Hi Guys.

Just a quick one, Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Life has been busy for myself and my family. I had a Hernia Operation about a month ago, all went well and I am back on my feet. Over Christmas, new year I spent allot of time working on my layout. All the bench work is up and in place, all the staging is in place and wired. All the track is laid with code 100 track. I have done this so I could get trains running but will relay the scenic parts of the layout when funds allow with Code 83 and 70.

Having Trains up and running has really helped in getting an idea of how the operation and scenery will fit in as I keep going. It has also given me new ideas. The Idea of modelling Killawarra is dead ATM. I will revisit this with a possible Exhibition Layout in the future. I have some good ideas for this but will require a Layout of up to 10 metres in length. My 5.4 Metre long room could not do it justice. Another metre may of done it but my home layout will be freelance with a couple of small scenes picked out to model curtain areas such as a bridge that I am familiar with.

Now as I work on my ideas, I am not going to go into the layout on my Blog as yet. I am not sure why I am taking this approach for now, I just want to work on and keep my ideas to myself till I have worked it out. They are changing all the time and maybe I just feel I will be wasting my time going through each thought process. I am nearly there so hopefully there will be plenty on my blog about this soon. I am enjoying watching trains run so for me the hobby is starting to bring me some relaxation.

Last year I put my hand up to be a presenter at this years Modelling the Railways of NSW Convention 34 at Loftus TAFE. I had never tried something of this scale before. I had never put together a Power Point Presentation before. So  there was a couple of first. My presentation was titled Making Ready to Run Rolling Stock Your Own. This was a discussion on my experiences with working to RTR rolling stock to suit my era of modelling the NSW north coast during the early 90's. I worked on a number of projects to for my presentation which I will also share on this Blog. I am just finishing off these so I can put the full story together. I am nearly there so stay tuned.

Here is some previews

Some of you may remember my first ever Blog. It was about kit bashing an ILM's NLCX fitting it with a LLV floor from a RTR OTM's LLV Van. As nice as it was looking, I sat on the project with the Knowledge that Auscision were working on a NLJX. As soon as I have this van painted and weathered I will have it's full story here. I am real proud of the work on this and it looks great.

I have spoke about this kit bash before. Nearly done with this one

This was the other Kit bash that I discussed in the presentation. Will have it's full story soon.

Here is a couple of shots of the construction in the earlier stages

Cheers Justin Moy

Auscision AQSY container wagons

Hi Guy's

This is going to be a discussion on the new AQSY container wagons that I just received in the last week or so from Auscision. They appear to be a nice model and they are a reasonable representation of the prototype. Many years ago I looked at Scratch building a couple of these and went about buying 2 Laser Cut kits from Rail Motor Models in Victoria at the time. This was just the basic cuts to start what would be a scratch build, and the level of detail would depend on the modeller. This got to a point and was left.

This AQSY I gave a slight dusting and placed it on SEM bogies. A lightly weathered pair of SDS 28 foot containers have been added and make a nice load for this wagon.

This is as far as I got with the scratch build. Since Auscision's nice Die Cast model there doesn't seem much point in continuing?

When I was looking into scratch building these, I was living up at Ballina at the time and a member of the Northern Rivers Fussy Modellers Group for a couple of years. I learnt allot from this group of gifted modellers and was fortunate to be able to copy a heap of their research info while there. So it is good to have a model come out that I can go over photo's and make an assessment of issues arising and whether it would be worth while to fix any errors or let it go.

First from Auscision's own web page there were 455 of these wagons built, from 4 manufacturers. There is a number of differences between these. I guess the most obvious would be the oval hole vers. the square type hole version. There is also some variations among the Square hole version, mainly around the sizes of some on the holes. ATM the only visual issue I can see is the bolster detail on the side sill of the Square holed wagons appears to be the same as the oval hole version. This could be a point of added some extra modelling work if you were inclined. I don't think many would notice.

From the photo's I have, I think most of the Square holed wagons have this type of detail on the side sill at the bolsters. The model I have has what I can gather something similar to the oval Shaped bolster detail. A bit of styrene work and this could be corrected

The only other area that I feel the model is let down is under the wagon around the bolster area. The frame should run through this area but appears to shallow off, perhaps to allow for the 22 inch minimum turning Radius promised buy the manufacturer. This is another area that a concerned modeller could go to work

And there is a little green washer provided. One of mine fell off and I was having a WTF moment and realised what had happening.

Under the prototype you can see how this area differs to the model

Photo by Steve McElroy

It appears that Auscision have used the same Factory as they did for their ABFX/AOOX projects. Unfortunately having reasonably accurate  underfloor detail just doesn't seem to be a priority of this factory when you compare it to other factories work such as the NLKY's and NLDF's as an example. Not that it makes this project look bad. It is just a bit of a let down when other projects come out better. It just goes to show the great work done on the NLDF's and NLKY's ETC. I don't know the story of why detail around the bolster was not added, the only thing maybe a restraint on the weight of the die cast model or bogie movement. At the end of the day it gives a modeller something that they can add to the model if they want to. It is not something that can be seen while the model is running, like a bad roof profile etc. The only reason for me to mention it, is that compared to other factories that Auscision is using, I think this one is letting them down in this area. On the plus side is they come with genuine KD 58 type couplers so I don't need to replace mine. I am putting KD 58's on all my new projects now to replace most Scale couplers that come RTR. As good as they are don't take well to being painted. KD's don't seem to be troubled by paint.

A few more comparison Photo's

Photo by Steve McElroy

Photo by Steve McElroy

 For the wagon freaks out there, This is one of the few times I have seen 3 butter boxes on the one wagon, esp. a north bound on it's way to Brisbane

It is a good representation of the Prototype, it is strong and things won't fall off the model without misadventure. There is a couple of short comings, If a modeller wanted to go about correcting these items, it would make the model your own. They are still out running and for my era there wouldn't be many container trains running around that didn't have at least one variant of this wagon on it. The 4 that I have will be welcome among my fleet of container wagons.

Just to finish, some detail shots of the new Auscision Southern Aurora Cars. I only got the Spirit add on set and the XPT test Baggage Car as that was all I needed for my Grafton Passenger. The XPT test car will be painted back to a normal baggage car and the power car will have some mods. done. The NAM was sold off. More about this latter.

Nice job Auscision

Cheers Justin Moy