Volume 7. Number 3 June 09 CLUB MEETINGS: EVERY THURSDAY. All Club Members Welcome. SECOND THURSDAY in the Month is the Committee Night. All meetings are now held at the Clubrooms (except when otherwise stated) at 62 James Road, Te Puna. This is our new clubrooms James Road is the first road on the right past the Te Puna School on Te Puna Road Start Time 1930hrs or 7.30pm. THIRD THURSDAY in the Month is Train Running Night President : John Eden Secretary: John Hutton Treasurer: Gordon Walker Vice President: John Bracey Cheque Signatory: Gavin Woodward Publicity: TBA Editor: Gordon Walker Special Warning. If you are tempted into buying the Flying Scotsman beware to collect the lot 125 parts it will cost you well over $2000. As seen on TV. COLLECTORS FAIRS, EXPOS. & SWAPMEETS 2008 Queens Birthday Weekend Model X Hobby Show Recreation Centre Henderson. 18 th April Collectors Fair Akorangi at Glenfield Memorial Hall North Shore. 11 th June Annual General Meeting. 11/12 th July 14 th Taupo Hobby Expo Events Centre. -do- Alpine Energy Model Railway Expo Timaru 8/9 th August Model Train Show Masterton Town Hall. Always check to confirm dates & times etc. Layout Reports. DCC Layout. #1 This will be a static layout within the club for the boys to play!!. The major landscaping has started and at present after turnout repairs is now operational again. There is still a requirement to connect the yard to the Locomotive Depot.. Foreman of Works for this project is Colin Gray. Recent observations suggest that there is a lot of changes to the track going on.
DCC Layout #2. Deleted from the inventory Page 2 British Layout. Fully operational. General maintenance only. Street lighting has been done, New addition re a coalmine has been added. Thomas. Fully operational, only requires basic maintenance which is being done. N Gauge. Operational. General maintenance. Phoenix City is now fully operational Presidents layout has gone home. New British Layout. Things are going very well the Baseboards and backdrop all done. Track testing being done. Points are being linked to the ground frame. A bit of fine-tuning going on at present getting everything running without derailing etc. Thanks to the Brothers Butcher and Peter D. Seen a Britannia and a Virgin Set going around the track. 4472 was used for testing in the past two weeks. Marklin. The layout is operational. Has been smartened up somewhat. Drive a Train Exhibit. An 8 x 4 layout 2 ovals within each other plus 2 sidings. In storage, operational. British Models recently released. Bachmann Models; LNWR Super D G2/G2a 0-8-0 Freight Loco September 2008 A prize for the LMS modeller. OO Scale. LNER B17 Footballer N Scale 4-6-0 September 2008. This Months Question see Page 7. Last months Quiz. 1. The answer a P2 rebuilt to A2 2-8-2 to 4-6-2 6 locomotives most notable being Cock of the North 2. Notes from the Committee. Lighting to be installed to illuminate access to the building. AGM in June. Turn Up Kevin Smith is doing a great job in setting up the library. Any purchase exceeding a value of $20, prior approval MUST be sought. Request Notebook in office. MORE ON SCT LOGISTICS In last months talking points I gave some details on SCT. The April 2009 Australian Model Railway Journal has a further article with a few details I did not know. The order for SCT class locos was increased from 11 to 15. The 6000 tonne train was on the 22 march 2008, it ran from Parkes to Perth and consisted of 71 wagons and measured 1754 metres. It was hauled by 4 of the company s earlier G class locos. The regular trains now are hauled by two of the new SCT class locos, are 1600m long and weigh 5,500 tonnes westbound and same length but 2,500 tonnes eastbound. They include a crew car and a containerised in-line fuel tanker to reduce the number of stops. They have also developed Multi-freighter vans and another nearly 6m high van called a Greater-freighter for the Adelaide to Perth run. For the future they have purchased land at Beaudesert where Queensland Rail? are to build a major marshalling yard near Brisbane so it would seem they will be competing on the Eastern Seaboard run. John Hutton.
Page 3 MODEL RAILWAY MANUFACTURING. We have trains, we run trains, and we buy trains. In the past they were made by Hornby in England, Marklin in Germany, Roco in Austria and the list goes on. But do they still come from those countries? Most brands today are sourced from Chinese manufacturers e.g. Kader Holdings and Sanda Kan. It was announced in November 2008 that Kader Holdings had purchased Sanda Kan. Kader Holdings is also the parent company of Bachman Industries. Prior to the purchase Kader was one of the largest manufacturers of model railway products. Kader Products was formed in Hong Kong in 1948. In 1952 it began making model trains for Bachman Industries which Kader purchased in 1981. So is any brand better than any other today? If it s labelled Made in China it probably comes out of the same factory, possibly even the same motors, wheels and gears. The difference is possibly in the detailing. John Hutton CLEANING SOOT As related by Des Jones to John Hutton. Jan. 2009 In the mid 1980 s the central section of the NZ main trunk railway was electrified. This project involved major upgrading of the infrastructure. Besides the obvious things like straightening tight curves, new bridges, stringing the caternary wires between thousands of new posts one of the unseen projects was to clean eight decades of soot from the tunnels around the Raurimu spiral and the number 11 tunnel to the south. The tunnel project involved lowering the tunnel floors for extra height and it was found the soot accumulation on the top amounted to another 200mm. Des was involved with a firm called Speedee Waterblasting and his contract involved cleaning the roof and walls of the tunnels prior to earthwork. Des s truck was fitted with an industrial waterblaster powered by a large diesel engine planted on top of a flat wagon. This machine supplied each lance with 30 litres per minute at 3000psi. The train consisted of a loco, probably Da, followed by flat wagon with an air scrubber to remove the loco exhaust fumes. This also separated them from the loco noise, then a tank wagon of water, a flat wagon with the truck and another air scrubber, another tank wagon then a flat wagon with the work party then a van. The various separations also kept the operators away from the engine noise. On the operator s flat wagon they had a long lance that was mounted to the deck, this was swivelled back and forth to clean the roof. The sides were cleaned with hand held guns. The workers were enclosed in protective suits but still were very dirty at the end. They were based in Taumarunui and worked at night between Christmas and New year and had to be back in Taumarunui by 8am to clear the track. Each man worked a 20 minute shift with the lance at the beginning of the day getting down to 2 or 3 minutes before swapping over. At the end the guards van was taken out of use because it was so damaged with soot and dirt and damage from bits of concrete.
THE JUDAS LOG TRUCKS. Page 4 During the construction of the Kawerau to Murapara line in 1953. The Ministry of Works were responsible for the site works but the NZR did the plate laying. There was tremendous pressure to get the line complete for the mill opening and the NZR worked from both ends. To get the rail from the Kawerua end materials were carried on empty returning log trucks to where needed. Eventually many of these trucks would have been displaced by trains. It is worth noting the "Forest Service" had considered Papamoa as one of the sites of what is now the Kawerau Mill There is a full article in issue 293 of the NZ Railway Observer and well worth reading. John Hutton Letters to the Editor. A NEW CLUB LAYOUT FOR SHOW PURPOSES Over recent months there has been talk of building a new show layout. This started during discussion on purchase of Russell s NZR layout. Gavin suggested we build one and I think it has gone from there. I agree. I know we have some members who are negative in their thinking, I also suspect we may have members who still belong to the flat earth society. I was reminded of this when I visited the Brisbane Model Train show in May 2009. I agree we should build anew. I believe we should not build like we have in the past either layout type or method of construction. There are better ways and ideas. There are alternatives. Let us think laterally. We want other clubs and the public to say WOW that is great. John Hutton May 2009 THINGS THAT CROSS MY MIND. Somewhere in this article are pieces of wisdom. Over many years I have been involved in and done many things. Some that come to mind are bringing up a family along with home ownership, gardening, concreting paths and walls, building fences, sheds and painting. Outside interests such as boat ownership, boat building and rebuilding, hobby farming, car repairs, caravans, fishing, whitebaiting Amateur radio with masts and componentry, the list can go on and on. To be a Kiwi you do every thing possible yourself. When you come to a need for something if possible you make it and frequently to do that you have to learn a new skill for example electronics, welding, weed control and business. Work was frequently an interruption in my activities. However over the years I have accumulated a considerable workshop and to participate in these activities a collection of useful things. Over the last 10 years we have made two house changes each time halving the size of our house until we now live in what we call our two bedroom seaside
Page 5. Bach. But Noeline is quick to point out that it came with the large garage workshop in which at one stage I had 3 cars. In the last move one of my energetic sons returned from overseas for a few days (He quickly moves mountains) to help us shift house. He ordered, despite me protesting a large skip bin and filled it with good useful things I had saved for making things in my retirement. While I still have a large shed full, it has upset me that I have since had to buy items for projects to replace what he discarded. I am being warned that the next move will be to Australia and furniture, clothes, bedding etc will take precedence in the 20ft container I am going to be limited to. I gather I will be allowed to take some trains. Everything else regardless of value will go to the tip. What am I coming to? Well sometimes we have to make judgements about possessions that sometimes are greatly prized that have cost a lot or been constructed with much care and effort. This time might have come to many of us at the train club. It might also be a blessing in disguise. Layouts. Why would we want to keep a layout? To run trains on, or to show at an annual show or hoard for ever? How should we decide on which existing layout to keep? I say they should be light and easy to handle and have a purpose in the design. John Bracey said after the Hamilton show there was a layout there with no detailing and should not have been there. For the public s perspective there should be a variety of themes or countries. For young peoples perspective they should be computer controlled. I will suggest if we are sensible at least one third of the layouts are dismantled carefully or given away. By all means retain the best of the reusable components and dump the rest. That we have only the one HO, two rail, show layout, with a combination of DC and DCC on the ONE layout. That the DCC section is state of the art digital control of everything and computer also set up for the public to view and see working and wide curves. The DC section to the public would be indistinguishable to the DCC section. Only the controllers look different. Horrors, I hear people say it will not work. Well that is rubbish. Well if others can choose types of scenery and colours that can be seen in several countries,to runs a variety of ultinational trains, so can we. I digress. TEMPIS FUGIT. I LOVE MY JOB Just consider how lucky you are. The poor man but I still laughed LOVE MY JOB If you don t laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma! This is even funnier when you realize it s real! Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.5 on FM dial in Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won. Read his letter below. ~Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it s not so bad after all.
Page 6 Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back o f my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It s like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn t stick to it, however, the crack of my ass was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my ass. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say, I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn t shit for two days because my ass was swollen shut. So, next time you re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your ass. Now repeat to yourself, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. Whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!! Life isn t tied with a bow, but it s still a gift. Quote of the recession so far: THIS IS WORSE THAN A DIVORCE. I VE LOST HALF MY MONEY AND STILL HAVE MY WIFE. This Months Quiz. Prior to British Railway. Name the Big Companies associated with these Railway Stations in London? Euston, Kings X, Liverpool Str. Marylebone, St Pancras, Victoria, Waterloo and Paddington. In what year was the first non-stop run of The Flying Scotsman? Which Class of loco was the first Pacific wheel arrangement? NZ led the way!! Which Dance Band has quite a number of Railway themed tunes in its repertoire. It lost its leader in WW2? In what year was Ja 1271 built at Hillside Workshops?
Page 7 Riding the Cushions Believe it or not this is a Railway Term. In 1928 when the Flying Scotsman the train not the locomotive started non stop running between London and Edinburgh they introduced a corridor tender, so that crews could changeover on route. The relief crew would travel in the first compartment of the first coach and when the time came to changeover they would pick up their kit and go through the tender. Prior to changeover they had in fact were riding the cushions. In later years that practise proved too costly in wages so they did a crafty when the train was opposite 50A (York MPD) it would momentarily stop the old crew get off the new ones on and off it went. Going North it was on the racing strip 4 parallel tracks for 44miles York to Darlington they were allowed about 40 mins. Plenty of opportunity to make up for lost time. In the early days the trip took nearly 8 hrs (392.4 miles), York was 188miles from K X. Your Editor. Parting Shot My daughter is associated with this project, SH1 crossing the Mainline between Marton and Taihape at Ohingaiti. Photos courtesy of Susan Walker. Overlander heading North. Travellers on SH1 will be familiar with this place Xing Left 90degree turn cross the tracks and 90degree RH turn. Pub on the corner. And hardly anything else.! Gordon Yorkie Walker Your Scribe. See Appendix Page. Draft of the Annual Balance Sheet See Page *8 for a real bonus.
Page 8 Photo from Steam Railway Magazine. Now for the members who have been denied the pleasures of a REAL locomotive. This is it!! Peppercorn Class A1 in the livery as the first one built. (60114 W P Allen) Built at Darlington by the A1 Trust at a cost of 3.2 mill pounds. completed 2008. It was officially named by Prince Charles in York on February 19 th. The original batch was numbered 60114-60162 and unfortunately they were all scrapped, therefore the next in line is as numbered. The interesting thing the boiler was built to the original specs in the old East Germany, no-one in UK could handle the job. In the build all specifications were incorporated including alterations that occurred in service. The class were from the last CME of the LNER and actually came into service after British Railways was created 1 st January 1948. I have a Bachmann model 60158 Aberdonian which was shedded at my local MPD 37B Copley Hill which is in Leeds.