The Flimsy OUR OCTOBER GATHERING

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1 Volume 2, Issue 11 October 2011 The Flimsy The Newsletter of Division 2 of the NMRA AR OUR OCTOBER GATHERING With our All-Powerful Leader absent without leave and having taken his dog and whip with him, there was a corresponding drop in attendance at David O Hearn s with only 14 fronting up for today s meeting. The daunting challenge of keeping the meeting in order had been delegated to the hapless Peter Dinham as Acting Unterführer. Our Intrepid Leader s excuse that he had to be at Tumbarumba today for his grandson s deb ball was unsurprisingly greeted with derision and scorn. Down at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos! (For full text, see page 5 in this newsletter.). Jeez! What sorta mugs does he take us for? While imaginative excuses from others for their absence today were duly examined and ripped apart, none were savaged quite as heavily as our Noble Leader s. Announcements Peter Dinham read us some titbits from the recent meeting of Divisional Superintendents in Sydney. All attended in person except for New Zealand who used Skype. Clearly these periodic meetings are worthwhile, bringing thoughts together from the different Divisions. And the Divisions are indeed different some are large, others very small, some are concentrated in a city, others are widespread, and so on. We will hear more on this Sydney meeting from our Fearless Leader at our own November meeting, and he will then be called upon to justify his Seven Star hotel accommodation in Sydney. The firm decision has been made by NMRA Australasian Region that the 2013 Convention will be in Canberra. The 2012 Convention is at the NSW Central Coast. A couple of positions remain vacant on our meetings calendar for Intending hosts please respond direct to our Illustrious Leader. The venue for our meeting on Saturday 10 December is still under consideration and is yet to be announced. Watch this space! The thought arose that it might be handy to have a back-up venue (e.g. Hellenic Club or Southern Cross Club) that could be called into play at short notice if ever needed. For further consideration. (By Editor: It will be at Viv Brice s place) There was some lively discussion on whether the recent and not very polite exchange of s between two of our members on the subject of absence from meetings should be published in The Flimsy. Those concerned should of course remain nameless since they are Graeme Hodges the First and our Magnificent Leader. Graeme pushed hard for open publication, but unfortunately the final decision is up to the Editor of The Flimsy who is... guess who! (By Editor: I left the second paragraph above in, Graeme!) Gerry Hopkins s recent visit to Canberra resulted in modelling work by Jess Brisbane, John Payne, Stephe Jitts and John Prattis being assessed and successfully graded. The numbers for this activity with Gerry were reduced by several members being at the Bungendore model railway exhibition that same weekend. Our Acting Unterführer rebuked John Bullen for desertion, having noted his full-time presence at Bungendore with a Swiss layout from Sydney. After pointing out that this Swiss layout won both of Bungendore s two major prizes, John tactfully enquired as to how many prizes were won by the exhibit where our Acting Unterführer was stationed. Abrupt change of subject back to Gerry Hopkins and the NMRA Achievement Program, after noting how nice it was to see the John Bullen was back after at last running out of lame excuses for his absences. Continued on page 2)

2 David O Hearn suggested that we could perhaps work as a mutually assisting group towards gaining Achievement Program (AP) awards, e.g. turnout construction towards qualification as Civil Engineer. Gerry regarded this proposal as feasible, so David has invited those interested to contact him and he will organise dates and venue. (By Editor: Interestingly, this same suggestion was also raised at the recent Division Superintendents meeting in Sydney and met with general support). Stephe Jitts remarked that Gerry had been very helpful in his advice on wagon modification. Altogether a most valuable visit despite the low numbers involved. Show & Tell John Bullen spoke on his and Yvonne s recent visit to Switzerland, which included a German organised railway tour. The German tour firm LGB Tours had advertised their Swiss tour in the two countries considered most likely to be interested, namely Germany and USA. This attracted 15 Germans, 10 Americans and 2 Australians. But when the tour assembled in Zürich, there were only 15 Germans and 2 Australians. Individually, all the Americans had pulled out very late, forfeiting their deposits. Two principal reasons were cited fear of terrorism and shortage of money. Now down to a party of only 18 (8 couples, 1 adult son and the tour leader), the tour went ahead most successfully. At the conclusion of this excellent tour, each couple was given an LGB wagon in G scale. Everyone in the tour party had a G scale model railway layout at home, so this was a most appropriate gift (and would have been worth over $400 if available in Australia). John proudly displayed this latest LGB acquisition a 3-axled Swiss Federal Railways Brünigbahn baggage coach of the 1920s, almost 50 cm long. It will look magnificent on John & Yvonne s Christmas G scale layout and will go perfectly with their existing rolling stock. John also mentioned the unexpected success of the trivial Australian gifts he and Yvonne took with them to give to their fellow tourists and to helpful hotel staff. At Sydney airport you can buy miniature koalas by the tubefull for less than $10 for a tube of a dozen. The koalas legs are spring-loaded so they grip a finger, a pen or a jacket lapel. Each koala holds an Australian flag and wears an Australian jacket. Very cheap, but also very distinctive and they do make a big hit overseas. Rob Nesbitt displayed his Loco Of The Month, this time a Porter backwoods miniature loco at On30 scale, from Select-a-kit with a Bachmann motor. Rob considered that the kit quality and its assembly instructions were not good, a comment echoed in on-line forums. It took Rob about 3 weeks to assemble, but despite the odd difficulty in assembly, the finished product runs well. See forum/topic.asp?archive=true&topic_id=7453 Graeme Hodges spoke about the HO scale nostalgic Bulline (i.e. Bull Line!) rolling stock developed by John Allen (Gorre & Daphetid RR) and Whit Towers (Alturas & Lone Pine RR). These stock cars are produced by Athearn and distributed by the NMRA and were aimed squarely at deflating the stuffed shirts of over-serious modellers. See Public_Store/index.php? cpath=28&oscsid=sov3st5l9iplndguk2iakpdgq1 John Prattis spoke on his recent attendance at the NMRA Convention at Noble Park (near Dandenong). The effort of going there was well worthwhile, thanks to several useful clinics. Layout visits were by self-drive tours. John Bullen mentioned the latest from Märklin, a complete train set aimed at ages 3 to 103. It has magnetic push-together pull-apart couplings, runs on any HO gauge track you like to run it on, is remotely operated by a hand-held infra-red controller, and has remote control of starting, variable speed, stopping, headlights, and sound. Sound effects (Continued on page 3) 2

3 include horn, running noise, station announcements, and door closing with electronic warning. Together with an oval of Märklin C-Track, the entire set costs only 40! The track alone is worth nearly that. Being battery powered, it runs sweetly on Grandpa s cherished DCC layout too. And of course it is readily expandable as its owner matures. For an instructional demonstration by a proud young owner, see v=nq503xjftfg&feature=player_embedded The Main Show With the excellent assistance of PowerPoint and his large screen TV, David O Hearn introduced us to Making Steel, the theme of the model railroad he is building. David had decided to escape from the general style of Australian model railroading and to do something different. Inspired by what he saw at the NMRA Convention in Hartford, Connecticut, two years ago, David has settled for a modular layout designed around steel production. There will be two steel industry modules with a main line running through them both. Much of this material is available from Walthers and from Auscision and Austrains. David has sought to make use of modern technology for special effects such as day/night lighting, taking advantage of LED ribbon lighting now available. See LED-Ribbon-Flexible-LED-Lighting-12v-s/39.htm. David led us through the steel making process, with particular reference to his Ashland Iron & Steel Blast Furnace'. See productinfo/ David also spoke on rolling mills, rolled steel, and HO scale ingots and moulds. The best reference book on this whole subject is Dean Freytag s The History, Making and Modeling of Steel. See or Modeling-Steel/dp/ For further information and some excellent model layout photos, see At the conclusion of an interesting and informative presentation we adjourned for afternoon tea. After tea we went downstairs to view David s many layouts in different stages of construction, including his new steel industry models. When complete this will be a most impressive layout hopefully ready to be on the layout tour list for the NMRA Convention in two years time. z Some of David s specialised rolling stock 3

4 Some of the October Attendees: Lyndal Mitchell, Brian Thomas, Stephe Jitts. Rob Nesbitt, Fran Thomas, David Low, Wal Pywell, John Prattis, Ken Macleay and Peter Dinham s legs Bungendore Model Railway Exhibition by Viv Brice The second annual Bungendore Model Railway Exhibition was held over the weekend of 15/16 October in the town of Bungendore, about twenty minutes outside Canberra. The exhibition is organised by the Canberra Monaro N Scale Group ( in conjunction with the Bungendore Rotary Club. It being the Bungendore Markets day weekend, Australian Railway Historical Society was also involved as they provided trains (in 1:1 scale) for trips from Canberra to Bungendore - railcar on Saturday and steam on the Sunday! It is a small exhibition, still in its infancy, but it has promise and the combination of model trains and a real train proved very popular. Combining it with the local Market day would seem to be most appropriate and attendance was well over the 1000 mark. I have uploaded a few photos from the exhibition at sets/ /. Another of our members, Jess, also uploaded a few at photos/jess_narra/tags/bungendoreexbn/. It was most noticeable that a few layouts had forgotten that one of the key features of model railway layouts at exhibitions is action keep the public interested several layouts had either very few trains running or times when no trains were running, and that is disappointing. On the plus side, Grishun, the Swiss Railways layout had trains popping in and out of tunnels on several levels, and the Hills Club of Sydney were running almost prototypical length trains (multiple locos and 60 or so coal cars) z Just to show that it s not only the prototype that has problems with tight overhead clearances when running double stack trains!! 4

5 AMRA Exhibition Liverpool By Viv Brice The AMRA 2011 Model Railway exhibition was held at the E. G. Whitlam Centre in Liverpool over the long weekend of 1, 2 & 3 October. I arrived at around 2:00pm on Saturday and had no trouble finding a parking space, which from previous visits either indicates better organised parking (which it was) or fewer visitors (which I m not sure about). Inside, it just didn t seem as packed out as previous visits although those had always been on Saturday mornings so the comparison might not be valid. As for the layouts, there was the usual wide selection, although a couple of holes indicated a couple of no-shows unfortunate. The layouts were of course predominantly models of NSW Railways but that is not surprising given the exhibitions location and background. Some of the layouts were definitely showing their age and the range of prototypes seemed smaller than usual. The usual vendor stalls were there, plus a couple that I d not seen before. The NMRA had a stand and it turned out to be very good for attracting possible new members. The stand was complete with a mini-layout by Ken Scales MMR as seen in the accompanying picture. I took some other pictures of the exhibition, and these can be seen on Flickr at with/ /. However, these photos are biased towards showing how various layouts handle their ends to provide some inspiration (or otherwise) to the division s HO layout group. Overall, I felt the exhibition did not quite live up the standards of previous years. Overall, a trifle disappointing. z TUMBARUMBA NATIONAL ANTHEM (by John O Grady, alias Nino Culotta) I was down the Riverina, knockin' 'round the towns a bit, And occasionally resting with a schooner in me mitt, And on one of these occasions, when the bar was pretty full And the local blokes were arguin' assorted kind of bull, I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way. It's only in Australia you would hear a joker say: "Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven't seen ya fer a week, And yer mate was lookin' for ya when ya come in from the creek. 'E was lookin' up at Ryan's, and around at bloody Joe's, And even at the Royal, where 'e bloody NEVER goes". And the other bloke says "Seen 'im? Owed 'im half a bloody quid. Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did - Could've used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze, Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos." Now the bar was pretty quiet, and everybody heard The peculiar integration of this adjectival word, But no-one there was laughing, and me - I wasn't game, So I just sits back and lets them think I spoke the bloody same. Then someone else was interested to know just what he got, How many kanga-bloody-roos he went and bloody shot, And the shooting bloke says "Things are crook -the drought's too bloody tough. I got forty-two by seven, and that's good e-bloody-nough." And, as this polite rejoinder seemed to satisfy the mob, Everyone stopped listening and got on with the job, Which was drinkin' beer, and arguin', and talkin' of the heat, Of boggin' in the bitumen in the middle of the street, But as for me, I'm here to say the interesting piece of news Was Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos. Ken Scales demonstration layout at the NMRA Stand at AMRA 2011, available for drive-yourself with a demonstration of DCC My favourite end the trestle and bridge of Dungog Useful Websites - A great selection of American billboards from the 40 s, 50 s and 60 s. Copies are for sale but the website images are ideal for N or HO scale models - A growing collection of photos of US boxcars - The website of the Great Western Railway in UK. The museum is located in Swindon, in some of the original buildings of the GWR works there. - Keystone Crossings the home of all things Pennsy, either on this site or on one of the many links contained therein. 5

6 From the Editor: C mon, people, this is YOUR newsletter don t let it die. I need your photos for the back page anything will do so long as it s your work and railroad related. I also want some websites that you find interesting you re soon going to get bored with Pennsy sites! Gerry Hopkins visit was much appreciated and I d like to extend our thanks to him for this. The AP is an important aspect of membership of the NMRA and the presence and advice of out region s AP Chair was most helpful Thanks, Gerry. Viv div2sup@nmra.org.au National Model Railroaders Association Australasian Region Division 2 ACT Bringing model railroading to you News Our next meeting is at Brad Hinton s abode on Saturday, 19 November at 2:00 pm. Forthcoming events include our last meeting of the year on 10 December, which will now be held at Viv Brice s home, and our Christmas dinner on 8 December Disclaimer: Any resemblance between characters in this newsletter and real model railroaders is purely intentional but no offence whatever is intended. Only the facts may have been altered to protect the guilty. Every reader has the right of reply and we look forward to publishing them! Seen near Burnie, Tasmania in 2004 quick, where s the coupler height gauge! (Viv Brice) 2 Tbfpmox # # 6