A short lived idyll, Charity Street and a "Mustard Pot".

For me, modelling doesn't get much better than this -  A project underway, a cup of tea close at hand, a few evening hours free ahead and some good Test cricket (in this case The Ashes) chattering away from my old radio that my Dad restored. Something about valves makes it all sound right. The combination is just brilliant, wish I could bottle it. It could only have been better if Australia was playing better, on this night they were, but not for long.....

Fortunately the modelling presses on, and in this case as can be seen in the two pictures above, I have extended some of the scenery to an overbridge that I actually started building a year ago before realising there was a whole lot more work to do before it could be emplaced. The abutments are not equal and that's a factor of it's location which might be divined by the second shot wherein it bridges both the scenicked section and the "hidden" suburban stabling. The unusual shape will probably make more sense once I have built the next section of scenery, for now, trust me, I know what I'm doing.....I think......Anyway, this latest of "Glenburn's" streets needed a name, and I had been tempted to extend the previous thinking of Hope St and Faith St to name this Love St (per 1 Corinthians 13:13 for the ecumenical readers), however a discussion on the Victorian Railways forum had David Foulkes of Steam Era Models and Geoff Baxter of Hollywood Foundry noting Charity might work. Now, without the excellent products of these two people, Glenburn would be at least less and possibly not exist at all - Steam Era Models kits and parts are widely used throughout my rolling stock, and all suburban units are powered by Bullant or Steam Era Beetle mechanisms. So, as a thanks to them both, this is the Charity Street bridge.

As I mentioned above, there's quite some scenic work to go to complete this section however for a change of pace I took on the two vehicles to populate it with. Both are European models, modified to varying degrees to match local prototypes. I'm a bit pleased with the Yellow Cab (apparently "Mustard Pot" in their day). I had seen yellow cab looking vehicles in paintings of the day, and a little research showed there to be a good reason for this being the case. The previous Mercedes was thus changed a bit to better resemble one of the Fiats that were imported in the early 1920s to form a Taxi fleet in Melbourne. I skimped on the wheel covers which works at viewing distance on the layout but my quick work-around is way too obvious here. If you're interested, some more detail on these Yellow Cabs is here:
http://www.auspostalhistory.com/articles/1660.shtml

For the bus I referenced a few pictures from here and there of buses in the era in Melbourne, including those included on the brilliant "Cavalcade of Transport" mural now at Southern Cross station, and a real boon for modellers of this era.