the Scale Seven Society (membership about 300 people, worldwide), took up all of the 32mm gauge circuit and rebuilt it in 33mm gauge, then re-gauged three locomotives and about half-a-dozen wagons. I deny being at all autistic, just seriously obsessive, and it had to be right. These video pictures are of the model railway which I have built since.
Here is a sequence showing the locomotive going through the coalyard of my model colliery. The train is going unrealistically fast in scale speed, of course.
I have just added three more coal trucks to the fleet, and had an interesting experience yesterday as I tried to have the train to twelve coal trucks pulled around the circuit by my model Peckett 0-4-0 saddle tank (actually originally built by my father and John, for Nick, since repainted by me. My layout has a hill on it (not all railways are perfectly flat …..) and the Peckett could not pull the train up the hill:
As you see, wheelslip occurred and the train ground to a halt. Clearly a more powerful locomotive was required. As several real colliery owners did in the UK in the 20th century, I turned to a Garratt articulated locomotive:
My model Garratt has two motors, just like the original articulated locomotives did, and the greater power available means that the gradient was easily conquered.
There is a scenic section on my model railway, also, and the final video shows this:
The weather here has been lovely, although after the rain this rather beautiful fungus has grown on one of our bottlebrush trees.
Building seems finally to be getting under way properly.
The frames for the downstairs area are going up, and some of the steel beams have been erected.
The frames for the upper storey have arrived also, and have been stored above the garage, as seen here!
Then earlier this week the sandstone has begun to arrive. I must say that I hadn’t realised that buying sandstone would be so complicated: what colour do you want (well, sandstone coloured ….?); do you want “rock face” or “hydrasplit”; are you having quoins? Quoins are the corner pieces, usually alternate directions long and short sides, standing out a little from the main stonework with smooth faces. Hydrasplit means that five of the sides of each block are smoothed to help construction, but the sixth is left rough. All six sides can be smoothed of course, but we felt building that way you might as well use concrete …. Rock face means that each edge of the stone is split back to give an even edge.
The main stonework is shown here, with the rock face visible, and the different colours that the bricks will be. There are also some pinker parts, but I couldn’t find a good piece not covered in plastic to take a picture of.
Here are some of the quoins.
There is quite a lot of scaffolding around the house now, ready for the stones to be made into walls, I suppose.
It isn’t weathered yet, and there is no coal in the tender, but fundamentally it’s done. The final parts were fitting the cab doors, the coupling hooks and cab glass. Also I needed to stop the electrical shorting from the pony-truck wheels (the swinging small wheels at the front of the locomotive) to the front footsteps. This was achieved quite easily simply by putting little blobs of epoxy resign on the inside of the steps.
After this, testing on my reverse-curved test tracks showed really pleasing results – even running slowly it now seems to run smoothly.
Slow running is actually more important and more impressive, if you ask me [sorry about the music in the background, by the way].
Next will be either fitting Digital Command Control, or starting on the weathering.
It may not be to everyone’s taste or interest, but my ‘blog about building this kit has entertained me and John, at least! It is very much the same as some entries which I have made on the Western Thunder website <http://box5457.temp.domains/~coulshed/australian-family-events/>, but that one is for seriously train-autistic people (joke ……..)
Even at this stage there are mistakes to be made, and lessons to learn, perhaps.
For those who see these things there are several problems with the locomotive as seen here.
Most obvious is the water-based varnish covering the letters and numbers. Perhaps less obvious is the lack of window-glass. Least obvious (perhaps) is the fact that the central two pairs of driving wheels in the second picture are not exactly on the rails ….
In order.
I have had trouble with solvent-based varnish destroying transfers in the past, so once my transfers were in place I fixed them with water-based matt varnish, with the results shown in the pictures. This in itself I did not see as too much of a problem, because I thought that once an airbrush-applied coat was put on, the streaking would vanish.
My mistake, though, was to use a short-cut and (thinking that the varnish already there would protect the transfers) I used a “Testors” aerosol “Dullcote” varnish on the tender sides. Whilst the transfers survived, it produced bubbles and wrinkles in some of the plain paintwork!
Disaster. They were large enough patches that, even allowing for my intention to produce a weathered appearance, I couldn’t leave them as they were. I didn’t want to have to do the whole sides all over again, so rubbed off the sections of affected paintwork with a glass fibre brush, back to bare metal, then resprayed with primer, masking the letterwork.
Then I resprayed with matt black.
It isn’t perfect by any means, but after weathering I don’t think the differences will be visible.
Next the windows.
Initially I wanted to use microscope coverslips to make real glass windows, and even bought a tungsten scriber to cut the glass. However I soon realised that the coverslips were incredibly fragile, and I thought that in my hands would soon be broken in place on the loco., when replacement would be very difficult. Also I realised that there was no way to produce the front-facing windows on the cab from glass, anyway. Whatever method I used, I realised that the front windows were going to be impossible to position without taking the cab roof off. So rip it off I had to do (well, carefully unsolder and lift it off ….).
Using plastic “glass” was OK until I was unwise/uneducated enough to use cyanoacrylate to glue the side window frames in place. Araldite had been fine to secure the plastic sheet to the frames, but cyanoacrylate has made some of the glass go “misty”. Well, I suppose there may have been quite a bit of steam in the cab at times ….
Finally the problem with the wheels.
Once again, this is probably something a more experience model-builder would have avoided, but bear in mind that this is the first tender engine kit that I have ever made – three tank engines and a Garratt before this.
This illustrates the problem, and my solution (so far – I haven’t fully tested it yet!
The MOK kit comes with a drawbar which has a disc at one end and an elongated disc at the other (running-track shaped). Naively, I went for the close-coupled length.
It looks good, and would work well on straight track, but on curves the tender will not articulate enough with the locomotive, and one or other comes off the track. The problem was that I had cut off the extra length of the elongated end of the drawbar. So I have had to reconstruct it from flat brass strip and solder it onto the drawbar, as shown. With a slot at the tender end, I’m hoping that the tender can look realistically close to the engine itself when pushed together, but will move apart enough to go around 2m radius curves when in forward motion. We will see eventually if this works!
Incidentally, those who have followed this thread may notice something has changed in the pictures. Nick and Andrew were worried that me using their pool table for pictures might end up in damage to the green baize, and so we have now constructed a wooden top for the table! We had time for this because of our recent weather – Australia really is a different world of weather, or is it global warming? It is still warm, but we’ve had over 150mm of rain in the 5 days, and so plenty of time for making things like table-covers – and model locomotives, of course!
Whilst we have been waiting for the concrete to harden (see the last entry), we have re-submitted the plans to the Blue Mountains City Council, with a “new” room above the garage. This is very important to me: without it there was no “junk room” in the house – nowhere to put things that are only used occasionally (suitcases, skis, portable fans, etc.). Also, there was no room which Sue could not see into on a daily basis: no room that might become a little messy without it distressing Sue.
When BMCC rejected our first design it had this utility room, but the council felt it made the house look too imposing for the village atmosphere in Glenbrook. Perhaps. Whatever the merit of this argument we had to remove the utility room to have the plans approved.
In response, our architect, Michael Weigmann, redrew the design to lower the roof of the garage by about a metre, cutting about a metre off the width of the utility room, with sloping ceilings down to 1.1m at the edges as well. This went to BMCC as an “amendment”, and has been approved. So this is what it will look like:
A year later, and not much different to the original design. Actually, to be fair to the council, it does look better.
For completeness, here are the plans and architectural views.
As always, click to enlarge.
No, it’s not a model railway room. There’s going to be a garden railway ….
Whilst we were away in Japan and Hong Kong, the foundations were laid for our house in Glenbrook.
These pictures were taken by our builder, Michael Edwards, because he knew we were recording the whole process, and he knew we were away – thank you!
The whole process is much more involved than I had thought. It you look at previous posts, the site had to be levelled, and then Michael had to arrange for holes to be drilled down to the bedrock (I think) to construct concrete pillars stretching from the rock up to the level where the “slab” was to be laid. The basic below-ground pipes had to be positioned before the concrete is poured, of course, but prior to seeing this construction, I had just thought a concrete slab would be poured over the ground as it stood.
Not so. First Michael explained that we would be using things which I think he calls “waffle pods” (sounds like listening to politicians on your iPhone) within the concrete. These are large polystyrene blocks, which I assume mean the concrete transmits less heat away from the house into the ground, and saves on the amount of concrete that has to be bought for the slab. I’m not sure which is the main influence!
When we returned from holiday, I was surprised at how high off the ground the floor level of the building was going to be, and it was clear when I saw all the pictures, I had completely underestimated the work Michael had to do.
First it would seem that the builders had to build up the ground a bit to achieve a horizontal base. Exactly how this was done I am unsure, but the stuff on the ground doesn’t look like normal soil, and the base level is already well above ground level.
I estimate that before this process began there was at the most 30cm difference in height between one side of the site and the other.
The plumbing it still poking well above ground level, though.
The concrete posts from the bedrock are still visible at this stage.
Next come the waffle pods.
Their polystyrene nature can be seen. I assume that the metalwork on top is both to reinforce the concrete, and to ensure a uniform depth on top of the pods. Perhaps also to hold them down under the concrete as it is poured?
I assume that the pods have to be positioned so that the gaps between them allow direct contact between the slab concrete and the uprights from the bedrock.
Either as part of laying the waffle pods or afterwards, a temporary wall has to be built to restrict the concrete as it flows into the slab, which is clearly going to be about 1/2 metre above the level of the ground seen in the first two pictures above.
If you look carefully it is possible to see the tops of the plumbing pipes just visible above the waffle pods.
Fnally, pouring the concrete!
I wish I had been there to see it, as it involved one of those trucks which pumps concrete through a long overhead pipe to wherever it is needed on the site.
Finally it would appear that the concrete has to be polished in some way – probably just taking the worst irregularities out.
This is the final result as seen before. Note the plumbing sticking through (but not by much!), and the height of the slab surface above ground level.
After that, nothing much happened for a while, because the concrete has to set, or “cure” or some such process.
Last weekend Sue and I (David) went to visit some friends who are currently living in Launceston, Tasmania. We went with them to visit and explore some parts of the Freycinet Peninsula on the western coast of Tasmania.
Tasmania is a lovely area of Australia. In terms of concentrated areas of beauty nowhere in Australia surpasses this state. Other areas may have more beautiful sites, but they are so far spread apart that it takes ages to get from one spectacle to another. In Tasmania no-where is more than four hours away! It also has a wonderful collection of colonial buildings: parts of it could be taken as being villages in the Cotswolds or Home Counties of England. Georgian and Edwardian architecture everywhere.
We went largely for the natural features, however. We climbed Mount Amos, at the northern end of the Freycinet Peninsula (French names abound in this area, a reflection of the French explorers whose contribution was largely written out of history by the later English settlers).
It was a steep climb to the summit.
However the views from the top, over Wineglass Bay, were superb.
We stayed in a colonial farmhouse, called Brockley Estate. Typical colonial-era architecture with later additions. Very English weather. Our friend David told us the saying: “so you don’t like this Tasmanian weather? Well just wait a minute and it’ll change for you.” Rain, fierce sunshine, strong winds, temperatures varying from single figures to 35 degrees all in this weekend
The next day we went to Maria Island – with its beautiful scenery, and buildings reminding us of its brutal convict past – the prisoners sent here were not quite the worst of the worst, but only one level up from there, and the harsh conditions reflected that. Whilst Tasmania is a truly beautiful state, there are constant reminders of the not-so-beautiful English colonisation of the southern-most Australian state.
Margan grow their own market-gardening produce as well as the grapes. How on earth do they stop the local wildlife from eating it all, I wonder?
