Category Archives: 2019 entries
Protected: Someone is travelling in Europe – Update #5
Gauge 3 Woodbury wagon update
On the wagon front, we have progress as the pictures will show.
First is the assemblage with wheels.
Importantly the suspension works, the wheels are at the correct height – shown by the buffers matching up with my other wagon.
So it is starting to look the part.
Next is to add all the gear under the solebars: mostly the leaf springs and the brake gear. This is a picture taken after I have removed the wheels in order to paint the gear.
There are some other items to add, though: the brake lever racks, together with the chains which I have added, with the pins used to “pin down the brakes” as the old locomotive men used to have to do (by hand, down the whole train!) before taking a train of these wagons down a steep hill.
The following pictures are of the largely completed wagon, prior to painting. I will admit that the load is not “to scale” (merely stones from the garden) but they hold the suspension compressed and so at the correct height.
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Click to enlarge, as always.
Protected: Someone is travelling in Europe – Update #4
Protected: Someone is travelling in Europe – Update #3
Protected: Someone is travelling in Europe – Update #2
Protected: Someone is travelling in Europe – Initial impressions
Gauge 3 locomotive
I have ‘blogged about this before but last weekend I took my locomotive to see an expert, and the results were good.
[click on the link toy watch]
At first this Wawrick Allison was very uncertain about it, but as time went by he seemed more confident that it was OK, and so connected the locomotive up to compressed air, and made it go, as you can see from the video. Complete with whistle!
This was quite a “moment” for me – after all it suggests that I didn’t waste $2.5k on scrap brass and steel! There is still quite a lot of work to do, but it was a very good moment.
More developments on the wagon-building front, by the way, see below.
You can see from the link which I have posted, I had to have some assistance building my Woodbury Midland wagon.
http://www.westernthunder.co.uk/index.php?threads/information-and-help-please.8158/
I hadn’t found a scale drawing of the prototype to use. The wagon it quite wide (101mm = 7 foot 6 inch inside width at the top). I purchased a set of Mike Williams W-irons to do the stuff not provided by Woodbury, but these W-irons (which need to be up against the solebars if the leaf-springs are to be in line with the axle boxes), don’t allow the solebars to be just inside the side-pieces of the wagon sides. Yet this seems to be the pattern of most wagons. So, should the solebars be a few millimetres inside the wagon sides, or should I have the W-irons further apart, and up against the solebars in what seems to be the characteristic position of solebars looking at drawings of other wagons on the midland railway society website?
Also the Williams leafsprings mounted on the underneath of the solebars leave no movement for the axle boxes up and down in the W-irons. So should the W-irons be packed with something so that the axle boxes are held down lower, giving more room for up-and-down sprung movement?
RESOLUTION. After asking on “Western Thunder”, I bought some balsa wood to thicken the sole bars, and 2mm thickness of balsa to lower the W-irons to the correct position.
These pictures show the progress.
Tasmania – Cradle Mountain
Last week we went to Tasmania. Nick had never been there, and in a week off he wanted to go walking in the Cradle Mountain area. His girlfriend was working and so Sue and I were able to take advantage of his organisational ability: he booked the flights to Hobart, the car hire and the accommodation! All we had to do was turn up.
This is the sort of scenery we could anticipate
The Cradle Mountain Nation Park is a wonderful area: beautiful scenery, very few people, wonderful food available.
Even the wildlife is easy to find and see. As you can tell, the wombats are not afraid of humans – somewhat to their detriment as there are many seen dead by the roadside.
Actually the park authorities do well to protect them. Although cars are not prohibited, there is a free bus service to and from Dove Lake, and the cars cost extra to get into the park, so many people leave them at the park entrance.
We hoped to get to the summit of Cradle Mountain (although both Sue and I have been there before).
It is a very tough climb, especially the last section.
There are well-constructed boardwalks over much of the trails, to minimise tourist- mediated erosion.
Nick gave an excellent lesson to me in how good it is to be tall – he could reach relatively easily from one enormous boulder to the next, whereas for me it was a real struggle.
Sue had to wait for us about 80% of the way up, above the snow-line (it had snowed the previous weekend).
This is us on the way down, and Nick throwing a snowball!
Overall Tasmania was just wonderful – clean environment, beautiful country, wonderful walks and lovely food: we had no less than three memorable degustation-style meals whilst we were there.
[double-click on any image to enlarge]
Mudgee
We have just spent the weekend in Mudgee, a little town about 3 hours drive from Glenbrook – over 200km. The above was the view from the house we shared with three other couples – local friends from home. The reason for this particular weekend was a sculpture exhibition at one of the Mudgee wineries.
It was very good, too, with several very impressive or amusing sculptures (or both, as you can possibly see).
Very good
The house we stayed in was very nice, and Mudgee has a lot to recommend it. Very prosperous in the times of a local gold-rush, it has a seriously impressive railway station, alas no longer in use.
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Furthermore, it has an opera house !
For country NSW, this is quite something.