Running some CountryLink timetables

I like to keep running my trains fun. Yet even once my removable staging comes online later this year, I'll only have around 9 feet of line to simulate trains coming and going on my bookshelf layout. So how do you keep operations fun? Well, I'll reveal a little bit of my nerdy side here, only if you promise not to tell anyone.

First-up I'm heading west, on the CountryLink Broken Hill Outback Xplorer.

The other part I love about model trains is collecting railway timetables. So with my circa 1993-2007 CountryLink Xplorer now here to stay, I pulled out my set of 2003 CountryLink timetables and created my own fun. Simply by simulating station stops at Philden from the pages of the timetable for each up-and-back movement on my layout. Beginning with the Western timetable, my 2 car Xplorer set had to cover for what is normally a 3 car train on the Broken Hill Outback Xplorer. In this instance, Philden becomes both Sydney's Central Station, and every other station the Xplorer is scheduled to stop at between Sydney and Broken Hill.

Out west, all the stations are starting to look the same.

It sounds simple. Perhaps a little too simple. But running a train up-and-back all afternoon on a bookshelf layout, can in time become a little boring. By pretending that the Mondays only CountryLink service 445 due for a 6.20 am departure from Central Station is scheduled to stop at; Strathfield, Parramatta, Penrith, Katoomba, Lithgow, Bathurst, Blayney, Orange, Parkes, Condobolin, Euabalong West, Ivanhoe, Darnick and Menindee before arriving in the outback city of Broken Hill at 7.10 pm Central Standard Time, I give my highly detailed plastic model a sense of purpose and occasion each time it comes to a stop alongside the station building at Philden. And then there is the matter of returning the train to Sydney once more.

Next I head south....

Once back at Sydney's Central Station, there is just enough time for me to go to the toilet, grab a fresh cup of coffee and perhaps a light snack before taking out my CountryLink Southern timetable and boarding CountryLink service 621, the Canberra Xplorer.

....to the Nation's Capital of Canberra.

The daily 12.14 pm midday departure from Central Station will see my 2 car Xplorer stop at; Strathfield, Campbelltown, Mittagong, Bowral, Moss Vale, Bundanoon, Goulburn, Tarago, Bugendore and Queanbeyan before arriving in the Nation's Capital of Canberra at 4.20 pm.

Along the way I meet my fair share of passing freight trains and connecting road coaches.

On the return 5.15 pm evening service 624 to Sydney, I may even catch a glimpse of my 82 class locomotive shunting the cement works at Philden, or should that read Boral's Maldon cement works. I can never be sure as Philden is simply located 'somewhere in New South Wales at a railway station far, far away...' That's just the beauty of having a fictional model railway.

Changing trains, I'm now headed north west....

Back at Sydney's central station once more at 9.26 pm after my trip to Canberra, I may decide to call it a night, or board the other Southern timetabled Xplorer service, the Saturdays only Griffith Xplorer. I choose instead to stretch my legs around Central Station's grand concourse and once more grab a cup of coffee before pulling out my CountryLink North West timetable and boarding the combined daily 10.05 am service 223/225 to Armidale and Moree.

....on the Xplorer to Armidale.

This service operates as two Xplorer sets coupled together before dividing at Werris Creek. Today I am taking the 223 service to Armidale. After leaving Sydney's Central Station at 10.05 am, the train stops at; Strathfield, Hornsby, Gosford, Wyong, Fassifern, Broadmeadow, Maitland, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Aberdeen, Scone, Murrurundi, Willow Tree and Quirindi before reaching Werris Creek at 3.34 pm. Here the train divides in two with usually a 2 car set operating to Moree, and a 3 to 5 car set depending on passenger bookings to Armidale. For some reason or other, the authorities today have only rostered a 2 car set to Armidale. Leaving Werris Creek, service 223 continues stopping at; Tamworth, Kootingal, Walcha Road and Uralla before arriving at Armidale at 6.19 pm.

And finally the waiting road coach will take me back home to Queensland.

By this time, I've had just about all the fun I can handle for one day. The return 224 service to Sydney isn't timetabled to return until the next morning at 9.00 am, and it will be 5.00 pm before it arrives back at Sydney's Central Station. So I leave the train at Armidale and board one of the waiting road coaches, in my case, a fictitious connecting Deluxe Coachlines service to Brisbane that will take me home to sunny Queensland, (will someone please make a CountryLink road coach?).

So there you have it. That's how I came up with the name the South NorthWestern Xplorer for my layout. The train bloody-well runs everywhere! And for a small layout where you can easily tire of running a train back-and-forth, being a geek and running my Xplorer to an actual CountryLink timetable prolongs the fun just that little bit longer. Now next time if I board the train in Armidale, I wonder if I'll simply head all the way to Griffith?

See also; CountryLink resumes Philden services

Railway Station Part Five

Passengers will no longer get wet while waiting for a train, thanks to a weekend project that saw the roof and windows finally installed at Philden Railway Station. It seems that at last, the key building on my small bookshelf layout is nearing completion, and work on my layout is well on target to be completed by May 20th. If you've been following my progress on this blog, then you'll appreciate that's only 12 months after I cut the first piece of wood for the benchwork.

Before adding the roof, I turned the model over to drill holes through the floor for the light fittings.

Before I got stuck into installing the roof, I first turned the model of a NSWGR A-4 station over, and drilled 3 holes through the floor so as to easily be able to install the lighting from beneath the layout. Although the holes were positioned in each of the 3 rooms so as to not be visible through any open doors, I touched them up with some matching paint anyway.

Although the holes are in inconspicuous places, I touched them up with paint anyway.

I next turned my attention to painting the window and door frames.

I learnt from painting the window frames on my Model Train Buildings laser-cut timber NSW G-2 goods shed, that the more coats of paint you apply on MTB's timber kits, the more difficult they are to fit in the window openings. For my second Model Train Building's kit, its safe to say that I have now mastered putting these kits together, and building this station kit was not only heaps of fun, but has turned out to be one of the highlights on my layout. Keeping to my two-tone colour scheme of off-white and burnt sienna, I added white to the inner framework of the plastic window panes that are supplied with the wooden kit.

Fitting the glass panels was a pain. The trick is not to paint the door frames with too thick a coat of paint.

I simply kept the protective paper lining on the window panes where the toilet block is located.

After gluing the triangular roof supports into place, and ensuring that they were appropriately spaced to support each corrugated iron panel, I could then glue the completed windows into place. Remember how I said that the toilet windows would be painted out with a frosty white privacy finish that is common at most Australian railway stations? Well, I cheated. The clear plastic window panes inside the Model Train Buildings kit come with a removable white paper film to protect the surface. I simply left it in place undisturbed, and glued it to the window panes so that the paper coated side was on the inside of the building. It was so easy, yet looks so good.

I next painted the awning support posts....

I painted the platform awning supports in burnt sienna. The same colour I had used for the door and window frames along with the waiting room floor. Three watered down coats of this artists acrylic is enough to give it a good finish without coating all the fine detail on the laser-etched timber in a blob of paint.

....and glued them to the station sides.

The roof line of the station building is 250 mm long, while the structure itself is 238 mm long. There are 6 support posts on the A-4 station, and taking into account that the 2 end support posts fit on the inside corner join of the building, there are 4 posts to be spaced out evenly between all the door openings. I divided the distance between the outside posts by 5 and found that each post needed to be spaced 46 mm apart. However, the post that runs parallel to the waiting room entry has been fudged a little more than 46 mm. I can't tell by looking at it, and I doubt that anyone else could either looking at the photo above.

I painted the corrugated iron roof sections using a silver paint pen marker.

My much-loved silver paint pen has officially done its last project. It is the same pen that I used on my NSW G-2 goods shed that stands opposite the platform, so it was important to keep both it and the corrugated iron roof of my station identical. The thing I love about the Uni paint marker is that it takes about a tenth of the time to paint a model compared to using an enamel paint. The end result not only looks like authentic corrugated iron, but can be picked up and handled in less than 20 minutes.

The triangular roof support sections need to be spaced correctly to support the roof panels.

Getting the spacing right on the triangular roof supports is critical to fixing the roof in position. There are 3 pieces of roofing on each side of the A-4 station kit, and there needs to be 2 raised triangular pieces supporting each section for the roof to come together. Having said that, I just eyed up where to glue each triangular support by simply holding a section of the roof up to the model and drawing a small pencil line where I was to glue each one. I then glued the model together using some acetone based craft glue. I also applied a thin strip to the side edge where each roof section met. Finally, when the glue was dry, I applied one more coat using the silver paint pen marker to the entire roof area. It is the easiest way to cover up any join lines or glue marks. The other thing I like about the paint marker, is that it provides a lot neater finish when touching up the sides of the roof section above the fascia.

Painting the underside of the roof sections gave the model a better finish when viewed through a camera.

The newly completed Philden Railway Station is just awaiting the final details.

Although the model now looks complete, there are a few final details I need to see to before officially commemorating the completion of Philden Railway Station. There are 2 chimney stacks to be added to the roof line, along with the guttering and fascia boards around the edge of the roof. The small rear loading dock to the parcels room on the right needs to be finished with some timber stumps, along with the CountryLink station benches that I will add to the platform. And of course I need some passengers on the platform, to justify the South Northwestern Xplorer service that is a daily visitor to the station of course. But as usual, that is a story for another day. Tune in next time for the final chapter.

See also; Railway Station Part Six or Railway Station Part Four and Railway Station Part Three and Railway Station Part Two and Railway Station Part One and Building a Station Platform

Railway Station Part Four

There is usually only one way of adding interior detail to a model building, and that is to do it before you fix the roof in place. So before I turned my attention to completing the roof on my Model Train Buildings NSWGR A-4 railway station, I turned my attention to the internet, in search of some authentic railway maps and posters for my station waiting room.

If you look closely, one of the maps is actually a scaled down map of the Sydney rail system from 2000.

While there are many manufacturers of scale sized railway posters on the market, a lot of these tend to be over-the-top Olden Days advertising posters plugging soaps or tobaccos from the UK or US. So for a 1993-2008 era NSW CountryLink railway station, I was going to have to make my own. It turned out to be quite simple. A quick Google search landed me a host of maps and posters from Australia's not-so-distant past to choose from. I saved each image, and then created a blank Microsoft Word document in which to import each photo. One by one, I used the mouse to reduce each image in size until they were about 15 mm high.

Making my own signs was a lot more fun than simply gluing run-of-the-mill advertising signs to my station.

Satisfied that they would look the part, I printed them on a sheet of standard paper before laminating them with a small cut-out square of self-adhesive book covering, using the same method I outlined in my post adding railway station signs. There is a State Rail poster saying Cooee Katoomba from the late 1980's, a Corroboree XPT poster from 2007, an Xplorer and XPT poster for a bit of CountryLink self advertising, a map of the Sydney rail system from 2000, and if you can spot it on the right, a NSW TrainLink poster from 2010. Its a bit of a motley crue of railway posters that together cover the era I am modelling. I then trimmed these with a sharp hobby knife and put them aside while I turned my attention to building the passenger waiting room bench that came with laser-cut kit.

Back to the Model Train Buildings kit to build the waiting room bench.

The L-shaped bench that comes with Model Train Buildings kit was simple enough to piece together. I applied a couple of dabs of white PVA glue to the bracket supports that would be visible, and then shoved it aside to dry.

Pthalo blue was the best match I could find for that deep shade of CountryLink/Freight Rail blue.

Remember how I said I was finishing the station to resemble a mid 1990's to mid 2000's appearance? Well, when the station building is to retain a well-maintained, somewhat traditional looking, off-white and burnt sienna colour scheme, I went ahead and painted the bench in the waiting room in pthalo blue. I have some exterior railway benches to add later to the platform, and since these will also be painted blue, I wanted the waiting room to look like it had just received a very quick makeover as part of the CountryLink roll-out. Gluing the posters and railway maps into position further emphasised the station's transition into the CountryLink era.

Painting the plain MDF board flooring was a lot simpler than trying to scribe floorboards to resemble timber.

The fascia, platform canopy brackets and window frames will all be painted burnt sienna. So to further highlight the original two tone colour scheme I also painted the floorboards in burnt sienna. As my station is supposed to appear like a well-maintained country railway station approaching its centenary celebrations, I decided the varnish had worn away from the timber floorboards to the point where the flooring was simply painted over. When the paint had dried I glued the painted blue waiting room bench into position. Deciding that the Station Master's room was noticably blank, I then cut some 5 mm wide strips of balsa wood, lightly stained them using the dirty water I was soaking my paint brush in after painting the floorboards burnt sienna, and glued them into place to resemble a bench and the Station Master's desk. Finally I added another NSW railway system map to the wall of the Station Master's office.

A long way from finished, but the simple interior adds some character to my station.

Although relatively spartan in its detail, the waiting room and Station Master's office add a lot of depth to the building. I decided against detailing the toilet with partitions, interior doors or a toot, as who wants to see someone on the loo anyway? The window panes will simply be painted out with that frosty white glaze as is commonplace at railway stations across Australia, and the door left slightly ajar so viewers can at least see that the floor inside is painted and imagine whatever sound effects they think might be emanating from the rest rooms. As you can see, the parcels room on the right has not been detailed as I am modelling this with the doors locked up tight. Next I have to drill 3 holes through the base of the model to add lights to the interiors of the Station Master's office, waiting room and toilets. Then I can add the window frames, doors and other architraves before I can place the roof into position. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

See also; Railway Station Part Five or Railway Station Part Three and Railway Station Part Two and Railway Station Part One and Building a Station Platform