More Wagons.......

Wagons, Wagons, Wagons. Thats is where my modeling focus is at the moment.
While im waiting for the call from Hare and forbes to tell me my brand new lathe has arrived, ive been working on various jobs around the shed to get it set up and running.

With the number of wagons I own steadily increasing in numbers, storage of wagons had become a problem.
Until now.
A friend of mine has been moving workshops and on one of the days I was helping him move I was offered some shelving. At first I said no to the offer, But while driving between workshops I came up with a use for this shelving that was on offer to me.

My newly finished wagon storage solution.

The shelves have worked out perfect. With a small amount of additions and modifications to the shelves I now no longer have wagons rolling around on the workshop floor, and the toolbox, box of supplies and the box for the steam engine are all packed away and stored neatly. WIN WIN!

So now to the wagons......
The PV is allmost finished. It now has its first coat of paint and now only needs small jobs to complete it.

 First coat of paint on PV 675.

Also this weekend my brother welded up my LCH for me. I was going to weld it with my newly aquired aluminium welding skills but he wanted to do it.... Who was I going to argue with someone who does it all day????

                                                                        

Welded up LCH.

Tonight I fitted the axlebox's to the LCH. Now Im waiting on the lathe to show up so I can turn the wheels and axles for this.

Im also in the middle of modifing my new bumtruck. But that will be subject of another post.

Thats all for now. Tomorrow im off to Cootamundra for work. There is a 47 class that needs some work done to it.

Another running weekend.

Just last weekend I took 1248 for a run at a mates house in Western Sydney.
I allways look forward to my visits to this track because in my own personal opinion it is one of the best tracks around.
We arrived mid morning and once the engines were unloaded we spent the afternoon running around the track.
This run was the first run for my second S truck that I have been posting about over the last few months. The wagon ran well with no troubles at all. Not even a single derailment.
We all ran from mid morning saturday until the very early hours of Sunday morning.

I didnt take many photos as I was out driving most of the time but I will share a few that i did take.

3805 and 3819 wait for a train in the yard. Unfortunatly they didnt double head.

1248 enjoys a rest in the yard.

A line up of a couple of engines in the yard.

A mate of mine takes 1248 for a run up the hill.

My freight train as it stands at the moment.

5701 undergoing heavy load trials.

Now that this run has been and gone I can now take 1248 off the operational roster. At 35 years of age the poor old thing is starting to become a bit tired. I will also now be decomisioning 1248's driving truck. This has been the engines original driving truck and after reaching 35 years of age, it has reached the end of its useful life and will not be run again.

Today I made the trip over to Hare and Forbes to purchase my lathe. Unfortunatly there was none in stock, once it arrives in a few weeks I will be able to begin working through my full page of repairs and modifications for 1248.

While im here I might as well give a quick update on the PV. Body work has been completed and it is ready to enter the paint shops. However I might just build a new roof for it...... Im not 100% happy with it. We will see what happens.

I have alot of other side projects on the go as well at the moment. There is plenty going on. But they will be subjects of another post some other time.
Thats all for now.

Body Works and the Liverpool train show.

Over the last couple of nights ive managed to complete the body work for the Explosive van.
First I scribed in the lines to represent the doors and the timber work into the plywood sides of the van.

This afternoon after returning to mum and dads place from my trip out to the Liverpool model train show, I managed to glue on the railcraft door hinges and louver van door handles onto the body and now it really is starting to look like an explosive van!

 Body works complete.

PV 675.

Now Ill have to turn my attention to building the roof for it and setting up the running gear.

As I mentioned further up I visited the Liverpool Model Railway show today and as with previous years I attended it was worth the look. Plently of great layouts to see and lots of great things to buy. I had to keep myself from buying the new Austrains pack of a LHO guards van, KP Mail Van and FS pass car. I dont need a smaller scale to model in (however they would look great behind my trainorama 3245!). I was a bit disapointed that Austrains is only selling in 3 packs. Some of us out there only want to buy 1 FS or a guards van etc. 

Thats all for now.

Jason.

PV 675 taking shape.

The PV van is starting to come along nicely now. Since the last post on the van I have managed to get alot done, Here's what Ive done.

A couple of weeks back now I welded the underframe with my MIG welder (after changing the wire and gas). This came about from a discussion with my brother about welding alluminium with my MIG welder and we came to the conclusion that there would only be one way to find out if it would work...... HAVE A GO.
So I did. This was my first time welding aluminium and it wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. Ill have to buy some more S trucks so I can improve my alli welding skills.

Welded up underframe.



After I welded the underframe I then began to work on the body. I cut out the body sheets to size about 2 weeks ago and started to glue it together. Tonight I glued the last of the supports inside the body and that has finished building the body. Now I will have to turn my attention to detailing the body.

Completed Body ready for detailing.

Tonight I have also decided on the number for the PV. A while back I stumbled onto some information on the internet about the PV vans including a list of numbers that a few (maybe it was a complete number list???) PV vans were numbered. Using this list of PV van's I have decided to number mine PV 675.

Thats all for now.

Until next time.......

Name Change.

Just thought I might let everyone know Ive decided to change the name of my blog. Ive been thinking about it over the last week or so that the original name of the blog was a bit long and a mouthfull as well. So now we have The Waratah Railway Workshops.

Over the last 2 weeks or so Ive managed to get a large amount of work done to the PV Explosive Van. Once I return back Home after this weekend and get a little bit more work done on it I will give you all an update on my progress.

First Job in the new shed.

Its been a few weeks since Ive made a post so here goes.
Ive been very busy with moving here to the new house and working some very long hours with the new job.
Ive managed to partially set up the new workshop but its no where near organised yet!

Tonight I completed the first job in the new workshop. I made up a very simple tool to remove some stuck injector cones in an Injector.

To cut a long story short ive been having a fair bit of Injector trouble with my loco 1248.
At the easter AALS convention at Edgeworth I purchased two Injectors from a supplier that was selling various parts at a trade stand there.

The first injector was a Warrick Sandberg injector. I baught this one because Warricks injectors have an excelent reputation for reliability etc, So I figured I would buy this to hopefully solve all my injector trouble...... When I baught this injector from Oldmate with the trade stand he told me "That injector is untested and brand new but doesnt come with a test certificate like my ones do".
Anyways I tried the injector on my engine straight away......No go it didnt work.
So i fitted the other "cheep" injector and continued to keep running.

Now a few months have past and I happend to be speaking to Warrick and mentiond that I had purchased one of his injectors from Oldmate, and he replied "ive never sold him any of my injectors, let me see it" so he had a look and within seconds said "well I can tell you this is not brand new".
Im not impressed that Oldmate who had the trade stand has sold me second hand parts knowing they are second hand and tell me they are new.........

The Sandberg Injector.

Today I was speaking to Warrick about this injector and what could be wrong with it. He told me an idea of a way to get the stuck cones out to work toward getting to the bottom of the problem. So after work tonight i made up the little gadget to get the cones out.

Ive used a piece of scrap steel to clamp onto the cones to remove them without damage.

The injector cone remover gadget shown clamping a cone.



So now its apart tomorrow its back to the drawing board to work it all out.

During the week Ive also had various other parts turn up in the post for different projects that I have on the go. I had the rest of the Warm white LED globes for Lower (and maybe Upper) Quadrant signals, And the remaining parts that I was waiting for from railcraft for the PV.

Allthough only a couple of parts turned up I thought I might show you some of the parts ill be using on the Van.

PV parts from Railcraft.

Thats about all for now. I hope to keep moving with the PV soon. Id like to see it finished.

4 Wheelers

Well theres plenty going on at the moment.
On Thursday I had a phone call from the Real estate to say that my application has been approved. Tomorrow I go down there to sign all the papers and get the keys. The Waratah Wagon and loco shops (Western Division) can start setting up shop tomorrow.

This morning instead of packing box's of stuff for the move I decided I would attack the two Warrick Sandberg S trucks I have and do those last couple of jobs needed to finish them. One of the S trucks Ive had running for a while, but the second one has never hit the tracks yet.
This afternoon I fitted handbrake wheels and release's on both wagons as well as the shunters hand rails.

Handbrake fitted to the second wagon.

I attacked the second S truck first. The parts used for the handbrakes have come from Railcraft, and are excelent products. The handbrake wheel is lazercut from steel and the ratchet and handle are made from polyurathane.

The finished products on both wagons. Both are now fitted with handbrakes and shunters handles in the body.

The photo above best shows what I achieved today. As they say in the classics "a picture says a thousand words".

All that remains on both S Trucks now is a final coat of NSWGR wagon grey and lettering and numbers.

During some spare time last week I managed to get a few bits and pieces done on the PV underframe.

All 4 axlebox's have been filed to suit the w irons and all now fit. Just a few small bits need attention before the underframe can be sent to Oldmate Welding PTY LTD for welding (welding aluminuim is a bit beyond my welding skills).

         Allmost ready to go PV underframe.

The above photo shows the PV underframe. I have used railcraft axlebox's and bearings with Warricks S truck wheels and underframe and the combination of these is 100% PERFECT. The underframe needs no modifactions to recieve these axlebox's. All that you need to do to make them fit is file the axlebox's down a little and out where the box's slip into the W iron. Perfection.......

Well thats all for now..... The big move starts tomorrow........

Packing up.

Yesterday I flew back up to Qld and returned to Toowoomba to collect the remainder of my things and (most important of all) my XR6 ute.
Today I made a quick dash out to the outlaws place (thank god none of them were home) to finish up the PV van wheels, as I now loose access to a lathe until I buy my own. So today was the day the wheels had to be finished.

Completed PV wheels.

As I mentioned earlier on in the post I have returned to Toowoomba to pick up the rest of my gear that is at my girlfriends house. I now have a job back in the home land of NSW where I have begun working for a company that repaires and maintains diesel loco's for SSR and IRA.

I have spent the afternoon packing up the tools and material that I have in the shed and tomorrow Ill pack up the rest of my stuff in the house and load up the XR6 for a early morning departure on saturday for Sydney.

So next week its back the real estates where I hope to rent a house soon and set up the new Waratah Wagon and Loco works (Western Division).

The Prototype and the Model.

On the weekend that has just past I Travelled to Robertson on 3642 as apart of the NSWRTM's "Southern Highlander". It was a great trip a fun day was had by us service crew and the loco driver and fireman as well.

I managed to take a couple of photos in between attending to the needs of 3642.

3642 has been prepaired for the run to Eveleigh. 8.7.11

3642 has been watered, banked and shares the roads outside the LES at Eveleigh with Goodwin-Alco group's 4486 and 4473.

Goodwin-Alco's latest loco to return to trafic, 4464 poses with 3642 out the front of the LES.

Standing at Robertson 3642 has been serviced and is ready to return to Sydney via the south coast.

Well that was my weekend with the prototype. Now its time for the model. Hot off the press comes this photo of the latest tender progress. Here you will see that the floor pieces in the coal space have been cut out. Now its time for the fun part of tender construction. RIVITS.

Oldmate Lazercutting and sheet metal has been busy again more tender parts.

New floor in the coal space.

Thats all for now.

S Truck, PV and Tenders!

Theres been plenty going on since the last post.
Over the last few weeks Oldmate sheetmetal, Welding and Lazercutting has been busy programing various tender parts into the lazer cutter to further progress with the construction of our two tenders for a NSWGR 36 class.

 

Here we have the main tank and baffles cut out. Allthough the photo doesnt show it the holes for the rivits have been cut out as well.


Soon the remaining parts of the turret will be cut out and we can begin riviting both tender bodys.

There has been plenty of S truck progress since the last post. The S truck is comming close to completion,as it stands this afternoon there isnt much left to do on it.
All that remains on the S truck is: Drill holes in the knuckle couplers and fit to the wagon, Make a trip to bunnings to buy bolts to hold the couplers into the coupler pockets, Fit dummy hand brake wheels (this wont happen until later because those parts are in Toowoomba....) , final coat of paint and lettering and numbers. I think the photo below can best show progress.

Allmost finished! Wheels and axlebox's fitted.

We also cant forget the PV explosive van..... I now have the underframe parts for the PV. It is one of Warrick Sandbergs S truck Underframes. The parts will now have to be sent to Oldmate welding for welding before it can progress any further.

Underfame parts ready for welding.

Thats all for now. But I will leave you with this video i found on Youtube last night of me, my engine and freight train passing the cammera at hotpot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5rZ-iAUaZg

A wheely good time.

So over the last couple of days theres been a fair bit of wagon progress.
I had the task of getting at least the wheels for the S truck on axles, profile the wheels and turn down the axle ends ready for the bearings before the end of this week.
The reasion I have to have the S truck wheels finished this week is because im heading back down to mum and dads place in Sydney for about 2 weeks for various things.

Anyways the wagon has to go to sydney to join the fleet, even though it isnt finished yet I will be able to complete the rest of it in Sydney.

Well the plan was to fly down on saturday..... But the ash cloud has kinda brought an end to that for various reasions i will not mention here. So now tomorrow is a trip to Sydney on the XPT for me because its fairly important to be in Sydney this weekend.

Now back to the wheels. I spent a bit of time at the outlaws on Saturday and a part of Sunday arvo on the lathe making progress on the wheels. Ill let the photos do the talking.

This photo shows the disc wheels I have chosen to use under the S truck instead of the spoked wheels that came with the kit. It fits with the prototype S truck to have disc or spoked wheels so I decided the spoked wheels in the photo will go under the PV.
The Disc wheels came with a LCH kit I baught on ebay. The wheels were faced on both sides and bored in the centre ready to recieve axles. All i needed to was turn up axles! In the photo you will see the wheels have been fitted to the axles and I have faced and bored the spoked wheels.

In this photo I am heating up one of the spoked wheels on the BBQ so I can fit the wheel to the axle.

In this photo you will see the disc wheels are all profiled, finished and painted ready to go under the S truck. The next set of spoked wheels have been roughed out and the end set is un touched and ready for profiling.

Today I managed to get the first coat of colour onto the S truck.

Well thats all for now. I had better pack for my overnight trip on the XPT to Sydney tomorrow.

More Hotpot Photos.

Photos from the Hotpot run are starting to be posted on the Illawarra Live Steamers picture page.

The link to the picture page can be found here: http://www.ils.org.au/picturepage.shtml

I managed to find a couple of good photos of my engine and freight train on there and I will share them here.

This photo give those who have never been to hotpot what its all about. Scale freight trains and fellow model engineers having a yarn.

 

My engine 1248 and my small goods train in the yard.

Over the last couple of days ive been working on wheels for the S truck and the PV. I will post some photos later.

The PV begins.

Yesterday I couldnt get much done on the S truck so I decided to make a start on the PV explosive van body.
Originally I was going to build a ABV. For those who are playing at home the ABV was a 4 wheel van that was used by the NSWGR to transport Arnott's Biscuits around the state.
I had a drawing of a ABV blown up to scale and I was getting all the bits and pieces ready to start building the ABV when i came across this photo on facebook.

This PV is being rebuilt by railcorp apprentices at Eveleigh.

I came arcoss this photo and thought to myself....... 'I can build one of them". So its gone from there.

Yesterday I made a trip down to the local photocopy joint and got the drawing for the PV blown up to scale, and made a trip to bunnings to get some timber for the body.

I then spent the afternoon marking out the body on the new 3mm plywood and then roughly cut out the pieces.
I also had some left over 6mm marine ply left over from the KF flat wagon project so i will use this for the floor of the PV body.

 The PV body. On the left is the floor in marine ply the middle is the body sides and on the right the ends all marked out.

So tomorrow its off for another trip to the outlaws...... But that means I can turn up the wheels on the S truck and hopefully get them underneath it and make a start on the wheels for the PV.

Thats all for now.

HotPot 2011.

On the weekend just past myself and the girlfriend flew down to Sydney for the trip to Wollongong for the annual Hotpot Run.
The trip began on friday with a flight down from Brisbane to Sydney and a train trip to my mum and dads place to get a few things ready with 1248 (that now lives at my parents place again) and to load everything up to head out on Saturday morning.
The only way to describe the trip down to the gong is Wet and Rainy. I was thinking will it rain the whole time or wont it????
We arrived at the track and the steaming bays were FULL, No one was interested in leaving the steaming bays because of the rain. It took about 30 mins to get 1248 out of the ute and another hour to get a spot in the steaming bay just to light up!
Eventually the rain stoped and a few engines started leaving the steaming bays for a run.

Over all as with the previous Hotpot runs ive been to it was a great weekend to attend. I do think the rain did stop a few people from attending but.
I didnt get to take many photos but here is some I did.

My engine 1248 sits in the yard enjoying a rest.

Rodger Kershaw's latest engine 3510.

Looking forward to next years hotpot.

Well thats all for now. Its time to finish my second S truck and start on my next project. A NSWGR PV explosive van.

Well its happend.

So I finally decided to sign up to one of these blog doodads. I thought it might be a good idea so I could keep track of a few blogs ive been keeping a eye on and reading over the last few years. Over recent times while ive been unemployed ive been spending a bit of time infront of the laptop looking at various railway things on the internet, and my reasearch has often ended up reading a little bit of info on one of these blog things.
Ive found that these blogs even though they are dedicated to modeling in HO, they give me alot of inspirartion for my modeling in 5 inch gauge because the prototype is the same.... The New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR).

Why did I sign up for one of these blog things? Its because ive found that im having alot of trouble keeping up with all these interesting blogs, So i thought well Ill sign up to blogger so maybe it will be easier to keep up these blogs ive been enjoying reading.
Why the Waratah Wagon and Locomotive Workshops you ask???
Here goes the story...........
6 months ago I moved in with my darling girlfriend, it wasnt really a planed thing to do... It just happend.
At the time I was living in Brisbane, This was supost to be a short term thing for 6 months and at the end of the six months the job was going to move back to Sydney (where I have grown up and lived for 23 years), however this was not to be...... at the end of the 6 months of living in brisbane there was no end in sight for a return home and I learned my employer was running into money problems so I was made redundant.

So now with no job and more stuff than I came to brisbane with 6 months ago I couldnt just pack up all my stuff in brisbane and move back home to fantastic Sydney. It was decided I would pack up everything from the room i was renting in a house in Brisbane to get out of the house and not pay any more rent. At the time the decision was made my 5" gauge engine was safely living at my place of work and I could come back and get it once i had moved out of my house in brisbane and into my girlfriends house in Toowoomba.
This plan was no to be.......

To cut a long story short, I was packing everything up at the hosue in brisbane where i rented a room when i learned of the wall of water that smashed through toowoomba and the lockyer valley and cut the warrago highway and my passage out of brisbane. I had planed on leaving brisbane that afternoon, that was before the floods happend. On the tuesday while waiting for the roads to open I learned that they powers that be were predicting a flood in brisbane that night and that the workshop that my 5"gauge engine had lived in for 6 months was in a suburb that was "under extreame threat of flooding" so apon learning this I rushed out to get my engine from the workshop. It Turns out the workshop didnt go under but the water was at the back door!
Anyways after 5 days of being stuff in Brisbane with a ute loaded with my steam loco a few wagons and most of my gear from my room minus the big things like bed and tables etc i made it into toowoomba after a 5 hour drive via beudesert. It was on arrival here in Toowoomba I said to the Girlfriend "so were am I going to put the steam engine????"  It was decided I was able to take over the garage and set up in there.

So anyways back to why the Waratah Wagon and Locomotive Workshops..... I have been building a few wagons for my engine to pull around and had put various photos on facebook of my progress of the wagons and had captiond the photos with captions like "KF wagons take shape in the Newtown Wagon Works" just as a bit of a joke. Newtown is the suburb we live in here in Toowoomba.
As I type out this blog I am working on returning home to Sydney after 12months of living in Queensland.
I have a couple of job applications on the go back home and I thought to myself.... "well the newtown wagon workshops isnt a name i can transfer to where ever im living in the future...." so i had a think and came up with the Waratah Wagon and Locomotive Workshops. This name doesnt tie up with a perticular suburb or place.

I decided on Waratah because at home at mum and dads I have a number of Waratahs growing successfully, However no flowers yet! Some of you might be awear that the floral emblum of NSW is the Waratah.
So it seems fitting to me to call my workshop The Waratah Wagon and Locomotive Workshops because of the prototype I model (NSW) and the fact I grew up in NSW etc. It just seems to fit.
So now where ever I live the name works?????????

So with that note I will end this first Post. I hope it hasnt been to boring..... I hope to bring you photos of various things I will be doing: Building 5 inch gauge wagons, Attending various runs with my steam loco and wagons, and there might even be some progress with my engine im building. Who knows what else I might chuck in the mix?