Comtrain goes H0! H0! H0!: 05/27/16

2016/05/27

2016_05_27 The wet has arrived

2016_05_27 Wallpaper eh Back sheets again?

BACK drops again!! My local Bunnings store paint manager, is a liberated Pom ;) He brought his family here after spending years painting and wall papering homes in England. He has never been available for a chat until now. "In England we still use oil based paints. The reason is that some of our houses are so old and the weather is so damp anyway that we need to properly seal the walls and plastic paint just does not cut it."
Most wall papering, he says, goes right over the top of old wall paper, and in very old houses it can grow to half an inch thick. The new glue seals up the old paper and its good for many more years. It acts as an insulation as well. New homes get oil based top coats to ensure the damp is sealed out and if required wallpaper can be applied. Strangely it is difficult to buy oil based paints here, and I guess damp is not usually a problem?

Without a doubt, I need to paint the plaster walls with oil based paint. I think he was suggesting that this means undercoat as top coats are acrylic? Apparently lightly sanding the existing plastic and mixing the blue colour into flat undercoat will do the job. Just another $57 for paint with 8 litres of unused paint to get rid of :(

The Murray Railway Modellers Exhibition 2016
Our exhibition this year was very successful again this year. I have been lost in action during this busy time and spent three days with the Exhibition.
Our major sponsor was Austrains again, and about an hour before closing Sunday he announced it was his best ever show here breaking records for all small Exhibitions.

Our huge collection of Australian HO and books went well, however a lot of the collection is still to be moved. Not sure what they will do now.

Cheers
Rod

About my Railway

The Australian National Railways was established by the Whitlam Federal Government following a commitment made in the 1972 election to invite the states to hand over their railway systems to the federal government. In July 1975 Australian National Railways was formed taking over the operations of the federal government owned Commonwealth Railways.

The state governments of South Australia and Tasmania whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between these two states and the federal government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in all South Australian Railways services (except for the Adelaide metropolitan passenger network) and all Tasmanian Government Railways services transferring to Australian National Railway in March 1978, the latter being re-branded AN Tasrail.

At first Victoria declined to hand over its Railways, however a change of Government after Bolte retired meant Victoria could be absorbed into AN as well.
Despite doing everything they could to tarnish ALP leader Clyde Holding, The ALP were able to defeat Hamer who was seen to be just another Bolte, doing more of the same into the future.

Clyde Holding handed over Victorian Railways to the Commonwealth where it prospered as a division of AN retaining its VR colours until later when AN decided to re-brand it as V/Line.

My Railway thus reflects what could have been ;)
And of course National Rail (Pacific National) has no place in my little scenario. Australian National was never privatised and has continually taken East Coast loads off the Highways. As well many branch lines were upgraded and Whitlam's policy of decentralisation actually moved employment to towns with a ready pool of workers, which of course took the pressure of Melbourne which was starting to expand as bush kids moved away from the Country in search of education and employment ( just as Gough Whitlam envisaged it would do)
Rod Young

Comtrain goes H0! H0! H0!

2016/05/27

2016_05_27 The wet has arrived

Photographs

About Me

Time Line