Category Archives: 2021 entries

Baddesley wagons

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I had some wagons to make in Gauge 3.  Coal wagons to a particular design, chosen by me on the grounds that they were relatively easy (! – see later) to make, and were colourful to make them more attractive.  Also, they are to a design compatible with my unlikely-to-come-true ambition of making a “William Francis” industrial Garratt locomotive in Gauge 3.  The trouble was or is, that no-one makes the relevant transfers in the right size for Gauge 3.There was no way I could free-hand paint the designs, so I had to think of a way to get transfers made.  If I could produce a computer file design, perhaps I could persuade POWSides to make the transfers (though at what cost, I hesitate to think).My first try was to do the whole side at a time, black background and all.  However on-line advice suggested that this was not a good idea, and a guy called “Overseer” on the website offered to do some transfers for me if I could do the design work, which included making files where all the white lettering plus the background is coloured black instead!
The reason for this is that it is possible to buy transfer sheets to go in an inkjet printer, but printing onto them is not straightforward, as they are clear backround sheets, and printers are made to print onto a white background.  So in order to produce the correctly-coloured letters it is necessary to print the letters first in white, then overprint the relevant colour a second time through the ink-jet printer, hoping that the paper is in exactly the same place a second time through. White is not a usual ink-jet colour, so the black cartridge is changed for a white-ink one, and the “black” printing done in white!
Fortunately we have a friend locally who is a graphic designer, and he was able to produce the relevant computer files of single-colours only, and I sent them all to “Overseer”.
Eventually the process was done, and I could try the transfers out.  There were a number of defects, but overall it was a very pleasing result. The number was angled, and the application of colours one on top of another was very difficult exactly to position.  Overseer sent some transfers in single colours as well as overlaid colours.  To try to position TWO colours (red and green) exactly onto the background white with the printer is clearly extremely tricky. 
The raised detail on the wagon sides was clearly a problem for me also.
Anyway, here is a view of the first complete wagon.
Many thanks to Overseer, who made the transfers, my friend Chris Burns who did the drawings, and of course Mike Williams who makes these kits.
It’s not weathered as yet.
Now I just need an industrial Garratt to pull it.
A long time coming, over a year, but here is the rake of three Baddesley Colliery coal wagons.There is a story as to why it’s taken so long, and why they are in different state of repair of course.
2111 has clearly just come from the works after an overhaul.

 

2116 has clearly had some sort of accident, and has had to have a plank replaced.However overall I am very happy with my little group of wagons. I’m quite proud of the end result, although I think more “weathering” is needed to be at all realistic.

 

Here is the story behind a couple of the wagons. Even if it doesn’t reflect well on my common sense, there may be some lessons in it.
I started off to build the two wagons as 2116 and 2117 together, as I had two sets of Baddesley transfers to use and two of Mike Williams kits. Building the two at the same time turned out to be a mistake: you see Mike had inadvertently put three of one side in and one of the other when he sent me the kits. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this, even when painting them, and even more extraordinarily when putting transfers on! So although 2117 was OK, spot the trouble with 2116! By this time I had run out of transfers. I’m absolutely sure Mike would have sent me a new side if I asked (even to Australia!) but that was no use to me as I had no transfers left. So I thought about what to do, and decided to butcher the kit and I cut the ends off one of the side-pieces and reversed them, using Araldite and “Milliput” to try to correct the catastrophe.

Not perfect for rivet-counters, and clearly likely to be a little fragile, but in the circumstances not too bad I thought. A little while later:

 

The next problem which I created for myself came when I tried to Araldite the sides onto the underframe. It wasn’t quite square when the glue set. Not good, but recoverable I thought. Araldite melts, or at any rate loses its grip, somewhere between 50 degrees Centigrade and boiling point, in my experience. So I waited until the household manager was out, and used her oven to heat the whole wagon up progressively towards 100 degrees, thinking to re-stick the sides. The sides weren’t too far out anyway – so I used rubber bands to maintain some of the square shape.

Catastrophe! The whole thing came apart, and the resin warped with temperature so much (the elastic band didn’t help I guess) that the sides were badly distorted and the ends nearly bent back on themselves! “Don’t try this at home, viewers”.
Much anguish and thought later, and fact that the manager was still away, allowed me to use the oven and a pair of surplus flat bathroom tiles to straighten out all four sides and ends, plus the distorted underframe.

So in the end, the appearance of 2116 could have been much much worse. The wagon was put back together but now I saw that one of the transfers was distorted anyway, so I decided to “weather” the wagon, and paint it to look like one of the planks had been replaced but not yet painted.

Good recovery, I think.

Local Walks 23 – The Grose Valley

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The Grose Valley (pronounced “Gross”) runs west from the Hawkesbury area (actually the river runs down to there) but we walked west up the valley last Wednesday.

It was a beautiful Spring day.  Clear blue skies, and by the end of our walk it had reached nearly 30 degrees.  Almost no clouds – just enough for the pictures.

Not really like walking in Europe, though – the vegetation is so different.  Many “Grass Trees” (aka “Black Boys” in less politically-correct times).  These are black stumps about 20cm across with a shock of long thin green leaves coming from the top.  After fires they shoot out a tall stick upwards to produce seeds and spread them to the wind – after fires so that the ground has fertile ash to receive the seeds.  They are very slow-growing, and a specimen a metre high could be a hundred years old, apparently.  There are several in the pictures, and at times we were following a path pushing through clumps of these unusual plants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The river was at a low level, but there were signs that when it is in flood, as it has been recently, the water level can rise several metres.  On the other hand, it is now just beautiful clear water in gentle flow past sandbanks and down minor rapids.  It was lovely just sitting back drinking coffee and eating cheese and biscuits, listening to the rapids and the birds tweeting (and an occasional squawk from a cockatoo).

 

Sydney Live Steam Locomotives Society

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On Saturday I had another excellent day at the SLSLS grounds in Ryde.

I started off spending a while using my brushcutter to get rid of a lot of overgrown grass and other plants impeding progress around the elevated track [which I will need in a fortnight’s time if I can get to the “Smaller Gauges Open Day”]

I was then able to get my steam engine through both its “hydraulic test” and its “steam test”, which means that it is certified as safe to use in the future (4 years in theory).

 

 

 

 

We then tried to run my engine around the circuit.

The trouble was, I had forgotten to put the “steam oil” into the oil supply for the cylinders, so it lost steam constantly, and after about 100m “I ran out of steam” – literally.

However this disappointment was lessened by my being given a chance to drive the 3½ inch gauge “Britannia”, which was also having its steam test done.

It is a much bigger model engine than mine and as such is very “forgiving” if you are an inexperienced driver (!).

 

I drove it around the circuit a couple of times – really special !!!!

 

 

Not Local Walks (2)

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Not at all local, although the eventual destination is not far from our other Not-Quite-Local walks such as Mount Hay (N-QLW 6).  We had to drive right up to Mt Victoria, then part-way down the Bells Line-of-Road to start this walk.  We joined some other very experienced Blue Mountains walkers: Bill (an ex-Yorkshireman), three ex-Brits (incl. David) an ex-Uzbekistani (Yuli) and three Australian born-and-bred walkers. A magnificent day out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                    The left-hand trace is from my Garmin watch, the right-hand map from Bill’s record of our day out

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d01pncpu1jmceqr/AAB1OyT0Zo1zPTRikhEwcCi0a?dl=0

To start with, the scenery is magnificent.  The tablelands (where the roads and settlements are) is cut into by steep-sided valleys, creating “walls” of sandstone, which might easily be 50-100m high, dropping down into valleys covered by gum-trees either side of the creeks.  There are fire-trails (access roads just cleared of trees but very rough) penetrating these areas.  The height of the tablelands makes the peaks look slightly less impressive, but Mount Banks, for instance, is over 1060 meters high.

We stopped on the way to look at these extraordinary patterns of erosion in the rock (Click to enlarge as ever).  Apparently as the sandstone is laid down, intermittently something gets into the layer which makes it harder to erode, hence the “ripple” effect.

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On the way down we were buffeted by seriously strong wind.  This photo. doesn’t really do it justice, but at times it was difficult to stand, let alone walk across rough ground.

 

A great day out.

 

Local Walks (21). Springtime in Glenbrook

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We are SO, SO lucky.
Springtime in Glenbrook is lovely, and our local walks are spectacularly beautiful at present, with the springtime flowers. 

 

This is a Waratah – the symbolic flower of New South Wales.

Most Europeans (including myself prior to coming here) do not think of Australia as a land of lovely flowers. Yet at times it is – see the previous ‘blog – and just at present the local bushland is at its floral best, I believe.

The waratah flower is about the size of a rose, and is always some shade of red.  As we walked through Glenbrook Gorge this week there were quite a few of them, as well as the other flowers shows in the previous ‘blog.

 

 

 

 

As we walked into the creek, we walked along one of the many paths we now realise exist in our local countryside, purely for recreation: apparently in the early railway tourism days, all the local townships competed to attract tourists, constructing paths and staircases for walkers to use to see the valleys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are some beautiful little creeks feeding onto the  main one.

 

 

 

Some more pictures of Waratahs.