faulcon1

This car will enter the modern classics in due course. The car shown here was not a car specially modified by it's owner, this is how they came from the factory for any member of the public to buy. In the UK it may have some trouble on the one lane two way country lanes.

Here's a video of a 1970's XA Superbird Falcon restored by the son of the original owner or his dad.

Here's the final part of that journey to Switzerland for the gathering of Lamborghini's

Here's part two of this trip and it begins in France on Harry little boat.

I don't know if anyone on the forum has seen this video but this chap lives in the Cotswolds and yes he's well heeled, very well indeed and good luck to him.

Here's another video Gem done by the same man of the old Ropes Creek line in western Sydney. It was closed in favour of housing estates and roads.....naturally.

This video is a gem. A CPH railmotor on the old abattoirs line in western Sydney. You can still ride this line today as it forms part of the Sydney Olympic Line. This video was done before the H&S zealots outlawed having fun.

In June 2018 I had to clear out of my house for the removal of asbestos wall lining and floor tiles for a brand new kitchen. The kitchen hadn't been updated since 1949. The builder found some old newspapers under the old lino floor tiles. I headed north for a short holiday and one place I went to was Timbertown at Wauchope (pronounced war hope). There is a genuine wood fired steam loco which hauls it's train of three bogie homemade carriages around the perimeter of the site. There are other working displays some steam powered and some horse powered. There was also an "olde worlde" cinema where one sat on hard timber benches, no cushions here. A film was shown on the timber industry down through the years. Not on an "olde worlde" large cinema type screen with an "olde worlde" projector but on a modern DVD player onto a large LCD flat screen TV. It spoiled the atmosphere a bit. Here's my footage. No wood is cut nowadays

This advert for Marshall car batteries is also railway themed. It was filmed on the Castlemaine and Maldon Railway in Victoria The car is an XD Falcon and the locomotive is a Victorian K class 2-8-0 No. 160. "Holler for a Marshalls"

For those who wish to come to Australia be careful when near railway bridges. This advert was done on an old Railway bridge since demolished on the freight only line near Mascot airport. It's also a subtle anti smoking ad.

The roads in Australia can be a real torture test for any car or 4x4. This one in particular is usually regarded as a 4x4 road only and then only in the dry season. However 2wd cars have taken it on and made it too as this video shows with an old 1994 thrashed out ED Falcon.

On the bloke sitting on the seat or the Lyrebird.

In June 2018 I had a brand new kitchen installed. But a lot of the wall lining in the kitchen was asbestos laden fibro as were the kitchen floor tiles. I had to clear out of the house for the special removal team to safely remove old the old asbestos material. So I took some holidays from work and went up the north coast to Coffs Harbour. I drove from Coramba to Dorrigo and this video is just part of that journey. It's really beautiful country up there and with a high rainfall very green. Not like the usual Australian countryside which is brown. My car (which I still have) is shown at the end. I'd love to drive it in the UK although the country lanes maybe a problem.

For those that fear coming to Australia because of our wildlife, our wildlife may find you rather attractive and may even try to "chat" you up like this Lyrebird in Healesville Sanctuary. At 3:16 is the call of a Currawong. A Currawong is bigger than a Magpie but not as big as a Crow or Raven. Nobody knows what the Lyrebird's own call is. He mimics other bird calls plus other sounds too. In his performance for this man was a kids toy laser gun. But they also mimic other everyday sounds from chainsaws used by home owners to hammers, nail guns, hand saws, car alarms, camera shutters, camera shutters with a motor drive etc. It's all done for love. The bigger and broader his range of sounds the better the chance he has of getting a female mate. This bird however is rather desperate maybe because all the female Lyrebirds have heard it all before and are no longer impressed.

In the UK you have a place called Rugby. Well we in Australia have a place called Ruby too. However you'll never drive through Rugby in the UK as fast as I did through Rugby in Southern New South Wales.

It's nice to hear and see stylish diesels for a change. Modern diesels are shaped like like house bricks and sound like vacuum cleaners and all very boring. I wrote on a YT video of modern diesels ascending Arglen and how I remember the "good old days". In the Blue Mountains if there was an easterly wind blowing one could easily hear four 80 class Alcos roaring their heads off as the slowly ascended the Blue Mountains line. The sound of them fading in and out as the wind blew. They'd come past my place and the house would vibrate and the noise they made was almost deafening but glorious all the same. At other times is would be two 80 class and two 44 class with the 44's exhaust on fire and flames coming out of it's exhaust port about one foot high. All the carbon was being burnt out. Once again the noise would deafening but wonderful. If 80 class were coming down the mountains or heading east then the driver would use the dynamic braking. On modern diesels a muffled growling sound but on the 80 class they had a high pitched scream. Electric locos like the 85's and 86's going slowly in pouring rain and the train getting ever slower as they fought for traction on the 1 in 33 grade. Car headlights on the highway would light the locos at night and they'd be barely moving. Now all gone and most freight goes by road.

Here is a slide show of Junee Roundhouse. This roundhouse was built in 1942 and officially opened in 1947. It was the second location for a locomotive depot the first being in Junee town itself and not popular with the people of the town due to the amount of smoke it produced. In the 1990's the railways no longer had any use for the roundhouse and there was a proposal to demolish it, but a vocal campaign to save it succeeded so that today it is partly preserved and partly in use once again. The user is Graincorp for locomotive maintenance or what it was built for. It is the only surviving full roundhouse in NSW. Goulburn was also a full roundhouse but in the diesel era part of the roundhouse was demolished where coaches and old diesels now sit outside. Our biggest roundhouse depot was the old Enfield depot which had two full roundhouses. There were three turntables at Enfield two had complete roundhouses with 75' turntables and the third had a partial roundhouse with a 120' turntable for turning the 60 class Garratts. The Enfield depot was demolished in 1975 for a large railway yard which didn't eventuate for many years. The 120' turntable is now at the Thirlmere Railway Museum.

On the May the 25th my brother and I went down to Goulburn where they were having the 150th celebrations of the railway. Preserved loco 3526 worked a special train to Goulburn and was serviced in the roundhouse which is now the home of a preservation society. They have recently restored an 0-6-0 tank which sat for many years at the Thirlmere railway museum in their "condemned road". Restoration work began in 2008 and was completed in 2018. The loco 1076 was for many years the roundhouse shunter at Goulburn in the steam era. Although restored to operational condition they are forbidden to drive it at the moment. They can raise steam but they can't move it under it's own power. So a diesel 4821 is coupled to the loco and that moves it. 1076 was built by the Vulcan Foundry at Newton Le Willows in 1884 builders No. 995. Her former number was 1804 of the Z18 class of which there were six locomotives. 1076 was fitted with a "coal grab" making her like a crane tank and the coal grab was removed in 1959. 1075 and 1077 reverted to 1801 and 1803 but 1076 retained her number for the rest of her government railway life. For those who don't know 3526 is a 4-6-0 express passenger loco. She was built by the New South Wales Government Railways in 1917, builders No. 118. She is the only survivor of 35 locomotives and is preserved in her "rebuilt" condition. She originally had a cut away cab (like a GWR Star) and no valance along the running plate. In this condition and painted a dark blue with a silver star on the smoke box door and she hauled the Caves Express of six specially painted blue and cream carriages over the Blue Mountains to Mt Victoria. A model of the Caves Express train in HO scale with 3535 (last of the class) in the blue colour scheme can be seen in my great train show video number 2 on the Overseas Modelling Page. 3526 was rebuilt into her current form in 1941. He driving wheels are small for an express passenger loco by English standards of only 5'9". 6'81/2" or 6'9" can't cope unassisted with a train on 1 in 40 and steeper gradients. 3526 recently returned from an overhaul where you was given a new built tender including frame. The water tank inside the tender is now stainless steel as are all the baffles. The continually patched up tender tank finally gave up and the rusting from the water killed the frame.

On the 8th of June I went with my brother to Rosehill Racecource to have a look at the Epping Model Railway club's exhibition. There were a large number of layouts there and traders. It seemed a better set up than the annual one at Liverpool which is no more. It's been moved to one of the stadiums at Sydney Olympic Park. At Rosehill one could get a decent cup of coffee and something to eat available to both the viewing public and the model railway exhibitors. There was also loads of free parking close to the venue. At Liverpool it was a long walk from the car park to the exhibition. The layouts were all of a high standard with HO scale New South Wales predominating. One layout "Fingal" really caught my eye as it was modelled on Tasmanian Railways. There is no R-T-R in Tasmanian prototypes so every loco, coach, wagon, all line side buildings has to be scratch built. This layout was in OO scale or as the builders called it OO14 as Tasmania runs on 3'6" gauge and OO gives it a narrow gauge feel. The 57 class 4-8-2 of 1929 seen on the Matelend, Blue Mountains and Rollingstock on the NSWR layouts had an operating Gresley Conjugating Valve Gear to operate the valves above the inside center cylinder. You would see these on the A3 and A4's if they weren't covered in. One 57 has been preserved No. 5711 which was withdrawn from traffic in 1961. They were designed to haul heavy slow coal trains. The 58 class 4-8-2 of 1950 looked similar but were meant for high speed goods trains like fruit expresses but they too were used on long slow coal trains a task they were never designed for and they were regarded as a failure. None have been preserved. The 57, 58 and 60 classes were the only steam locos on the New South Wales Government Railways that were fitted with automatic stokers. Oddly enough steam had to be raised using the shovel and a fireman was only allowed to operate the automatic stoker when the loco was coupled to a train. The 30 class 4-6-4 tank seen on the Matelend layout are available R-T-R at around 300 pounds each. Ouch!!!!!. All the layouts at the exhibition were for sale.......at the right price for those who have deep pockets. I took some amateur video. It's amazing what's now available in NSW HO scale considering our small population of 24m.

There's one thing that has to be remembered when building the track base of a garden railway. The indoor board method cannot be followed here. There are many ways to construct a track work base from thermalite blocks which can be cut with a large toothed wood saw to rubber pathway material used in kids playgrounds. As for being worried about expansion in hot weather, that usually only occurs on very hot days when you may not want to operate the garden railway anyway due to the chances of sunburn. But to stop the sun sending the track out of alignment a cover is needed and thick pieces of polystyrene foam provides a good cover. It's cheap and fairly easily cut using an old bread knife. Just use brick to hold them in place so the wind doesn't blow them away. You could even paint the polystyrene with acrylic paint (oil based paint will melt it) in an attractive green so it blends in.

Here's the final video of the XW Falcon. It sounds and looks a little different now. Oddly enough the Barra six in my own Falcon produces more HP than the Cleveland in this XW. But mine sounds no where near as nice.

Yes well Peter Anderson at one stage had four V8's the 351 in the XW and another 351 in an XC Fairmont GXL which he's restoring plus a 302 in a 1996 Fairlane Ghia which he sold and another 302 in his dad's XD Falcon. His dad died many years ago but Peter ended up with his car. He's not a Ford fanatic as his daily drive is a Holden Commodore. He's also restored a Wolesley and an MG. He also has a pre war Wolesley as well that's awaiting restoration. He's recently been doing a quick restoration on a Mitsubishi Sigma. Well quick is not quite the right term as the car was stripped back to almost a body shell. He would love his son to be interested in car restoration but he shows little interest yet. He has many parts plated from nuts and bolts to brackets and door opening and locking assemblies. He said that the plater charges $65.00 whether you have one part to be plated of one hundred parts. Peter is also rarely without a cuppa tea. He was working under the XW and it must have been wintertime for he said that he should drink less tea as he'd been pissing like one of the concrete babies in fountains. I love his daughters comment in the video when Peter says 'You wait until I have this done up' and his daughter Rosie says 'What it will still be crap' she has a lot of faith in her dad's abilities.

Here's another Falcon with an interesting history but the owner didn't have the skills to restore the car. So he paid others to do all the work for him. Here's the video

On YouTube there are various people showing cars being restored. But they show a slide show and not the nitty gritty of car restoration. In Victoria Australia there is one bloke who shows cars he's working on from start to finish like a 1969 Ford XW Falcon which he bought as a running car but rather tired from old age. The car had a 3.6 six cylinder engine but that was removed and a 351 V8 was put in it's place. The restoration was done in the blokes garage as are all his other car restorations. He's a high school teacher but has worked for car dealers in the past. Oddly enough he hated working on cars for a living but loves doing it for a hobby. In the first of thirty one videos he takes his youngest daughter for a ride in the Falcon in it's "as bought" condition. She being of a different generation is none to pleased with dad's latest acquisition. He lives on the local railway line that terminates at Belgrave or the start of a journey on Puffing Billy. Here's that video of the Falcon:

The governments around the world have known that prostate cancer is a bigger killer of men than breast cancer is with women but they don't really do anything about it as most men have grown up with the macho image and don't go in for the doctor inserting a finger where the sun don't shine. Here in Australia it's rarely talked about as unfortunately men's issues are laughed at and not taken seriously by society. Women's issues are center stage in Australia's mythical patriarchal society. Our local car park in the village has a blood donation bus parked there (The Vampires) for one week and the other three weeks are taken up with the Breast Screening bus (The tit squeezers). There's never been a prostate bus there and I doubt if one even exists. Men's issues in Australia are unimportant. Yet male deaths far outstrip female deaths in Australia. Go into any nursing home and they're full of women with just a handful of men. Men don't live long enough it's as simple as that.