Volume 4, Issue 2 February 2013 The Flimsy The Newsletter of Division 2 of the NMRA AR

OUR FEBRUARY GATHERING

Only 13 fronted up for roll-call at Wal Pywell’s today. Peter Dinham and Mal Risby were most conspicuous by their absence. Must have been the long walk that deterred them, their homes being just around the corner from Wal’s place. No pilgrims from faraway lands either. Today’s Long Distance Rail Enthusiast Award goes by default to our Valiant Leader who had survived his arduous safari from Canberra’s Far North to the Deep South.

Announcements //// ( . . ) ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐o00‐‐‐(_)‐‐‐00o‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ * * * * * Wot! No Announcements? * * * * * * * * * LEDs themselves are SMD (surface mount devices) * * and come in long strips. Bought this way, each LED costs only a few cents – which is just as well, because When invited to confirm this, our Fearless Leader these tiny things can be very tricky to solder and you announced that there were no announcements. But that are likely to destroy several unless you are an was one announcement! No it wasn’t, I only said there experienced solderer and take care to use the right were no announcements. Well that makes two now! The solder (with a lower melting point) and a temperature meeting was sternly called to order. controlled soldering iron! Tony Payne exhibited the 1:87 scale waterline model Show & Tell coastal freighter he had assembled and finished from a Last October we admired Jess Brisbane’s fascinating kit owned by John Prattis. This model is eminently bagful of wooden bits and pieces, better known as a suitable for loading quarried stone in a waterfront scene Bailey’s Produce kit, one of many laser cut wooden near Port Kembla. Craftsman’s Kits available from Bar Mills Model Works. John Martin showed his SD45 loco – a Kato kit See http://tinyurl.com/bccjmo9 Continued on page 2) Today Jess displayed the On30 loading dock she has built from some of the pieces in her Bailey’s Produce kit. The loading dock sports a wooden floor and a corrugated iron roof in different stages of rust and neglect. The individual planks in the floor have been coloured differently and treated with the wood-graining tool Jess demonstrated last month and look most realistic. The whole structure is enhanced by two LED lights set under the peak of the roof. Jess uses white LEDs and colours them with glass paints available from Eckersley’s Art & Craft Supplies. The

finished with Cannon details. See But before we dive into this at the http://www.cannonandco.net/. The deep end, hadn’t we better be sure loco livery displayed the progressive that this Josserand bloke knows what stages of ownership from Norfolk & he’s talking about? Best we check Western to Springfield Terminal and him out. Back in the 1880s, US then finally Montana Rail Link. railroads had become conscious of Brian Thomas opened an elegant the need to pool their knowledge and wooden box to reveal a 1:43 scale experience to produce the best model of a South Australian 930 possible set of operating rules, to be Class diesel loco, a close relative of made available to all roads. Sadly, the NSW 44 Class. The prototypes of much of this knowledge had arisen both classes were built by A E from accidents resulting from Goodwin, ALCO’s Australian licensee. inadequate rules. Brian’s beautifully finished and Peter Josserand was a Chief painted brass model (in a production Dispatcher for the Western Pacific run of only 7 models) is produced by Railroad at Sacramento, California Berg’s Hobbies, Parramatta, and is and a consultant to the Brotherhood made in Taiwan. Berg’s Hobbies also of Locomotive Firemen and produces the NSW 44 Class, this Enginemen. He published his first being a useful starting point for their edition of “Rights of Trains” in 1904. very similar SA 930 Class. His aim was to set forth clearly the Brian’s loco weighs about 2 kg, its basic principles underlying the rules, doors swing open, its windows slide and to show how the rules of various open and it blows the correct horn note. Its silver running roads differ from the Standard Code and from each gear makes it easy to see the fine detail, very different other. from the black running gear of the NSW 44 Class. Of Sections in his book cover The Standard Code, course it drew inevitable criticism today from our sharp- Operating Rules, Block Signal Rules, Interlocking Rules, eyed rivet counters because its windscreen wipers are Signals and Their Use, Superiority of Trains, Train not DCC operated. Well, of course not – a well-planned Movements, Forms of Train Orders, Centralized Traffic model railway doesn’t get rained on, does it! Control, Special Instructions to Operators and Train We all admired Brian’s beautifully finished and very Dispatchers. Peter Josserand’s book has stood the test expensive wooden box, but at least it did come with a of time and is still being reprinted. free O scale loco inside. Wal Pywell passed around his two Kalmbach books Graeme Hodges the First drew our attention to page on bridge and trestle construction. The first edition of 106 of the current issue (March 2013) of Model “Model Railroad Bridges and Trestles” was published in Railroader, dealing with operating rules for model 1992 and has been reprinted many times. See http:// railroads, based on prototype practice. www.kalmbachstore.com/12101.html Invaluable background is to be found in the Kalmbach “Model Railroad Bridges and Trestles, Volume 2” was publication “The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does” by published in 2012 and follows on from the first book, John Armstrong, now into its fifth edition. See http:// containing additional tips and techniques. See http:// tinyurl.com/owky www.kalmbachstore.com/12474.html. As with all The bible for model railroaders who take operating Kalmbach instruction books, these two are full of seriously is Peter Josserand’s “Rights of Trains” which excellent photos. This led to a discussion on bridges, also ran to five editions. See http://tinyurl.com/burpofn. bringing forth the information that there is an interesting This 459-page book is not a simple read. It is best Scherzer rolling lift bridge for the single lane road and mastered by following the examples it gives. railway track bridge on Franklin Wharf at Constitution Dock in Hobart. The Scherzer rolling bridge is different from the conventional bascule bridge which lifts by simply rotating the bascule about a fixed horizontal axis. The Scherzer bridge actually rolls backward as it lifts. By pulling the bridge back as it lifts up, it gives greater vertical clearance to tall vessels. For a working diagram, (Continued on page 3)

2

Nevada. The Southern Pacific was the only railroad to adopt this solution, but it was successful enough for them to have 256 of these locos on their roster. Not all were 4-8-8-2. Other Cab-Forward wheel arrangements included 2-8-8-2 and 4-6-6-2. The other variant was the mighty Allegheny 2-6-6-6 developed by the Chesapeake & Ohio RR in 1934 for hauling coal trains over the Allegheny mountains. The built 68 of these extremely heavy and powerful locos. The rear set of 6 wheels were all carrying wheels for the enormous firebox required by the huge boiler. Other railroads took up the Mallet design, developing it further. The most significant one was the Union Pacific RR which required a more powerful loco for (Continued from page 2) hauling heavy freight up the Wasatch Range in the see http://tinyurl.com/3aseun Rockies in western Colorado. This led to ALCO producing the 4-6-6-4 Challenger loco for Union Pacific in The Main Show the late 1930s. 252 were built altogether (27 of them by Wal Pywell presented a talk on Mallets and Baldwin) and Union Pacific took 105 of them. The Articulated Locomotives, getting off to an excellent start remaining 147 Challengers were operated by eight other by being scrupulously careful to break the habit of a railroads. lifetime and to pronounce ‘Mallet’ correctly. Wal’s talk The formidable Wasatch Range was also a key factor was in two parts – first he explained the principles of in the development of the Union Pacific RR 4-8-8-4 Big compound steam locomotives and then he traced the Boy in the early 1940s. Its design was an extension of the historic development of the Mallet locomotive to its already successful Challengers of the 1930s. Only 25 Big ultimate in the ‘Big Boy’. Boys were built, thanks to World War Two and then the In leading us through the principles of compounding, introduction of diesel haulage preventing further Wal used coloured diagrams on his TV screen which exploitation of this successful design. The last freight run were clear and helpful. We covered high and low by a Big Boy was in 1959. pressure cylinders and their different sizes, together The Big Boy had the longest locomotive body (26 with the need for the high pressure cylinders to be fixed metres, or 30 cm at HO scale) of any to the engine frame, thus ensuring that the flexible (Continued on page 4) steam supply to the other engine on the frame (or Bissell truck) contained only low pressure steam. This type of locomotive was invented by the Swiss engineer Anatole Mallet (1837-1919) and the first loco employing his principle was built in France in 1876. Others followed and USA’s first was a 0-6-6-0 built by ALCO for the Baltimore & Ohio RR in 1903. The Great Northern RR became interested in this in 1905, but encountered some difficulties, especially on curves. This led to the 2-6-6-2 introduced by Great Northern and also by the Santa Fe RR in 1910. It should be noted here that the term “Mallet” strictly applies only to a locomotive that is both articulated AND compound. Initially, Mallets were low speed locos, used primarily by logging railways, but further development by the Chesapeake & Ohio RR led to much larger and more versatile locos. Ultimately, Mallets were used on about 50 US railroads between 1910 and the 1950s. However, many of these were railroads associated with timber haulage. As Mallets became more popular, they got bigger and more powerful. In 1934 Baldwin built a 2-6-6-4 for the Pittsburgh & West Virginia RR which allowed a much bigger firebox, and this design was taken further by ALCO in the 4-6-6-4 they built for the Norfolk & Western RR. Meanwhile two interesting Mallet variations appeared. First was the 4-8-8-2 Cab-Forward loco developed by the Southern Pacific RR and built by Baldwin in order to overcome serious problems for crews from the asphyxiating fumes of oil-burning locos working up steep grades in tunnels in the Sierra

3

(Continued from page 3) ever built. This presented manufacturers of models with quite a challenge in designing a model capable of negotiating the much tighter curves (eg 36 cm radius!) to be found on model railways. To illustrate how model manufacturers overcame this difficulty, Wal had his two HO scale Challengers on display for us to examine. Wal concluded the show with a stunning photo of an extremely impressive 4-8-8-8-4 loco (or was it a 4-8-8-8- 8-8-4?) stretching almost to the horizon, it seemed. When pressed, Wal confessed that Photoshop had been a major contributor to this particular design. Time for a most enjoyable afternoon tea in the leafy bower of the back verandah. Thanks to Wal & Gay. z

Gotthard Base Tunnel

HAVING TROUBLE ON STEEP GRADES? by John Bullen In the previous issue of The Flimsy, we solved your tracklaying problems by introducing you to Viessmann’s HO scale model of part of the Plasser & Theurer automatic tracklaying system. We now solve another problem for you. Steep grades can destroy enjoyment of a model railway layout as your locos struggle and slip and sometimes fail to advance at all. If shortening the train or coupling up a banking loco are not favoured options, then don’t despair. Instead, just model the Swiss prototype by boring a base tunnel under all your landscaping, thus having negligible gradient on your track. The photo above illustrates part of a 15 km completed section of the new Gotthard Base Tunnel that is now about to be tested. The whole tunnel will commence operation in 2016. It will consist of twin tunnels, each 57 km long – the world’s longest. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel This project has been brought about by the need for a faster route, carrying much more traffic on one of Europe’s busiest freight routes. By tunnelling under the Alps, the grades and spirals of the original line opened in 1882 are now being bypassed. Each tunnel was bored by an automatic boring machine to a diameter of 8.8 metres. After lining, its diameter is now 7.7 metres. It is fitted with a special low vibration track which will accept trains at 250 kph. Future passenger trains are expected to travel at that speed and freight trains at 160 kph. When you come to model your own Base Tunnel, you might even be fortunate enough to run through existing storage space instead of having to excavate earth. Having now solved your gradient problems as well as your tracklaying problems, we will remain ever alert for more Helpful Tips For Struggling Modellers. z

4

www.nmra.org.au

From the Editor: National Model Railroaders Association Australasian Region— Back to Wal’s this month, only 2 months after Division 2—ACT his previous meeting. Well done, Wal, for Bringing model railroading to you backing up so well, with an excellent presentation on America’s big steam. News There has been quite a lot said recently in the  Next meeting will be at Peter Dinham’s place in ARC about the problems associated with Wanniassa on Saturday, 16 March, 2013 where “volunteering”, where the few volunteer and we hope he will talk about something! many of the others whinge and moan and treat  The 2013 Convention here in the ACT will be those who volunteer as “lackeys”. I feel this is held 21/22 September 2013. Called Canberra probably the norm for volunteer activities but it Rail 2013, it will be held in the Kaleen High understandably can cause much stress to those School. who do the work. We’re pretty lucky in Div 2 that there are very few of the latter, but I have to say, there could Disclaimer: Any resemblance between be a lot more of you who could do some characters in this newsletter and real model railroaders is “volunteering”. In that light, how about some purely intentional but no offence whatever is intended. Only articles, letters and prototype photos for your the facts may have been altered to protect the guilty. Every newsletter. Viv [email protected] reader has the right of reply and we look forward to publish- ing them!

18.4 x 13.6

NSWGR No. 3265 at the annual ‘Festival of Steam’ at Thirlmere, NSW, on 3 March 2013 (by Viv Brice) 2 Tbfpmox # # 5