faulcon1

If using Peco points outside whether they be insulfrog or electrofrog the center spring needs to be protected for it's made of steel and easily rusts to the point (no pun intended) where it breaks. Although replacement springs are available from Peco they're an absolute to fit. So a thick grease that's compatible not only with the steel of the spring but also the type of plastic that Peco uses needs to be found to provide protection. But I'd still put a waterproof cover the points when the railway is not in use.

Here's 5917 climbing Cowan Bank unassisted in about April 2022. Whoever took the film did it with a mobile phone held vertically so it's a portrait video. There were five tunnels on Cowan Bank all named Boronia one to five. But since the doubling of the line many years ago only four tunnels are in use. At about 4.12 we can clearly see the abandoned No.5 tunnel and then the tunnels are four, three, two and one with two and one being the longest. Whoever took the video kept filming throughout the entire accent without a break and that includes all four tunnels. Unlike 3642 or 3801, 5917 loses it's feet on the grade. For those who don't know 5917 was built by Baldwin locomotive works USA in 1952 and was one of twenty locos and arrived as an oil burner. She's are light weight 2-8-2 weighing 151 tons with a boiler pressure of 200 psi and a tractive effort of 35,000lbs. Water capacity is 5,500 gallons and oil was 2,400 gallons. Between 1962-66 all but three of the class were converted to burn coal and she has a coal capacity of 11 tons. 5917 entered service in March 1953 and was withdrawn in August 1972 having travelled just over 800,000km in her twenty year railway service life.

Peterborough Roundhouse in South Australia is unique in that the turntable has narrow, standard and broad gauge rails on it's turntable deck.

Within the past few months The National Film and Sound Archive have re-released A Steam Train Passes but in 4K. Yes it's the same 1974 film as before but now the resolution is more clear and crisp. Where the narrator in the sepia footage says "proud product of Australian engineers and artisans", he should have said "proud product of Australian and American engineers and artisans". For the one piece frame was cast in America and the streamlining is an adaptation of the New York Haven and Hartford Railroad I 5 4-6-4. Americans love 3801 for no I 5 made it into preservation and if you look at a photo of an I 5 you can see the similarities in the cowling along the top of the boiler complete with the two vents at the front and the bullet nose. It too had side valances along the running plate. Also where the narrator says "in these great workshops in Eveleigh Sydney" well it wasn't Eveleigh railway workshops in Sydney but Clyde Engineering Workshops in the western Sydney suburb of Granville. It was Clyde Engineering that built the first five 38 class 3801-3805 for in the shot were the boiler is being lowered onto the chassis frame there's supporting structure for the cowling along the top of the boiler. The railways had quite a time of getting the first five 38 class built as Clyde Engineering was also doing work for WW2 at the same time and the 38's were often put onto the back burner so to speak. The railways sent rail workers to help speed up the construction of the first five 38 class. Clyde Engineering was well versed in railway locomotive construction having built the preceding 36 class locomotives.

I saw the Chiltern Green layout at the South Devon Railway where it was housed in a BR MK1 coach.

Here's part three

Here's part two

Does anyone remember these layouts

Japanese soldiers admitted they were dreadfully indoctrinated by the army at that time. Yes people in China still do have an intense hatred of the Japanese and Chinese students who had English speaking teachers said once they graduated they wanted to go to Japan so they could kill Japanese people. Being told they were 70+ years too late as the present generation of Japanese have not killed Chinese people, Chinese students say that makes not one iota of any difference.

There was a British reporter who went on a tour of Japan by rail and one place he stopped at was Nagasaki. There was a woman there who survived the atomic bomb and told school children about her experience. What the reporter said was that although the children were visibly upset at her story they're not told what their own imperial forces did to the people of other Asian nations and allied POW's. I remember a TV program years ago before the internet called "Horror in the East" where former Japanese army soldiers told their stories of what they did in China and how they moved from one village to the next stealing, raping and burning. At that time they looked upon the Chinese people as bugs not humans. They even had Americans servicemen from that time telling people that war crimes weren't just done by the Japanese but by the Americans too. Japanese soldiers would surrender to Americans but on getting close to them they would pull a pin on a hand grenade and blow themselves up and the Americans too which is why you see Japanese soldiers in old footage stripped to their underwear upon surrendering. On Guadalcanal the Japanese did a Banzai charge straight at fortified positions but in the carnage of massacred Japanese soldiers some survived and they were taken prisoner, disarmed and put in a fenced compound and an American soldier was detailed to guard them. In the middle of the night he machine gunned the lot of them to death and why?, he got fed up with guarding them so he killed them. So this American said that when people say that only the Axis forces committed war crimes that's not true because both sides did it. Germans have had to live with the crimes of the Hitler era to the present day, but the Japanese have not and the Americans compromised the war crimes trials in Tokyo with many war criminals escaping justice. Even old Japanese soldiers couldn't understand how the Japanese Emperor was never tried for war crimes because all of the Japanese imperial forces fought in his name. One old soldier said that old soldiers don't really talk about war experiences and they're told to keep quiet otherwise it will shame Japan. So the TV program gave them a rare chance to speak.

Perhaps the brown tree snake on the model railway was hoping for a 009 layout where the track "snakes" its way around. If the doors to the model railway are just standard Aussie garage roller doors then they need to fit proper house type closing doors and keep them closed so the local wildlife can't get in. Access should be from a side door only fitted with a draft excluder so snakes can't get in under the door. A King Brown is not something to be messed with and you certainly don't get heroic and try and catch it yourself. Good on the mother for acting so quickly as her daughter would be unlikely to survive a bite. This is because of all the rain we've had so they're very active and it's highly likely that rodents are nearby and the snake can smell them. Just because the yard looks clean and tidy doesn't mean that rodents aren't around.

So if you order Crocodile meat and the piece of meat you get has recently had an American tourist for lunch does that mean you've ordered meat with extra FAT.

Not willing to supply locos to Australia maybe true but some retailers in the UK (not the big one in Liverpool) run new and pre-owned models before sending them overseas to make sure that what the customer is buying is indeed of saleable quality. It covers the retailer if anything bad should happen either with the postal services or the customer damaging what they bought and then trying to fraudulently get a refund from the retailer. Bachmann's service department has had similar cases where a customer has a problem with a loco and has sent it in to be repaired often with a note attached reading "I haven't touched it" Yet the Bachmann repair staff can see the teeth marks on the loco where the customer's dog has been chewing on the loco. One could say a BONE of contention.

I did buy online a DJi pocket camera which has a built in gimbal. What was not mentioned on the website page was that one needed to register the camera with the company that made it in China which I wasn't prepared to do as all Chinese based companies have links with the CCP. One also needed to have a late model iPhone or android phone to activate the camera. The company I bought it off wasn't interested in fully refunding the purchase price. So I contacted the ACCC and they took a look at the web page of this Australian based camera company and agreed that there was no mention of needing a late model iPhone or android phone to activate the camera or the need to register the camera with the China based company. The ACC contacted the retailer reminding them of their obligations under Australian consumer law and suddenly they were very interested in refunding the full purchase price. The ACCC also told me that getting a refund from a UK based company shouldn't be any trouble but getting a refund from a Asian based company would often prove to be next to impossible.

Oddly enough we Aussies are some of the longest lived people with many of us living into our 80's and 90's. So if our wildlife's objective is to kill as many of us as possible, well they're doing a rather lousy job of it. Many American created YT videos harp on and on about all the dangerous wildlife in Australia but in my sixty years I've only seen three snakes in person. One red bellied black snake in my place, one king brown snake and that was in Cowra railway yard close to death having been run over by a big 4x4, and a diamond python in the Dorrigo National Park Rainforest Walk which was only about one foot away from me and paid no attention to me whatsoever as it slowly climbed into a tree. Amazing watching it's body slowly from the tail come into a long zig zag shape with all it's muscles taut so as to be able to rise vertically up the side of a tree to reach the first branch and then the whole body is slowly brought up to that branch and bunched up again to reach the next branch up and so on. Yes I've had red back spiders in my garden shed but another lizard lives in there now so no spiders. It's not as big as the pink tongue or as small as a Skink. It's in between and there's actually three of them, one in the garden shed, one in the garage and one under the house. They seem contented to hang around and there must be food for them otherwise they'd leave. In nature everything feeds off everything else and with us humans at the top of the food chain we only get eaten by other things in the food chain if we're stupid or unlucky.

The last time I was in the UK in 2017 I hired a Hyundai i35 diesel which had a built in sat nav but it was so annoying. I'd be driving along a motorway not something I usually do in the UK because the local roads are far more scenic than a motorway and when approaching an exit which I didn't intend to take the sat nav would speak "in 800 yards bear right". It would count down in 100 yard increments. On reaching the exit I didn't want the sat nav would say "now bear right" which meant just keep driving on the motorway. Every time I planned a route it did it's best to try and take me straight to a motorway which I didn't want to do. In the end I gave up and switch it off and used a AA big road map atlas bought in East Grinstead. Being of the older generation I can read and easily follow a paper road map.

On Dash Cam Owners Australia in one of their "on the road" compilations, a cop books someone sitting at green traffic lights totally absorbed in texting on their phone with drivers behind who had been tooting this stationary driver but all to no avail. Many a driver here and around the world texts on their phone whilst at traffic lights and motorcycle cops ride down between lanes of car looking into them to see who's texting.

The late Clive James said that growing up in Kogarah they had a pan dunny and one summers day the dunny can man arrived with a new empty clean can and ran down their driveway to the dunny. They heard the full can being removed and the dunny can lid being put on the full can. The also heard the dunny can man running back up the driveway to his truck with the full can over his shoulder. Clive however had left his push bike on the driveway and the dunny can man tripped over it on his way back to the truck. Clive and his mother heard the lid coming off the can followed by a lot of foul language from the dunny can man as he fell onto the driveway whilst being cover with the contents from the now rapidly emptying dunny can. Clive said his mother put her hands to her face and that being summer time over a billion flies headed for their driveway and the dunny can man. At Christmas time many people would leave a bottle or two of beer in their dunny for the dunny can man who must have had a very boozy Christmas.

This little chap/girl lives under my house and is very frightened of me as I'm so much bigger and usually only pops it's head out from under the house. Today however feeling brave it came right out although I only have to move near it and it immediately scurries back under the house.

I do ignore my female boss when she phones and I'm driving and it drives her crazy which makes me feel good. I phone her when I get to my next job location and I'm parked with the engine off. I have a hands free device but still refuse to answer the phone and I have the ring volume set to zero so I just get the vibration noise.

The police here will fine you if they see you using a mobile whilst driving but they won't confiscate the phone. They could easily open the phone up and remove the Sim card and then hand the phone back to the owner. But they don't and yes the fines should on par with drink driving fines.

Trip advisor is NOT to be trusted as owners of Hotels/Motels/Pubs can't leave a response to negative comments. A Motel owner in NSW Australia got a bad review together with a one * rating. He said to a local news crew that the person in question had invited all his mates to the motel room who stayed the night without paying, got blind drunk plus smoking taking drugs in the room and urinating and defecating throughout the room and on the beds and the room had to be completely redone with new furnishings new carpet and a new bathroom. The person who booked and destroyed the room also had to pay for all this and as a result went onto Trip Advisor and had a big whinge and gave the motel a one * rating. Google reviews of establishments are far better than Trip Advisor as an owner is allowed to respond and will to negative reviews as a model railway shop I know did when someone complained that the shop stinks of spices, has grumpy unhelpful staff to knowingly selling defective model locos to people. The owner left a reply asking the person to tell the truth in that the secondhand loco they bought they admitted to damaging themselves and that the grumpy one was them when the shop refused to refund the purchase price of the loco the customer admitted damaging. The owner added in future write the truth not a load of fiction intended to garner sympathy from actions that were all your own fault.

Unfortunately bad driving is the same the world over no matter which side of the road you drive on. Impatient people cutting others off, speeding, and ignoring road rules to others fiddling with audio systems, to texting on phones. Mobile or smart phones are drugs these days with so many whose faces are glued to the screen. A message comes in and they have to answer it right away and the same if someone calls and that call must be answered immediately, it cannot wait. All these products for hands free use still take away the one thing that people need when driving and that's total concentration on driving and all it entails. Police don't confiscate a phone if they see it being used whilst a person is driving because that confiscation would deprive the government of money. They want people to use their phones so that they can rake in the money via fines. I've had many an argument with my boss over my refusal to answer the phone whilst driving and I always state the same thing in that I'm there to drive not talk away to people on the phone. I don't multi task and I have no intention of starting whilst I'm driving.

Thank you for letting me know as these days steam always seem to have one or two diesels hanging off the rear and yet it's the diesels that fail not steam. How different to what Hawkmount USED to be like in the days of steam. These days no on camps out under the stars waiting for the morning parade of trains labouring up the grade of 1 in 44. Here's a video of what it used to be like in the days of steam.

How many carriages did she haul and was there a diesel on the rear giving assistance?.