Hallelujah!

I grew up in the Salvation Army and have strong family links with it of which I will always be proud. I have enormous respect for the Salvation Army both as a church and as a social outreach where they show Jesus love through works amongst the most needy. I decided some time ago to signify this through incorporating a Salvation Army Hall on "Glenburn", and here it is as the final large building in Faith St, appropriately placed amongst the working suburb of Glenburn between the terraces and industry. The building may look familiar to viewers and that is no surprise, it is modelled on but one of many Halls of similar style and architecture built throughout Australia during the significant growth of the Salvation Army under Commissioner James Hay in the early 20th Century. I based the model on the old Hall at Prospect in South Australia owing to family connections, however have had to compress it to fit the site. While a South Australian based prototype, the style was so typical it remains appropriate also for this part of Melbourne. Below is a picture of the Prospect Hall.

(Picture: Salvation Army Heritage Centre)
Below I have included some pictures during the build showing simple construction of a sheet brick and card base with layered styrene and card for detailing. Windows are all from Tichy, modified in some cases to fit the specifics of the building.

Return of the Native (with apologies to Hardy) and some Holiday running.

E374 was the first locomotive, and one of the first pieces of rollingstock I built for Glenburn back in 2008. She did most of the early running of goods trains and was the test locomotive for most of the trackwork. She was always pretty low on power though, primarily through not having room for decent weighting, and my not wanting to strain the delicate mechanism she was built on. So, as more powerful locomotives became available, she was rendered firstly to just yard shunting work, then the larger loads being shifted in the yard obsoleted her there and she ran the track cleaning train for a while. But it has been some time since her last real (revenue) run. Some space has become available in the yard with the removal of the suburban stock to the new sidings recently (see earlier post below) so I lightly oiled her and placed her back on the layout for yard shunting tasks and occasional trip working. Todays No. 10a (Up goods ex-Warburton) was light enough that I called her up for the gig. So here E374 is once again taking the stage with a pretty eclectic consist, such have the cards delivered, but she handled it in her stride. Given she's a small tank with limited range, we'll have to imagine that for some reason she has taken over the run somewhere closer to the city.

Holiday break means some time for running, below are a couple of pictures of some of the workings.

As people leave for holidays and work numbers reduce, the "off peak" period extends, and the VR ever watchful of costs during this time reduces train sizes accordingly. This then becomes a common sight, two car suburban units form both Up and Dn services:

Ah, the elegance of an interwar country passenger train! D1 heads No. 31a with consist XYZ+G+B+C consist on the Dn through Glenburn..............

.............And here seen working up Glenburn bank.

1100 rolls No. 25a (Dn suburban goods) into Lilydale yard at the end of it's outward journey from Melbourne. Given operational requirements (read my big hand with an coupling/uncoupling tool....), I probably won't ever wire the yard, perhaps just the yard approaches, so I'll keep imagining the wires.

Yes, I still have'nt enough courage to repaint the boxcab, so here she is, still a rolling anachronism in the blue gold (which most true E class enthusiasts seem to rate a very poor 2nd to the all black livery for the E), heading No.14a (suburban goods ex Ferntree Gully) back toward Melbourne. All is not as it seems here - what appears to be a city bound Mixed with an AB car towards the rear actually is'nt. The AM Electric Motor needed to be transferred back to town, and was attached at the rear of an Up Goods.

Jesus.

.......Because quite frankly if I have any skill in modelling it's a gift from Him.

I am no fan of cameos but....

I have completed the cottages for Faith St recently, seen above. Don't worry too much about the white wall at the front of the layout, this will be directly attached to the fascia. It's just my opinion however I reckon cameos on layouts can be way overplayed, and in many cases their absence is the best path to a realistic scene. However in the interwar period there is one entirely Australian and appropriate cameo that I cannot avoid. True of many generations both before and since, a group of children playing cricket in the back lane with improvised stumps and field is too hard to resist, hence the below scene in the lane between the houses in Hope and Faith streets.

Raw Cottages & the Why and the Where

As shown briefly in the last update the first houses for Faith Street are to be a single storey terraced pair of cottages. The location defines the style - the cottages are directly opposite Qualmann's Warehouse, and as the warehouse is bluestone it pre-dates these cottages. It is unlikely that moderate-to-expensive houses would be built directly opposite such a location with its noise, traffic and industrial use. So these are humble workers cottages, not the more expensive houses seen in Hope St. One block makes all the difference! For the prototype I searched through my pictures from my trips to inner east Melbourne but didn't have any suitable candidates, so chose the following located in a similar area but in this case in North Fitzroy.

Picture: Picture Victoria

The descriptive by Picture Victoria is very direct, for the date of the photo, 1948, they are labelled as "poor". The materials are simpler, they are lighter on the decoration seen in Hope St, and they are'nt big - there are four houses in the block above. This fitted the bill for the location. nb. the building still survives at 177-183 Rae St. Must drive past one day! It's funny how times change, I reckon these would make a great place to live, particularly so close to the city, and so do many other people judging by the value of these kinds of properties today.

So to the model....As mentioned in the last post, construction is primarily styrene, with some other materials for detailing. I only have room for two cottages, and here they are shown initially "in the raw" but on their future location in Faith St, and two closer pictures. As can be seen, in line with their being more modest housing, the land space is smaller than Hope St also. The side the two first pictures are taken from deliberately is plain and flat as it will butt up and adjoin the fascia, thereby intimating continuation of the building.




Next step is painting/weathering and embedding with appropriate gardens/yards.

Business as usual & developments in Faith St

D4 277 assembles the down afternoon goods in Melbourne Yard....

......and is seen later on rolling the unusually short consist upgrade into Glenburn.

Earlier in the day, around the lunchtime off-peak, 1100 preceded the D4 on 21a goods to Ringwood, here seen humming through Glenburn while a two car swing door set accelerates from the Up platform Melbourne-bound.

I've started the next building for Faith St, this one being two of a wooden three cottage row. Build is mostly styrene at this stage. Front above and rear view below.

A Colour Blind Spot.

Readers of the Blog will know one of the challenges I have faced is ascertaining colour in this era before widespread colour photography. I have made it a bit of a passion to try to the best of my ability to render all aspects of "Glenburn" whether it be Swing Door stock, buildings, people's clothes or anything else. I have researched and coloured to try and best replicate how things may have looked. However I have recently discovered one rather large oversight. Wagons. A long time ago when I built "Cudgewa" a colour was recommended to me for goods rollingstock of the very late VR era which I was then modelling. It worked well and I used it thoroughly. When I started "Glenburn", it did'nt occur to me to check whether goods wagon stock was a different colour. References in old literature to "wagon red" did'nt challenge my assumption, nor did the lack of VR paint records for the period. However there are colour pictures around at the early end of colour recording (generally early 1950s) that show quite a different colour to that of the later era. I saw many of these but it never registered. It was a modelling blind spot for me. Funny really, given the effort I went to to ascertain every other colour! Recently the penny started to drop and I corresponded with a couple of experts on the matter who very kindly and comprehensively advised on what colour the stock should be. The colour is Deep Indian Red, weathering fairly quickly to a mid chocolate brown. So, I have started the long process of repainting 36 goods wagons into variations somewhere between the relatively newly painted stock that looks like this:

To a more weathered colour like this:
 There will be variations in between these two colours (and perhaps one or two more weathered) because in that era before the good colour holding paints we have today, paints really did'nt hold colour as well.

To illustrate the difference, here are two examples in the previous (incorrect) livery:

So, the process begins, and slowly the pictures in the "Rollingstock" page will be replaced with the new versions. And while I'm there, it's opportune to upgrade the stock where necessary such as the removal of those oversize handrails on some of my early builds - an example if one were needed of how our modelling improves, and we push ourselves to better standards, these were Ok several years ago.

I'm board!!

A bit of amateur carpentry with thin ply sets up the layout for the next stage of growth. Always surprises me how a bit of simple work seems to make a layout look more finished, even though it is very unfinished! The gap in the backdrop is to allow the passenger sidings, seen below in use between suburban runs, pre-backdrop:

It's not over 'til.....

  Qualmann's Ware/Store house is pretty much complete now, however the major sections aren't attached nor is it fixed into the layout pending quite a bit of surrounding work (including backscene, rear scenery, fascia, overhead wiring, signalling the siding etc. etc....!) that needs to be done. Good enough for a picture, though sans wires means the siding needs to be worked by steam.

Protection & Delivery.

Work on the Qualmann Warehouse precinct continues....The private siding serving the Warehouse joins the VR at the point visible here, which then joins the Dn main. As such, with wagons regularly stabled there, it needs the protection afforded in these situations. The above picture shows the derail arrangements, and also the backs of both the "End of wire" inverted star (a scale 50ft from end of wire per specification, for when the wiring arrives....), and the "Engines must not pass this board" sign which is immediately prior to the warehouse, below. I have'nt decided yet whether this derail is controlled by hand lever or from the box, hence the absence of this detail. My thanks to Phil Dunn for diagrams of the derail, and information from the VR Enthusiast forum regarding appropriate protection arrangements in suburban areas.

Beyond the excellent kits provided by the US maker Jordan, pickings are quite slim for interwar road vehicles, particularly trucks. Some exceptions were the excellent models made some years ago by Roskopf, a small German company. These models respond well to a bit of work, and look the part for the more traditional truck types of the era. While they have been out of production for quite a few years, they are still available from some of the 2nd hand sellers in Europe. The picture below shows the delivery truck following detailing (repaint, flush windscreens, removing one set of rear wheels, decalling, weathering) which will be parked outside the warehouse, with a comparative of an unmodified Roskopf truck.

Here she is "hooning" down Glenburn Rd at 30mph heading for the warehouse.

Err Houston....we have a problem....

Anything wrong here? The two lines on the right of this shot are the Up and Dn main, here passing the yard (I haven't named it yet as it serves several purposes) on one of the unscenicked sections of the layout. There's a wee gap on the Up (furthest right) line! I had a point there which I had suspected was a bit iffy, and while testing it out as an access point for some more stabling found it was definitely iffy. Fixed down, there was nothing to do but wrench it out and I took a fair section of the straight also, as this wasn't my best laid track. Murphy's Law dictates any work of this kind always has to be in the least accessible spot, and hence that's a 600mm reach across the yard....so I thought it pertinent to empty the yard before attempting the replacement. Once my stock is on the layout I prefer not to touch it too much, so rather than lift it, I ran it all to the other end of the layout which explains why what looks like a major signalling overun problem has occured in the shot below. No doubt VR has arranged a replacement bus service as no-one is catching a train at Glenburn today....

Something to Ware...

Whereas Hope St was residential, the next street closer to Melbourne, Faith St will be predominantly commercial. The first building for the street is the Qualmann Warehouse, which has been commenced . The building fascia is formed from the frontages of the Faller "North German Warehouse" (kit picture above) suitably modified, with body built out in cardboard and Noch stonewalling. Where appropriate, the building will be clad in corrugated card. The step design, visible in the pictures owes itself to placement bridging a rise in the layout height across the plan. Much more work to go before she's ready to place on the layout, will post updates as she progresses.