Author Archives: Koala Creek

A man of his word

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I had to dig around in my memory a bit …but I believe it was at the beginning of 2010, that I ordered an N-drive chassis from  N-Drive Productions. Although Neville Kent and his small company fell into a quite some hardship in 2010 and 2011, he kept his promise and delivered the 12 mm short wheelbase chassis this week, together with one of his new motor bogies.

n-drive

They’re great little runners and will act as the base for a couple of future projects. The 12 mm short wheelbase chassis will power a 0-4-2t Fowler made by Chivers Finelines. Although Roger Chivers stopped producing the kits himself, they are now being made by by Five79 (owned by his son Matthew) and are available via Parkside Dundas. The motor bogie will power something completely different … a Backer & Rueb steam tram … which has nothing to do with my Queensland tramway. I just like those little buggers.

Just a bit of noise

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I always wondered if it would be possible to add sound to a small HOn30 layout. Wouldn’t it be great to hear the puffing sound of a small 13 ton Shay passing by? Unfortunately it will be hard to fit a speaker in an HOn30 locomotive. So, what options are there?

DZ125 in Shay

First of all, I should go digital … I know, it sounds a bit scary, as it means that I will have to fit DCC decoders in my models. With small decoders like the Digitrax DZ125 or the CT-Elektronik DCX74z, it should be possible and as you can see from the image above, the DZ 125 just fits in an N-scale Shay … so should definitely fit in mine. Furthermore, I will have to find some kind of “under-the-table” digital sound system, that will be able to handle the sound of my locomotives.

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Testing, testing, …

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Well, here it is … the first test print of the Jenbach. As always, I cleaned it with acetone and added a couple of layers of Tamiya primer. Once it had fully dried, I did a quick test fit on the Bachmann chassis and bumped into my first problem. The printed body fits nice and snug over the chassis, the air tanks however are a bit too wide to slide over the side frames.

img002 - first test print

So, I sawed them off and did another test fitting. As you can see from the image above it fits quite nice, but there are some issues with the 3D-print itself. First of all, the lower sides of the cabin are bent quite a bit. It’s a known issue with FUD from Shapeways, caused by the fact that they are thin and not supported. This can easily be corrected by making them a bit thicker, so I will change that. The second issue however is a bit more serious.

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Building a Jenbach

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The Bundaberg-Jenbach was the first Australian built diesel locomotive being used for the sugar cane tramways.The Bundaberg Foundry built them under licence from Jenbacher Werke of Austria and was successful in selling two of them.The first locomotive was delivered to North Eton Sugar Mill in 1953 and the second in 1954.

jenbach - bachmann chassis

Bob Dow, a railway modeller from Brisbane, has a great construction article on his site of an HOn30 model of one these Jenbach locomotives. Being a lazy modeller myself, I decided to simplify things and started working on a 3D model. As with every model however, you first need to find a chassis and then base the model on the actual size of the chassis … trying it the other way around doesn’t really work.

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Wow!

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While browsing the web, I discovered a great site . It’s called Weston Langford Railway Photography and contains a huge amount of pictures of Australian railway scenes, taken between 1961 and the current day by the well known railway enthusiast, Weston Langford. I did a search on Moreton and found about 20 pictures that were taken on the 22nd of November in 1966. Inspirational stuff for modellers Australian sugar cane railways!

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The image above shows ‘Eudlo’ uncoupling loaded sugar cane trucks near the main line junction, before backing up to take on water at the Bli Bli water tank.