Category Archives: General

Rows of cane

Posted on by

Based on the picture in my previous post, I placed some questions about the planting, growing and harvesting of cane. Below you can find the answer of one of the members of the Australian Narrow Gauge Yahoo group … it’s a great story to read and a very helpful guide for sugar cane newbies like me …

cane train

The Farmal M tractor indicates that the scene is set in the ’50s which is when I grew up on a cane farm outside Mackay. Cane growing was a complex and very regulated business but I will keep this brief.

Cane was planted between March and June depending on the wet season that year. In our area the wet season started the last week in January. However no-one, except maybe Lennox Walker, knew if it would last a day, a week, a month, or 5 months.

Continue reading →

New design

Status

Unfortunately I had to abandon the 3-column theme that I used for the Koala Creek blog for more than a year. Due to the latest update to the WordPress back-end, the old theme was not working correctly any more, so I had to start working on a new one … and this is what I came up with. Hope you guys like it …

It finally arrived!

Posted on by

As already mentioned in my previous post, Shapeways is now offering a new material called Frosted Ultra Detail … or better known as FUD in the Shapeways community. According to the specs sheet, FUD offers the same detailing possibilities as the material that was used by printapart.com. As a test, I placed a FUD order about a month ago …

shapeways order 01

Due to the overwhelming success of FUD, they unfortunately could not make the promised 10 working days for delivery … but what the hack, it finally arrived today! As you can see all parts arrived nicely packed in separate bags and the quality of the details are superb. The material itself has an icy look to it and is probably the reason why they call it Frosted. As for the parts that I have ordered, I believe that they came out very well.

Continue reading →

Long Time Comin’

Posted on by

For those of you who have been waiting for an update on my HOn30 Shay … this one has been a long time comin’. I have not been spending much time on it, because I am building a diorama of the Dutch Inlet Canning Company. I however also had issues with my 3D-printing service. First of all they increased the material cost and secondly they increased the shipping cost.

shapeways

You can imagine that sending over test parts for fitting purposes, became a bit too expensive. Fortunately Shapeways, a well known 3D-printing service introduced a new high detail material just before Easter. They named this material Frosted Ultra Detail and the specs come very close to the material that was used by the old printing service. So I started designing parts for the Shay again … and will make them available online in the near future. 

The Dutch Inlet Canning Co.

Posted on by

Man, I just noticed that my last post was over three months ago … way too long. So what have I been up to since the end of November last year? As mentioned last time, I decided to enter the diorama contest of Eurospoor 2011. I finalised the design of the layout (which you can find at the end of this post) and finished my first Craftsman kit.

dm053

The Moose Air Lines cabin is based on the Dill’s Market by American Model Builders Inc.. I changed the paint scheme and have replace the standard roofing with corrugated metal roofing made by Rusty Stumps Scale Models. It’s great stuff that I will surely use for the structures on the Koala Creek layout.
I’ve now started working on the first building of the cannery , which will be based on the  Whalen Apiaries kit van Fos Scale Models.

Continue reading →