A place to call home.

Whilst this blog is primarily concerned with all things 'train', and my efforts to build a museum of Toy Trains, I also recognise that there are other necessities of life- such as a roof over one's head at night.  And so a significant event occurred on Thursday with the signing of a contract with a local builder to build a cottage at Whistlestop.  The idea of a one-bedroom cottage is to give us somewhere to live for a while as the other projects planned for Whistlestop develop, although we still are hoping to build a larger house adjacent to the cottage one day.  I am extremely excited about being truly able to call Whistlestop 'home', which we haven't been able to do previously.

Here is a picture of the cottage site taken a couple of years ago when it was the storage site of one of my brother's projects- a 1927 Hupmobile.

Here's another picture taken from where the front verandah will be, looking southwest.  I'm really looking forward to developing this area more, with all the grass being mown, and gardens created amongst the rock outcrops.

There is a cartoon which I don't have access to at the moment unfortunately, but it shows a bloke showing a mate his train-room which is a really grand building, and in the background is a very modest structure which is his home.  I really don't know why that's funny........................

With the excitement of building our home, and all the other extremely exciting projects that are ahead of me, I am very concious that there are many, many, people in the world who are homeless through no fault of their own, with no prospect of ever improving their situation.  My daughter Amy works with an organisation whose aim is to help people trapped in extreme poverty- and the number of those people is perhaps surprisingly high.  You may like to read her blog at Love, Liberation & Lost Luggage.

Why not Aussie Trains??

I have mentioned several times on previous posts that I have a really strong interest in Australia's heritage, particularly regarding Railways and Transport.  Why then is there such a strong American emphasis on my Toy Train collection?  Why don't Aussie Toy Trains feature in my forthcoming Museum?  Both good questions, and the simple answer is that there simply are not enough Australian-made toy trains to create a worthwhile display.  There are a few though, so let's have a look.

Prior to World War Two Australian children had relied heavily on British-made toys, which for most boys meant that they had a Hornby O gauge train set.  After WW2, with British industry struggling to get back on it's feet, there was a vacuum in the Aussie toy market, and several local manufacturers attempted to meet this need.  There were three main toy train makers- Ferris, Maurlyn and Robilt- although there were other smaller concerns as well.  There is an excellent book about Australia's Toy Train industry called Spring, Spark and Steam which details every known maker, and which I thoroughly recommend if this subject is of particular interest.

The Ferris company specialised in making early car radios (we had one in our Holden), but diversified into toy trains.  They made a few different styles, but perhaps the most common type was the Sydney Suburban train.

I'm sure that these were quite popular in Sydney, but as a Melbourne Boy they were of limited interest in comparison to the other 'big' manufacturer's offerings.  Robilt trains were built only a few miles from where we lived, although I didn't know that then.  My introduction to Robilt trains was also what I still consider my 'Greatest Find'.  In suburban Melbourne our local council would have occasional collections of rubbish which was too big to be taken by the dustman each week.  We would put all this stuff out on the nature strip by the street, and in due course it would be collected by contractors.  Things like old mattresses, tree stumps, old prams, all sorts of stuff!  For young boys it was a real adventure!!  The prams would be stripped of their wheels for use on Billy Carts, bits of wood acquired for cubby houses, and other interesting stuff duly carted home, much to our parents chagrin!  In one of these piles of junk down the street I found a small cardboard suitcase.  This was opened, expecting either junk or nothing at all, but low and behold it was a complete Robilt train set in good condition!!  I couldn't get home quickly enough!!  I had never seen anything like this before, although in retrospect it was probably only ten to fifteen years old when I found it.

The locomotive was like this, except that mine was black, with V.R. on the tender.  It is clockwork O gauge.

There were two carriages like this.  The top-of-the-line locomotive that Robilt made was a fairly good model of the VR S class steam locomotive used to pull the Spirit of Progress train.

So you can see that there were some really nice Aussie Toy Trains, but certainly not enough variety to base a whole museum on.  Now there are also some really excellent HO and O gauge model trains of various Australian prototypes made by companies such as Austrains, Auscision and Train-o-rama.  I do eventually hope to build a scenic model railway for the museum based on a Victorian Railways line around the 50's or 60's, which is what I remember when growing up.  This is some time off though.  In the meantime I am gathering a nice collection of models, as well as the continual search for the wonderful old Robilt, Ferris and Maurlyn toys.

Another layout addition

Another interesting package arrived in the mail today, containing an MTH Tinplate Traditions set of #92 Floodlight Towers, which are copies of ones originally made by Lionel in the 1930's.  These are suitable for either the Standard Gauge layout or the pre-war 0 gauge layout, and are 21" high.

I've been looking for a set of these for a long time, and now they're all ready to be installed on one of the layouts! Every new item is exciting, and I really hope that will always be the case.  Nearly all these Lionel-type accessories do something, and most have a light of some sort.  I want to be able to dim the overall lighting in the Trainbarn for a short period while visitors are there so that all the little lights on the layouts and in the trains become more prominent.  I think kids especially will really enjoy that!  Ok, I will too!!

Although of course I really enjoy the actual trains, what I think I enjoy most about this hobby is building the 'layouts' that the trains will run on.  A layout can be as simple as an 8 x 4 sheet of plywood painted green with the track screwed down onto it, or as complex as one of the many amazing scenic layouts built by railway modellers, with plaster mountains from floor to ceiling.  If you want to see a truly awesome 'layout' have a look at the Miniatur Wunderland website, about a model railway display in Germany.  My layouts in the Trainbarn will not be particularly realistic- they are toys, not models- but with a little bit of imagination the scenes will show all the various aspects of a real town, railroad yard, or countryside.

It was a German toy company- Märklin- that developed the idea of building toy train layouts, as against a simple circle of track with a train running around it which was the norm at that time. They were the first to sell extra track items, station buildings, signals etc.  These items now are highly collectable, of course!  The Lionel company took accessories a step further and not only fitted them with electric lights (Märklin had used candles), but made them do all sorts of other action-type things, as well.

When you come and visit the Trainbarn at Whistlestop, no doubt you will want to see lots of colourful trains running around the layouts, but I hope you also notice and enjoy the many accessories- some large, some small- that for me, at least, make each layout so enjoyable and interesting.

Scales and Gauges

Like any hobby or occupation, Toy and Model Railways has it's own jargon, which can be very confusing to outsiders.  It is impossible to talk about Toy Trains without using the terms 'Scale' and 'Gauge'.  Sometimes they're used interchangably, but they're actually quite different.

Gauge is simply the distance between the insides of the two rails that the train runs on.

For example, many real trains are said to be Standard Gauge, which is 4 ' 8 1/2'' gauge.  The most popular Toy Train gauge is 0 gauge, which is either 1 1/4" or 32mm between the rails, depending on which country you are in.

And then there is 'scale'.  This is simply the ratio between the size of the real thing and the model.  It can be expressed in several different ways, somewhat adding to the confusion, ie as a ratio 1:87 for HO scale, or as 3.5mm/foot, which is also HO scale.  For example a model of an F-7 diesel locomotive in HO scale will be 1/87th of the length, width and height of the real locomotive.  If you had 87  HO models and lined them up in front of each other, they would equal the length of the real loco.

Model trains are usually built to a certain scale, ie HO, or N.  Toy trains however, are usually built to run on a certain gauge of track, often with little regard to being the right size relative to that track gauge.  Lionel, for example, had several different price ranges for it's trains, which all ran on the same gauge track.  The more expensive the train was, the bigger (and more detailed) it was.  So those who are interested in model railways talk of O scale, whereas toy train enthusiasts would say O gauge.  Confusing, isn't it!!

To help guests to Whistlestop better understand scales and gauges I decided to set up an interesting display  showing all the different common model railway scales.  I am collecting the same locomotive in the same colour scheme in every common scale, and placing it on a short section of track.  It was hard to find a loco that is common enough around the world that it was or is made in every different scale.  The only one that I am aware of, and the one I have chosen, is an F-7a diesel lcomotive in the beautiful Santa Fe Warbonnet livery.  So far I have this loco in Z, N, TT, HO and G scale, missing examples in S, O and 1 scale, which are all available, I just haven't been able to get one yet.

Here is a picture of the first three (Z, N and HO) to show you the idea.

I have since been able to obtain one of these in TT scale, which is perhaps the least known and hardest to find.  This scale was and is most common in Germany, and a German company- Rokal- made a Santa Fe set in the 60's, or thereabouts.  I was very fortunate to obtain the complete set of carriages with the loco, too.

The assumption with this display is that a certain scale goes with a certain gauge of track.  For example, the HO scale loco built to 1:87 proportions runs on track with a gauge of 16.5mm, and N scale- 1:160- runs on 9mm gauge track.  Scale modellers have almost infinite variations of scales and gauges and you could literally write a book about the subject!!

The biggest 'model' train gauge is considered to be G scale- 'G' indicating their normal use in the Garden.  I was recently able to obtain a Santa Fe F-7 built in this scale by LGB.

Also part of the display will be a backdrop poster of one of these F-7's pulling the famous Santa Fe Super Chief train somewhere in the back blocks of the U.S.

That's a very brief explanation of scales and gauges, but if you are now more confused than ever then you will just have to visit Whistlestop when it opens to view this display in person!!