To my big surprise, I stumbled upon a couple of 1:87 models of Aussie cars at a European Model Railway exhibition this weekend. These little white metal gems have been manufactured by Weico Models in Victoria.

Although they do not fit the era of my layout, which will be situated in the mid 1930s, I could not resist buying them … one never knows if they will come in handy at a later date!
For those who have never seen these cars before, they’re Holdens … on the left is starts with a 1953 Holden FJ Panel Van, then a 1953 Holden FJ Sedan and on the right the most Australian one of them all – a 1958 Holden FC Ute.

One of the biggest challenges of modelling a tramway in a country that is located at the other side of the world, is building realistic scenery. The overall impression of the layout will have to convince the audience that they are looking at a village that’s located in Queensland. Unfortunately there are plenty of examples with a complete mismatch between the look of the layout and the location it is trying to depict. I really would like to prevent that my future layout will become one of those …

I presume that most of the structures on the layout will have to be scratchbuilt, but first of all I started looking for kit manufacturers that make typical Australian buildings, which will  fit my HOn30 layout located in Queensland.

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A great tutorial on painting a background for your layout, can be found at Dave Frary’s Trackside Scenery blog. Dave is an active professional  model railroad builder, photographer and instructor. His photos, plans and stories have appeared in Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman and many other publications.

There was also an interesting quote in the article

… In the next few months I’ll be building a sugar train railroad based in the Caribbean. It’ll be on some fictional island surrounded by lush jungle with evidence of past volcanic activity …

Wow, that sounds interesting … I will be following his blog with a lot of interest the coming months!