New members

Hi - taken a while to post. I'm new to the hobby. Enjoyed Lionel trains as a child and have always had a G gauge train around the Christmas tree.
My mom had been holding on to a bunch of tins full of trains that my uncle had and remember fondly as a child. She passed them on to me and I've been working on getting everything running again. Most are post war Lionel with some American Flyer.
My father-in-law is also a Lionel enthusiast. He had a 671 he had been trying to get working from his childhood. He got me started on some basics of how things work. I bought Greenburg's manual and scanned the internet. I've restored to the best of my ability all of the engines to working order. I got my father-in-laws running for the 1st time in years. It has been very rewarding.
I've been relegated to the garage for my layout and have a design. Doing some testing before I get too far into it. "Unfortunately" I keep buying projects to restore which has slowed my layout progress.
I appreciate allowing me to become a member. Not sure what I can contribute but hope to learn a lot.
Thanks!
PS - honored to be number 300!

 

Hi guys my name is Peter, I'm from a large western town in New South Wales Australia. I heard about the forum from Gary at the thorleigh model railway show 2017. I'm involved in a show layout called western rivers. It's a scratch built ho layoutthat is based on the darling river east of broken hill at a small town called manindee. It's 11m x 4m. Running a nce dcc system. I also do dcc installs sound and non sound as well as starting to teach myself kit building wagons. I hope to pick up a few tips and tricks off u all.

 

Good afternoon all.

Newbie Garry here.
Found you by accident while googling for something else and thought id give you a go.

Only experience in forums is RMWeb which i have been a member of since not long after it started.
Its grown into such a beast that for me its lost its "community" feel if you like. Unfortunately many are all to ready to shoot you down if you get the slightest thing wrong and the amount of arguments is untrue.
OMG is that wheel really 0.25mm out of scale!! Jeez who would have thought the world would end on such a calamity!! .

Anyway im not interested in scoring brownie points so here i am.

My main interests are the 70s and 80s BR Blue period and and huge ibterest in the welsh slate industry and associated narrow gauge railways.

My collecting got out of control so last year i sold a load of stock and got my loco count down to around 100.

Main scales i model in are OO and 009 although i do have 7mm and 16mm narrow gauge kits and stock.

Had to have a break from it all for a little while, divorce and illness etc but currently trying to plan a layout and getting stumped for ideas. Itll come

So ive pitched my tent here, got the fire going....anyone for a sausage butty ? ;-)

 

I found out about Platform 1 courtesy of Gary at the recent Thornleigh exhibition. Here's a bit about what brought me here...

As a kid I had a few different train sets (a Tomy set, wooden Brio trains/ track, a Great Western train set that blew smoke, the classic Hornby Thomas set from the 80's etc). I loved playing with these, but then I'd visit that huge O-scale layout that used to be in Beenleigh when I was up visiting my late Grandad, or the layout under glass at the old Hobbyco premises in George St- and it was a reminder that my efforts back home was childs' play by comparison!

While it was reassuring as a 3 year old to see grown men, some as old as my Grandad, still enthusiastic about the same thing I loved, I'd see these elaborate layouts and detailed models and I knew that I was too young to play with them. It was a bittersweet reminder that I was just a little kid...

I remember the old Hobbyco on George St- that flight of stairs you descended off the street down to the store, the scale building sets up on the shelves, the model engines on display in the glass cabinets that lined the walls, the big display layout that was so intricately detailed I could've gazed through the glass for hours at it. It was all such a fun, visually stimulating experience- yet it remained beyond my reach...

At home I'd make dioramas out of building blocks or using lengths of the HO scale track from the Thomas set and incorporate model trees or plastic farm animals into it for added realism. Then, when I was in kindergarten, Dad built me my first proper layout. It was a sheet of chipboard that had a basic oval of track on it- but it had ballast, model railway grass, a creek, a road that crossed the railway line, lichen bushes and, to top it off, a paper mâché volcano at one end. It was fairly simple but I loved it! For my birthday that year, I got my first "proper" engine- a 4 wheeled Hornby tank engine that I could run on my new layout via the controller that'd come with the Thomas set...

Then, one afternoon, I was on my way home from school and thinking about the cool layouts I'd seen in photos, at exhibitions, at places like Beenleigh or Hobbyco- and I thought again of how much I'd love to have a cool layout like that. I then realised there was no reason I couldn't have that. Nobody had ever told me I could never have a layout like that. It was at this moment I decided: one day I would build the layout I dreamed of.

That same day when I got home, I began drawing pictures in my scrapbooks of scenes from the big layout I'd build one day- the stations, the bridges, the railway yards, the buildings, the tunnels. Over the years, I've lost count of how many "revisions" I've drawn of this ultimate layout I plan to build, but a quarter of a century later the vision remains...

There have been changes to my plans along the way- I initially planned to run a bit of everything on my layout, then decided I just wanted to run Australian trains, to now wanting to be more specific and base the layout on the State Rail/ CityRail network from when I was a kid. I'm lucky in this regard because in the time period I'm setting it in, there was a wide range of diesel/ electric locos running and a decent variety of liveries too.

Since that original oval layout that fit under my bed, I've started (then abandoned) two other layouts for various reasons- but it's third time lucky. I'm in the process of building a 6x4 layout that serves as practise for my much larger, grander vision. I've got the roadbed and track all fixed, painted the track, painted the table and am in the process of finishing the road base. You can see a sneak preview pic of the layout from when I finished the track in the attachment- there's more pics to come soon!

So welcome from me, and I look forward to your help and advice as I bring this long-held dream to reality, bit by bit!

Attached files

 

Not quite-

Specifically, the period I'm modelling is April 1990- March 1991. Nostalgia aside, in that period you had:

The tuscan livery
Reverse livery
Candy
Red Terror
Bicentennial
Freight Rail

all operable, not to mention the Intercity XPT/ Countrylink transition on the XPT's...and that's before we start on how many different classes of suburban/ interurban trains there were!

You could have 1 of each loco in a different livery and end up with a collection to rival Toto's!

 

The Grey Ghost livery was a one-off introduced in 1986 if I'm right, but I think it was gone just a couple of years later because it got dirty so quickly?

There were definitely a reasonable amount of tuscan 46's and 48's going around well into the '90s, and I know 42220 kept its' original scheme too. The reverse scheme was shorter lived and so rarer overall, but I know 8047, a few of the 48's and at least one of the 44 class still had that scheme in the early 90's as well?

 

It’s all Gormo’s Fault ! I just love his intriguing invitation to see what he’s tripped over this week ! I’ve been looking at P1MRC for a while and you seem like a friendly bunch so I’m dipping a toe in the shallow end to test the water. Which is unusual for me cos I normally fall straight in off the top board with a huge splash. I am currently remodeling my GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY Rothley Station. I did do it once before. But then we moved house. I have a video that I put on You Tube to keep for posterity. I will refer to it as Rothley mk1. I will put the link to it as soon as I can.It was quite good fun to “play” with as most people couldn’t keep track of where the train would re-emerge after the train went off scene. I will post a track plan of it later.My current build is modular starting with the space I have available. It’s only 2 boards 6ft long by 2ft wide laid end to end. The idea being that when I get my loft room in September I can create a whole ensemble with other stations and eras.I am using the Bachmann Branchline Great Central Railway buildings set.I enjoy modeling and I pick up tips from Gormo’s shed videos and in the UK there’s a very talented guy called Richard whom has a railway called Everard Junction.I sometimes am guiltily of independent thought myself and my latest idea is using roofing felt as a ground cover material. Its cheap and easy to get. You can use the cheapest you can find as it’s not going to wear out or leak rainwater onto your baseboard! Will post a picture.I am running DCC, which surprises even me ! .... in the 1980 ‘s we had a thing called zero 1. It was Hornby ‘s first attempt at going digital. I admire their effort but I guess the technology wasn’t developed enough to be practical. I remember my trains always running away. Maybe I was too young. I was probably only 10 or 12 ? So when I heard about dcc I kind of dismissed the whole thing. But it’s actually pretty useful I now find. I started out with the NCE POWERCAB .Great but difficult to control more than one train at a time. I then discovered a new concept called the Ace Signatrak. It’s a little known and new system but it’s absolutely excellent and affordable. Independent control of upto 5 locomotives at once. I bought mine by pre ordering before the first release last year and I always said I would put a good word in for its inventor. Mr Fraser Black. ( no affiliation just a very happy customer)Now I have. Perhaps i will review it one day.Bye for now.Ps I wrote a great introduction earlier. It was even quite funny in places.I kept saving it throughout the day on Word on my phone. Grabbing 10 mins here and there.Some how I manged to cut it and paste in something else from Clipboard and save the new document under the same filename. It’s gone. My sense of humor must have gone with it. I hope to find them both again soon. I’m sure you understand.
Happy modeling boys n girls.MY WAY I DID IT

 

its getting past my bedtime ... up at 3am... if I manage it ! lol
I put 2 picture s in my gallery. If I did it properly you should be able to see my roofing felt idea
cheers