Having grown up in Victoria in the 60s I have a huge nostalgia for the Victorian Railways of that era- blue and gold diesels and red goods wagons. As I was finishing-off painting the handrails on the Barn yesterday, in Dulux Manor Red, I had the realization that this particular red is very close indeed to the red that I remember the VR wagons being painted. Perhaps not exact, but very close. Anyway, that prompted me to unpack a few of my HO VR items, mostly from Auscision and Austrains, and photograph them on my newly painted handrails in a great, sunny position.
I really like these trains and very much hope to build a simple layout to run them on one day. Another dream that I know I would really enjoy doing if I ever had the time would be to restore one of these Z guard's vans, as I know there are quite a few rotting away in country Victoria, such as this one! (photo taken by Steamfreak )
One thing I really don't like doing is putting trains away again in their boxes, hopefully one day that won't be necessary!
Great progress lately with the 'Barn, and beautiful Queensland Winter weather to enjoy generally. I divided the barn up into three sections for the painting and the first is now effectively finished. I still need to paint the wallboard that goes up to chair-rail height, but that can wait till later.
I'm really pleased with how it looks, of course! Really, the painting hasn't been as hard as expected, it just takes time, particularly the ceiling.
Here's another view of the area that has been painted, but it's a bit hard to get a sense of the scale of it. I plan to build 'temporary' layouts within this area, perhaps changed every year or so, and the space available is 25' 11" x 11', which is really good! The first layout here will be recently produced British O gauge three-rail, which will be very fun indeed!
I had several friends who are involved in the old car hobby visit the other day, which was very enjoyable. While there's not much to see here at the moment, we all had a great time sitting around the pot-belly stove, whose warmth was very welcome, chatting about this and that, but particularly how enjoyable and satisfying it is having hobbies. I couldn't agree more!!
A couple more signs have also made it onto the beam in the entry area. Still plenty of space for more though!
All in all everything is going very well indeed!
One of our daughters lives in Melbourne, and last weekend we had the opportunity of spending the long weekend in that very interesting area. As you can no doubt tell by the slow pace of progress of my train plans at Whistlestop, and the general scarcity of blog posts, things are moving ahead, but slowly. But spending time somewhere else always guarantees lots of stimulation and encouragement, and our weekend in the deep south was no exception!
I was very fortunate indeed to have a personal guided tour of the Melbourne Tram Museum by a friend who is probably the leading historian of Melbourne's excellent Tram system and all things 'Melbourne' in general. I thoroughly recommend the Museum to anyone interested, it is very well presented and very interesting indeed! This visit was then followed by a journey around Melbourne on several current tram lines, and I was really fascinated by some of the features that were pointed out, such as the remnants of Melbourne's early Cable Tram System.
Up until relatively recently, prior to the extensive use of concrete, the areas around the actual tram rails was filled in by what looked like bricks, but in actual fact was wooden blocks, usually Red Gum. I can remember as a child that we got a load of these as they became redundant for use in our fireplace, the problem of course that we now realize is that the wooden blocks were often soaked in tar, which when burned is carcenogenic, but such things were not known then.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, part of the old Hawthorn Depot which houses the Tram Museum still uses these 'Tramway Blocks' as it's flooring, which I found very interesting!
After a beaut evening meal in Fitzroy I was off to what is now Southern Cross Station to watch a steam special depart. I have many great memories of this station from my childhood, when it was simply known as Spencer Street Station, and was the terminus for all the Country and Interstate trains, which it still is. The loco for this Steamrail special was supposed to be one of the magnificent R class locos, but ended up being a K class, still very impressive, of course. So a very interesting evening ended with the loco chuffing it's way into the darkness on the way to Bendigo and Swan Hill, a super end to a really excellent day!
The next day we headed to Phillip Island, specifically to see the Penguins come back to their nests at dusk, which I found really interesting, on a really superb Winter evening. It was really great to be outdoors on this beautiful and wild coast.
The opportunity to visit the area just east of Phillip Island was taken and I really enjoyed the area generally. A surprise was the State Coal Mine at Wonthaggi, which is now an interesting museum, where we had a beaut lunch. To burn off the calories we then walked along part of the Bass Coast Rail Trail between Kilcunda trestle bridge and the site of Anderson Station. This line had primarily been built to transport the coal from the Wonthaggi mine to Melbourne, mainly to fuel the steam locos, but served the needs of the agricultural community too.
Of course we went the 'wrong' way along this line, with a fairly steep climb up towards Anderson, but it was really good fun on a really nice day. I really enjoy walking along rail trails!
So, all in all a really great weekend, and now I'm back into the painting of my Trainbarn at home, greatly refreshed and encouraged.
