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faulcon1

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Everything posted by faulcon1

  1. Here's the final part and the part of the line many tourists know.
  2. Here's part four. I've excluded Part 1 because it's this video but the other way from Mount Surprise to Einasleigh.
  3. This video is the beginning of a journey in far north Queensland from Forsayth to Cairns. It's a four day journey with the passengers staying overnight in pubs.
  4. A documentary on the Darjeeling Hill Railway by Nick Lera who's said with the advent of You Tube it's hard to sell DVD's now. So he's uploading his programs to YT and this is just one. Some are in German too. The steam engines are used these days for tourist trains and new diesels are used for ordinary service trains. At one stage the whole journey cost the princely sum of 3p for an eight hour trip behind steam.
  5. Thank you all for your helpful suggestions much appreciated.
  6. I have an early Bachmann 2251 32-301 and I only took it apart the other day for the first time. On screwing it back together the rear screw screwed up nicely but the front screw wouldn't meaning stripped threads. Is there any way of fixing it as I don't want to have to buy a new body. I have seen online of people using super glue with baking soda but the screws they use to "cut" a new thread are all pin point screws and the chassis body screw on model locos are not pin point screws. The loco is not a split frame chassis but the first run of the later chassis which at that time was not DCC ready. I think the model dates from about 1998. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
  7. This is a blow to us all and from the comments above and on previous pages we've all come to rely on Hattons as always going to be there. It's very sad but shows that even a huge retailer is not immune to the forces now at play. I sincerely hope everyone there at Hattons can find another job and I can only wish them all the best for all their futures.
  8. Thanks for that info, much appreciated.
  9. After the Lapstone ZigZag was rendered obsolete the first deviation was the construction of a single bore tunnel without air shafts on the false assumption that the smoke would be blown by natural wind out of the tunnel mouths. It was on a continuous uphill 1 in 33 gradient curving it's entire length. It was notorious in service when steam crews would lie on the cab floor with the fall plate up desperate for some fresh air. Assistant engines would be used on the rear and their crews not only had to deal with the smoke and fumes from the train engine but their engine too. There was one accident where the assistant engine finding the task too much stopped and reversed out of the tunnel coming to a halt outside the tunnel mouth. The train engine had stalled and the train engine crew overcome by smoke and fumes had passed out. The train then free wheeled out of the tunnel to smash into the assistant engine.
  10. Here's a video done by two blokes of the Lapstone ZigZag bypassed many years ago and now a walking track. The history is fascinating however the steam train sound effects are American as you can here a bell ringing and we never had bells on locos in New South Wales government service. The B&W photo of a 60 class Garratt is also incorrect as Garratts never traveled on this line which had fallen into disuse many years before the Garratts even entered service. At the time of the Lapstone Zig Zag was all locos in New South Wales were of English design and many were built in England namely by Beyer Peacock.
  11. Here's part two from Critters Camp to Croydon. This famous railway goes from nowhere to nowhere much and is completely isolated from the rest of the Queensland railway network. There were plans to connect it to the rest of the network but, well, they just never got round to it.
  12. Here's part one of the a cab ride trip on the Guflander from Normanton to Critters Camp. The maximum speed on the line is 40kph or 25 mph.
  13. Be that as it may I still don't see the need to upgrade............yet. I hope all three locos are a great success for Rapido but I just don't buy the latest and greatest simply because it is the latest and greatest. It was the same with the Heljan class 25. Yes improved detail over the Bachmann class 25 but for me at least not a HUGE improvement to warrant spending money on it just because it's the latest and greatest. A capitalist society is the USA and the UK along with Australia are social democracies. The USA is capitalism on steroids and always had been. Social democracies take the best of socialism and capitalism and combine the two.
  14. I concur with what you say for although a 44xx is nice to see I'm completely baffled by the 45xx and 4575. Is the thinking we haven't had either of these in new tooling for some years now so lets do it. But there's very little wrong with the Bachmann model which performs very well and is highly detailed. A GW Saint would have been better as there hasn't been a Saint model since the tender drive version of many years ago. The Dapol/Hornby Hawksworth County certainly needs updating as that's very old tooling. I see no need to replace my Bachmann 45xx and 4575 just because a newer model comes along. But that's just me of course and I drive a 15 year old car and see no need to update that either.
  15. I concur with what you say for although a 44xx is nice to see I'm completely baffled by the 45xx and 4575. Is the thinking we haven't had either of these in new tooling for some years now so lets do it. But there's very little wrong with the Bachmann model which performs very well and is highly detailed. A GW Saint would have been better as there hasn't been a Saint model since the tender drive version of many years ago. The Dapol/Hornby Hawksworth County certainly needs updating as that's very old tooling. I see no need to replace my Bachmann 45xx and 4575 just because a newer model comes along. But that's just me of course and I drive a 15 year old car and see no need to update that either.
  16. In the mid 1990's here in NSW Australia we had GM EMD locos enter service of 4,000hp the 90 class and at that time the heaviest diesels in state at 165 tons each that were built in Canada. They were supposed to easily haul the coal trains they were given. But even two of them on 84 wagons had terrible trouble with adhesion with the problems being traced to the radar guided wheel slip control. The Canadians hadn't wired up the latter stages of the wheel slip control thinking we wouldn't need it. But they had no idea just how much the railways intended to get out of the new diesels. The wheel slip control can be heard working by a high pitched ringing sound with the locos down to a crawl on a 1 in 60 grade or steeper. In inclement weather banking engines are still used and usually 81 class which is the father of the class 59. It was the success of the 81 class GM's that was the reason in the mid 1980's that Foster Yeoman (as it was then) bought the class 59's. Now of course 4,000hp diesels here are a dime a dozen and diesels now come with the ability to lower their horsepower depending on how heavy the train is. The NR diesel locos that haul the Ghan and Indian Pacific luxury trains work in pairs and don't need 8,000hp to haul the train even though both trains can load to over 30 coaches. They can increase or decrease the amount of horsepower that is needed. Electric locos hauling passenger trains are a thing of the past here because when the freight operations were privatised the state government not only charged private operators access charges to run trains on the state's rail network but if using electric loco power they also charged for the electricity the locos used. So by using only diesels there was one charge that didn't have to be paid and as for environmental concerns?, what environmental concerns.
  17. But what I'd like to know is who pays for the damage caused either to a loco and or permanent way. In Blue Peter's case the then BR should have paid for the total cost of the damage but I've read in other places that the owner Geoff Drury paid for the majority of the damage with BR paying a token amount which is very wrong. The powers that be sanctioned the locomotive to run on the line and the crew to crew it and they damaged it so the powers that be are responsible for the total cost of rectifying all the damage caused, NOT the owner of the locomotive. The same with the Western for it wasn't the locomotive owners fault that the engine slipped but the man who was driving it and so who paid for the damage caused to the permanent way and any damage to the Western. Don't for get if a loco causes delays to other trains on the line the operators are very quick to point the finger at the locomotive's owner and demand compensation for delayed services so the gate has to swing both ways.
  18. I have a female boss Tim who keeps asking me every year if I'm going back home as in the UK. But I was born in Australia of British parents who came here in the late 1950's and I worked with a Yorkshire man for fifteen years with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. I found out that I can pick up accents rather quickly for I was talking to a northern Irishman on the Puffing Billy railway in 1998 and in next to no time I was speaking with a Irish accent. I thought about it afterwards thinking I hope he didn't think I was taking the Mick out of him. So when I've come to the UK which has been three times so far I've made a concerted effort to talk in a broad Aussie accent which isn't my normal way of speaking. It's done simply so I don't slip into speaking to a person in their accent which they may find offensive. I've been though Barmedman on my way to Temora. Pretty little place it is too. If on your next visit to Australia and if you get a chance Tim, visit the Rail Transport Museum at Thirlmere near to Picton. It's now run by the state government having been run by volunteers since 1962. It was originally located at Enfield a suburb of Sydney in an old locomotive depot which was a huge place with three roundhouses. When originally built Enfield was out in the "sticks" being just open land. The third roundhouse at Enfield was only a partial roundhouse with a 120' turntable for turning the 60 class Garratts. That turntable has survived and today is at the Thirlmere railway museum as it's needed to turn the only operational Garratt 6029. There are many engines in there of English origin. On CF you have a funeral station and we have one in Sydney near to central station known as Mortuary Station and constructed of sandstone with slate tiled roof. From there funeral trains used to run to Rookwood Cemetery where there was another Mortuary type of sandstone station to receive the coffins and mourners. Only the base of the Mortuary Station survives today in the cemetery as the sandstone building was demolished and re-erected in Canberra as a church. Today of course the stretched estate car is the preferred method of transport for coffins. There's a company in the UK called Coleman Milne who specialise in making hearses and for a number of years they imported Australian designed and built Ford Falcons right up to when local production finished in 2016. A You Tuber who lives in Wales imported an Australian Falcon into the UK having driven the car round New Zealand and he's got some spare parts for the car from Colman Milne. In New Zealand is the Mount Pleasant Railway they have a replica four wheel Rail Bus powered by a Ford Model T engine with the Model T driver controls.
  19. I've been to West Wyalong recently and it's actually two towns Wyalong and West Wyalong separated by a flood plain. You would notice the difference Tim in driving around the back streets and their width compared to England. I learnt to drive properly in a country town and my first attempt to do a three point turn was a failure because of the wide road I easily did a U turn instead. I recently went out to Bourke nearly 500 miles from Sydney and Bourke received a new railway station not long before the railway line was closed altogether. I looks like a community center. However the load bank still survives in Bourke and is just before the main traffic intersection in town. The main western line of which Bourke was it's terminus now only runs as far as Nyngan and even it's station is not used by trains but is now Nyngan's museum. Part way between the two towns was Byrock a junction for the line to Brewarrina now all gone. Nyngan itself was once a railway junction for the lines to Bourke and Cobar but now only the line to Cobar remains open for rail use. Only the rail traffic is gone for unlike the UK the railway lines are all still there with the four foot slowly being reclaimed by nature. That area out there is home to the most venomous snake in the world, the Inland Taipan but the chances of seeing one are extremely remote as it's spends most of it's time underground where because of the extreme conditions out there small animals spend their time underground too. It's been said that there's enough venom in one bite to kill over 200 adults. I journeyed onto Cobar a distance of 165km seeing Emus and feral goats on the way, which still has it's railway station but no passenger trains now call there, only the railway bus service. The station name board is now in the station car park and the line through the station is still open because it services mines in the area. Then I journeyed onto Hillston a distance of 256km which still has an active railway line but no station. At these three places the substantial station masters house is still there but now in private ownership. Between Nyngan and Narromine is Nevertire which is a junction for the line to Warren. Nevertire's station has been swept away but like other locations the station master's house is still very much lived in. Here's photo Tim of Cobar Station with my little car in the station car park waiting for a passenger train that will never come.
  20. I first became aware of that exhibition layout Tim way back in 1986 watching a Railscene video No.8 of a cab ride between St Pancras and Sheffield. In Bedforshire the the producer riding in the cab of an HST said there's a very famous 2mm fine scale model railway of this area. Then the inspector says, well this is Chiltern Green and and the video producer answers, Yes that is the place. So it was that video that introduced me to Chiltern Green but it was to be many more years after that when I eventually saw it and this was of course in the pre internet age and definitely pre You Tube which has only been around since 2005. By 1986 the Chiltern Green model railway had left MRC and Copenhagen Fields had begun and I didn't hear of CF until the internet age. In the video interview you said I come from a farming family and I used to spend my youth on a farm of 13,000 acres, quite small. My mum knew the farmer's wife and she knew her mother too. They were cockneys and the farmer's wife had a cockney accent mixed in with an Australian accent and her mother thought it was ghastly. I learnt to drive a car on the farm which was many miles from the nearest town and from the nearest bus stop. So instead of farmer's wife having to drive the kids all the way into town to go to school, the eldest of the kids who was twelve drove an unregistered car to the bus stop with all his school aged siblings. In the day time there would be a line up of unregistered cars at the bus stop. Other kids in very remote areas don't go to school in any town at all. They attend school of the air whereby they stay at home and do their schooling these days by the internet and Skype. One girl said that city schools don't have kids saying to teachers "excuse me Miss I have to go as dad needs my help rounding up several hundred head of sheep. I'll be back later". As you're in the dental profession Tim our Royal Flying Doctor Service flies city based dentists to very remote areas so that the people living there can have regular dental check ups and it's all covered under our universal healthcare.The RFDS has a fleet of planes that inside are a hospital ICU for a road ambulance is out of the question with roads being dirt and very rough a patient would likely die before reaching a hospital. So they're flown instead and once better the RFDS flies them home and that too is all covered under our universal healthcare. Many farms out there have their own dirt airstrip for the RFDS.
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