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?