Saturday, January 28, 2012

Bairnsdale Station Modules Part 1

Over the last few weeks we have been working on the three modules that make up Bairnsdale.

This picture shows current status with the track in place on two modules, wired up and painted; however the points are not yet operational... more on that another time! Note the blue foam extension on the top right. We still have to add one loop track and the track into the freight gate... still working on the alignments for that!




Here is a photo before we got to this stage. In the foreground is the traverser module, then comes the three Bairnsdale modules. The closest will have the timber siding on the left with crane, and stock yards and fuel siding on the right.





Here is the station area with a mock up of the station. This is to help check that we have enough room... with these and cut outs for the goods shed and freight gate area we found that we don't have enough room. We subsequently added the blue foam extensions!

Here is a shot showing the templates.

And here is the yard through going east towards Nowa Nowa. Every track of the prototype is in there!


Further work on these modules is on hold while I work on the modules leading to Bairnsdale, but now if we like we can shunt Bairnsdale to Nowa Nowa :)






Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Warf Line Shed Number 1

Part of my plan for building the Bairnsdale modules is to build the buildings as I go along, rather than focus on the benchwork and trackwork exclusively. This way it should all come together... well that's the plan!

At the East end of the station area the old warf line curved towards the south east. It was truncated back in the 1950's. Several sheds were built on this stub and by the period I'm modelling two were in location, while externally similar they differ in details. One of these has recently been demolished, however the other is still standing and thanks to John O'Kelly I have good pictures and measurements, so I've built this one first :) I can use these measurements to estimate the other shed.
 
This is the shed in 2009. the one to the right has been demolished in 2011.

 The 1976 station drainage diagram shows the two shed were leased to Tulloch Jenkins Pty Ltd, who owned service stations and a oil wholesaling business's in the Gippsland region. I remember bitumen wagons parked there in the 1980's. It appears to have been the office/administration building.





For a while I was confused how many buildings were there, some photos from the side showed a peaked roof building. Finally I noticed in this picture from 1975 that there were clearly 3 buildings there in 1975, with the last one being the peaked roof building. The peaked roof building appears to have been demolished  by 1976.

Peter Vincent 1975



 So off to work using fantastic photo's and measurements from John. Note the discoloration caused by fire damage.


2011 John O'Kelly photo
Both sides are the same John O'kelly photo

Under construction. A wall was added internally.
Interior painted black, roof on

Undercoated


Now back to the half finished goods shed as thanks to John I now have good photos of the roadside of the building, not just the rail side!.

Cheers
Rob