Yet another Australian.

G'day all,

My name is Mark Newton, I'm 55, married to Paula, with one child, Harry, who's turning 10 in May. We live in a little town to the south of Sydney called Waterfall.

I come from a railway family, and started working for what was then the Public Transport Commission of New South Wales in 1975. Over the years I worked in a variety of jobs and locations with the railway, eventually winding up at Eveleigh depot, maintaining and running a number of steam locos and diesels used on heritage/tourist trains. For a while we were running a steam tourist train out of Port Kembla, which is where I met my wife.

I did this until 2004, when went over to running suburban EMU trains out of Waterfall depot. I'm still there, working now as a guard trainer.

I've been an active railway modeller since my early teens. For a long time I modelled US railroads in HO scale, influenced by my father and a couple of trips there. I was particularly interested in some of the smaller railroads and interurban lines of the Midwest. So I built a layout featuring the various roads that served Peoria in Illinois. Unfortunately I was in too much of a hurry to get the thing operational so the benchwork and tracklaying were rushed, and subsequently the layout caused me a lot of frustration due to poor running. When we sold up and moved the layout went to the tip, and I promised myself I'd do better next time.

I assumed I'd continue with another layout with a US theme, but then I had an experience that changed all that.

We were laying over at Wollongong on a charter trip with one of the steamers, playing a game of cricket in the yard to pass the time - as you do. Unfortunately I managed to lose the last ball we had - by hitting it into the smokestack of the loco. I got sent to the local shops to buy a new ball, but on the way I found a second-hand bookshop.

I wandered in a for a quick look, and found they had a number of books about the railways of Japan. I bought them all for the grand total of $25. By the time I got back to the train I wasn't interested in playing any more cricket. On the return trip I sat in the crew van and was completely engrossed in reading my new books.

It wasn't long before the bulk of my US models were sold and I'd started building a Japanese fleet. Although the majority of Japanese modellers work in N scale, I've decided to be contrary and stick with HO. It's the scale I'm most familiar and comfortable with. In Japan, 1/80th scale models running on 16.5mm gauge track are known as #16 gauge. RTR models are produced by well known manufacturers like Tenshodo, Kato, Tomix, and Modemo, as well as smaller companies like Tramway and Aclass. There's also a large number of kits available in brass or injected moulded plastic. So even though it's a minority scale in Japan, there's a lot of models available.

At the moment I have three layout projects on the go. One is an HO scale tramway layout for my son, one is a simple Japanese exhibition layout, and the last is an HOn30 mini featuring a scene from the Belgian Congo. If anyone's interested I can post some photos showing where I'm up to with them.

When I feel like a break from all this, I'm a member at the Sydney Tramway Museum at Loftus, which is ten minutes down the road from me.

So that's my story, thanks to Gary for the invitation, and I look forward to contributing to the success of the group.

All the best,

Mark.

 

Thanks, Ian. Yes, J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e is the word I'm typing, but the forum software obviously doesn't appprove.

So for the meantime I'll refer to it as JNR - J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e National Railway.

Cheers,

Mark.

 

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome. I'll post some photos over the next few days to show where I'm up to.

And Gary, if you're interested we'll be having a special event at the Tramway museum on the 28th of February. The theme for this event is "Off to War", commemorating the centenary of WW1. We'll have re-enactors, vintage vehicles and all of the trams running will be 100 years old or older. If you or any of the other local members can make it down to Loftus on the day that would be great. I'll be there - just look for this bloke:



All the best,

Mark.