faulcon1

Michelago Station is on the disused Bombala Railway line which ran from Queanbeyan down into southern NSW all the way to Bombala. The station opened in December 1887. It was closed in 1988 and reopened again from Queanbeyan to Michelago in 1993 only to be closed once again in 2007. As can be seen everything has been left to be reclaimed by nature. All the trackwork and signaling is still in place. Michelago is just a settlement and not big enough to be a village but the station is in the heart of the settlement. The station masters house is now in private ownership. The photos top to bottom are, the main station buildings, the line looking north towards Queanbeyan, the line looking south towards Cooma and the resident 50ft manual turntable. Here's some video of two English designed steam locos at work on the line on a rail tour not long after the line had been reopened.

If you look carefully you'll see the puffs of the exhaust beats are exactly in time with the rotations of the wheels and also the whistles and leaking piston packing are exactly true too which makes me think that the sound is synchronised and was recorded at the time. Cameras in those days didn't have sound and bulky separate sound recording equipment powered by heavy lead acid batteries had to be lugged around. It's that attention to detail to get it all right that makes this footage so special. Note in the first clip that when 3824 goes by and whistles again like in real life the whistle note is lower and that's what makes me think the sound was recorded at the same time that the locos and their trains were filmed. Modern archive usually has dubbed in sound so locos blow their whistle but no steam comes out of the whistle and the exhaust beats are often out of sync with the rotations of the driving wheels. Here they're not. It should be noted however that the NSW 60 class Garratt's differ from Garratts in South Africa. The South African Garratt's like those on the Welsh Highland have a water tank, boiler and cab and then a coal bunker. Whereas the 60 class have a water tank, boiler and cab and a coal bunker with another water tank underneath it like traditional tender. This is why you don't see a bogie water tank behind any 60 class in archive footage. 6029 that's been returned to operational status does have a bogie water tanker when she runs tours simply because all the water columns have now gone.

Perhaps the problems for the Americans are the way they deploy the ships in their fleets. Here's a video of the Collins class submarine HMAS Rankin giving the US navy a run for it's money in an exercise off Hawaii.

Here in Australia some people use gas BBQ's or charcoal type BBQ's or the traditional wood usually gathered from gum trees in their garden. Hot summer days may seem ideal but if it's very hot with a hot dry wind, then there's often a total fire ban and anything with a sustained naked flame outside is prohibited. A Chinese family often used to have a burn off and they'd try to burn green garden cuttings or even wet green garden cuttings. There would be a thick column of choking smoke rising into the air and if we got a southerly wind the Chinese wife would go nuts at her husband because all the smoke from his fire was blown into their house. That all happened long before leaf litter was used for mulch which helps to stop the soil from drying out. Not a problem that you have in the UK.

The P4 layout of Winchester Chesil at the Milestones museum has been turned into a kiddies fun layout if this video footage is anything to go by.

A rare sight of the Whip Bird doing his Whip call.

The haunting tinkling sound of the Bell Bird. This is quite near to where I live.

Koalas those cute and cuddly marsupials, or are they.

Here's some varying driving standards for you all. The language can be a little strong at times but that's just the way we speak.

Perth W.A is not the other "side of the world" just the other side of the country, with vast reserves of iron ore. Where do you think all that iron ore goes, to China one of the worlds biggest polluters. Do you Pat B own a full EV? and if so which one and why did you buy an EV over an ICE. If you bought an EV because you like the concept, the car, the idea of not buying petrol etc, yes I can see the logic in that and well done good on you. But if you bought it just to do your bit to save the planet then you're wrong. EV's won't save the planet as Tesla fanboys like to think. Elon Musk's launch of the yet to be put into production Tesla truck was full of promises but the one piece of crucial information namely what the tare weight of the truck will be, was left out. It's that crucial piece of lacking info that will make trucking companies not place any orders for it. If the truck is heavy when empty then it can only carry a small amount of mechandise. That is not good for a trucking business. You can't load a truck to the hilt for roads have weight limits on them even here in Australia. There are stationary and mobile testing stations for checking a loaded rigs weight and if a rig is overweight then a huge fine is on the way because overweight rigs do huge damage to the roads. For me I can see the convenience of using an EV for round town driving. But for long distance driving my big 4.0L ICE Falcon is far more practical. Four beefy Australian men and all their luggage took a Toyota Prius from Sydney to Adelaide and the economy was appalling. They drove back in a Ford Falcon G6E which returned better economy overall than the Prius which is basically just a city car. On a country drive which I do a lot of my Falcon returns around 7.0L/100km or 40mpg. The average fuel economy indicates 6.8L-7.2L/100km so around 7.0L/100km. That's not bad for a car that weighs over two tons and driving on bitumen and dirt roads.

Here's my two pence worth. Living in Australia where driving is a necessity for public transport is woeful EV's aren't really an option here. The ICE rules supreme. Range anxiety to me isn't that much of a problem in the UK because towns are so close together. Whereas here in Australia it's sometimes several hundred kilometers between major centers of population. In the capital cities of states yes an EV is worthwhile if you have the money but out in the country at the present time definitely not. EV's in Australia are expensive, depreciate rapidly and when you sell it you have to remove the battery pack and the new owner has to buy a new battery pack and they aren't cheap. Only recently Tesla has been sending updates to it's cars via WiFi and they've been more of a down date than an update reducing battery range to extend the life of the battery. Some Tesla owners are disconnecting the WiFi so Tesla can't update or down date software in their cars. As for hydrogen like batteries which in the beginning had a very limited range hydrogen will improve in time and I think in the future a tank of compressed hydrogen will give the driver the same range as a tank of diesel. People go on about the environment when it comes to producing hydrogen but these same people don't seem to worry at all about the environment when it comes to producing petrol and diesel. That's just producing not consuming. By the way driving an EV is not saving the environment as most of the charging comes from coal fired power stations and the batteries themselves contain some very nasty chemicals and don't be shocked if used battery packs end up in landfill for it's the cheapest way to get rid of them. Recycling costs a lot of money and for many is not cost effective. In China they have battery powered motorbikes using lead acid and lithium batteries and the lead acid bikes are cheaper than a lithium powered bike. But once the lead acid battery can't be charged it's discarded at the roadside and a new battery is bought. Is that environmentally friendly?.

Ravenscar was originally named Peak, but a London property developer bought the place and decided it needed a far better name and so he renamed it Ravenscar. He had big plans for Ravenscar as he saw it as a large town to rival Scarborough. But Ravenscar had an insurmountable problem. The Victorians liked to be beside the sea and although people were given the impression that Ravenscar was beside the sea it is actually six hundred feet above it. Even the railway company got in on the act to extol the virtues of Ravenscar producing an advertisement showing it was an easy stroll from Ravenscar to the sandy beach. A complete lie. One of Ravenscar's residents has a plan of how big and grand Ravenscar was to have become. People even put a deposit of one pound sixteen shillings on a plot of land. Roads were built, curbs put in with drains but it all came to nearly nothing. Fewer than fifty houses were actually built. Some say the developer absconded with all the deposits. But whatever happened Ravenscar has remained a village to this day.

In time alternatives may have to be found for coal fired locos. Coal is rapidly becoming a dirty word world wide. Most mines here in "Straya" don't want to extract coal and leave it in big lumps to be burnt in loco fireboxes. They want to crush it down to granules usually for power station use or export. Then there is the disposal of the ash from the ash pan and cinders from the smoke box. Some locos have self cleaning smoke boxes but not all. At the present time diesel is widely available in "Straya" and cheap too. My work vehicle is a diesel and diesel at the pump is $1.50c or around 70p a litre. "Straya" is a hot and dry country and there's only a narrow window to operate steam in the winter months although often our winter temperatures are English summertime temperatures. With diesel for fuel there's no need to modify the production process. There's also no waste to pay to get rid of. The only downside is that the smell of coal burning is gone. But diesel fired steam locos could run all year round as there's no flying cinders which in a tinder dry country such as mine tips the balance in favour of diesel. That article I posted shows the burner set up and it's a world away from the old oil burning steam locos we used to have in the 1950's. I say oil but it was closer to crud. The locos should have been called "crud burners" for the "oil" they got was just crud. The oil tank in the tender required a heater to heat the crud just so it would flow to the atomiser. That's not necessary with diesel. Locos in NSW like the Garratt 6029 are expensive to run. One run costs in coal alone $10,000 and as the loco wasn't built for economy it devours coal like sailor in a pub after a long voyage and it doesn't work anywhere near as hard as it used to in it's mainline service days.

Last weekend I went out west to Molong and followed a small part the old disused Molong to Dubbo railway line. Passenger services ceased on the line in 1974 and the Molong-Dubbo section was completely shut in 1993. Like other disused railway lines in NSW the railway line is still there and farmers have now erected fences over the line. To walk it would not be a good idea as the grass is long and may hide snakes. Other parts of the line are difficult to follow being a long way from a road which out there is dirt. The line originally went from Orange to Dubbo via Molong and the Orange to Molong section is still in use but only for rolling stock storage. It forms a very long siding. The Molong to Dubbo Railway line was built to mainline standards due to a huge miscalculation. It was thought at the time that Australia would mirror the USA and have many inland cities, but the country is often just too dry to support large populations and so many railway lines were built but never carried the amount of traffic that was hoped for. Also unlike the USA which has many private railway companies New South Wales's first railway between Sydney and Parammatta was built by a private company but they went broke before completing it. So the government of NSW took over and completed the railway and that government has owned the lines ever since. Like the UK we now have private companies on our railways but unlike the UK mostly on the freight side. Nearly all passenger trains are still state owned and operated.

Your attitude is duly noted.

That's ok John. I hope you find them useful.

Yes. Ad blocker is not selective like some lawn weed killers. Ad Blocker is like Monsanto's "Roundup" it blocks all ads on all websites. Now I think that websites have every right to display ads if they want to. But it's my right with freedom of choice to whether I want to view those ads or not and as I've decided not to view them I block them. You may not like it but that's the way I feel and the way I will continue to feel. I think you'll find there are many users of this site who have an ad blocker add on activated. If you choose to delete my account on my admission of using an ad blocker on RMweb then do so. If it is a rule that an active ad blocker on RMweb is against one of your rules then I have no intentions of obeying that rule. It's called freedom of choice.

Yes I have Firefox too and they removed Ad blocker plus saying it wasn't compatible and the next day it was back again thank heavens. I know websites say that they need ad revenue and YouTube creators cite the same thing but the YouTube creators only get a tiny portion of the revenue generated on YouTube. Google get's the majority of the ad revenue from monetised videos. But one slip up and your videos are demonetised by Google so why monetise them in the first place.

Don't have to remove the number plates (front and rear) for we have free car parks and paid parking in plaza shopping centres starts after three hours of you being parked. I don't watch TV but I listen to the radio at night, well post 12am when it's ad free but then only in the work car. But I do object to ads on YouTube and so I block them all. What was the point of your post as it escapes me. What has ads got to do with the number plates on the car and not paying at car parks?

It was also revealed that the Germans had no where near enough heavy water. They would have had to have a Heathrow tank farm of heavy water a Hitler couldn't wait. That dictator had a 12 month rule give me a working prototype by 12 months and you get the go ahead. But if no working prototype is ready by then, then find something else to work on.

I have add blocker plus and it blocks all adds on YouTube and the web too.

Had mine a couple of years ago and when the doctor had his finger up my back passage I asked if this means we're engaged. He wanted to know what I meant. I said well my ring is one your finger.

A man used to live across the road from my mum and dad and in WW2 he'd been in Paupa New Guinea. He saw some horrific sites and wrote a book about his wartime experiences (long out of print). But I remember him saying in the book that when the Japanese shot Anglo soldiers or Anglo soldiers shot the Japanese the dead would have to be buried very quickly, not from a security viewpoint but simply because in the heat and high humidity the dead would start to decompose within one hour. He also told of a visiting officer who berated their company commander for not wearing his stripes or any other way to recognise his rank. It was pointed out to this visiting officer that Japanese snipers pick off the officers in the belief that the men left will become a disorganised rabble. This visiting officer made it known that he didn't care and that the company commander would be reported on his return to HQ. Well on his way back to HQ the Japanese attacked his staff car and made him their target. He took refuge in a muddy ditch where he ripped off all decorations pertaining to his rank and threw his baton away. The company commander never was reported. In another chapter he reported how out on patrol he and his fellow soldiers would have to make camp for the night wherever they were. One night they made camp but there a horrific smell and they soon realised that they'd made camp onto of buried dead soldiers who weren't buried deep enough and in the heat the swelling decomposing bodies had broken the ground. It's those sort of stories that were never on a recruitment poster. To look at him this man was perfectly normal and no one would have an inkling of the horrors he'd been through.

There was somone who said that the mobile phone has become a "drug" and those constantly on their phones are addicts. Getting a text message on a phone gives the user the same chemical reaction in the brain as smoking, drinking and gambling. That's why we see so many people using their phones when they're driving. This person said if kids are studying for exams and they're feeling stressed their parents don't say to them "well go and make yourself a scotch and dry". A message comes in their phone whilst people are driving and because of the drug effect it has they feel compelled to answer right then and there. They can't wait. I've personally been told to pair my phone with the blue tooth in the work car. But when I get a message come through I wait until I get to my next work location and I've parked before I answer it. I can't reply to a message whilst I'm driving and I won't. Only the other night I was stopped for a random breath test and whilst the cop was at the window off went the chime on the phone with a message. But I ignored it and told him I'll read it at my next work location. The same if the phone rings. The wonderful thing about mobiles is that they state the name of the person (if they're in your contact list) or the number. If "no number" is displayed then if they really want to contact you they'll phone back later. People have allowed mobiles to control them in "when I ring you will answer and when I text you a message you will reply and for both right then and there. You will not wait and you will not ignore me". Well I do. I saw the effect mobiles had on people way back in 2000 when I went to the UK and in the shuttle bus from home (as I live a long way from the airport) one lady was constantly on the phone telling her family of her location. She kept on phoning when we reached the international airport and again when we waited in the queue at the check in and again to tell of the further wait at the check in. She phoned again to say she'd checked in. It must have cost her a fortune. I phoned once when I arrived in the UK and sent a text once a week to say I was still ok.

Have you read this article. This railway had a problem with coal firing but not smoke but sparks. So they've fitted one of their locos to burn light oil namely diesel. https://puffingbilly.com.au/news/workshop-blog/would-you-rather/