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.

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.

Following Bob’s example, I based the model on the chassis of the N-scale Plymouth switcher made by Bachmann. I however have also seen a model that was based an N-scale diesel locomotive made by Fleischmann.
Modelling the 3D model in my CAD program only took me a couple hours. I have not added al details yet, but decided to order it from Shapeways already … to do a test fitting and to see if I measured the chassis correctly. All I have to do now, is to be patient and to wait for about two weeks for the printed model to arrive.

If you are looking pictures and more information about these Bundaberg-Jenbach diesel locomotives, just visit Lynn Zelmer’s site.