Philden's Snelson Collection additions

Its been a week of unpacking boxes and sorting through over a Century of railway memorabilia. Having been one of the many pre-registered online bidders at Ardent Auctions' recent two day marathon auction of the Snelson Railway Collection in Canberra, two separate shipments of railway memorabilia this week arrived safely on my doorstep on the Sunshine Coast. For a train enthusiast, it was like a little bit of Christmas arrived early.

Barry Snelson's railway collection as appeared in the Canberra Times took up two floors of Ardent's auction house.

The Snelson Railway Collection was a once in a blue moon event, rumoured to be the largest single collection of railway memorabilia to go under the hammer in Australia. The man behind the collection was a humble collector by the name of Barry Snelson, a 70 year-old man from the A.C.T. who had spent the past three decades amassing a collection of railway memorabilia that would rival a museum, only to hold his deceased estate auction while he was still alive so that he could help his daughters put a deposit on a house. You've got to admire a bloke like Barry. Not only has he got a good heart, but his collection took up two floors of Ardent Auction's premises in Fyshwick, A.C.T. An article (including the above photo), appeared in Sunday's Canberra Times on November 12, 2016.

A pre-World War One lineside marker post, paperwork and throttle notch markers from an Alco locomotive.

Of the 700 or so lots that were put up for auction, some items such as cast iron signs fetched up to $1,400 AUD. A working railway ganger's trike went for $2,000 AUD. While I spent 4 hours on both the Saturday and Sunday logged into the live online auction feed through Invaluable's website, I was mindful of the weight involved in shipping any winning items interstate. So I tried to limit myself purely to items that would enhance the museum quality presentation of my model railway when displayed alongside my layout. In the end, there were 22 lots from the auction that were successfully bid on, carefully packed, shipped and this week opened on the floor beside Philden. Along with the early 1900's railway lamps shown in the top photo, there is the pre-World War I line-side milepost (above), and the water gauge (below) from a long scrapped NSW steam engine that will become restoration projects over the coming summer. The steam engine water gauge is solid brass, measures about 23 cm across and when restored is going to be mounted on the end panel on my layout's staging extension, while the red 1900 NSW shunters lamp will be repainted bright red and sit on my Station Master's desk.

Some of the NSWGR rules and regulations books are 480 pages long and date back to 1935. The brass steam locomotive water gauge is solid brass and will be mounted on the end of my layout.

Also added to my growing railway collection are a number of timetables and NSW Railways rules and regulations books, with some dating back to 1935. Unfortunately, having to bid on these as a lot rather than individually, meant that I now have several duplicate copies of the same book. In some cases there are four copies of the same book. So along with what artifacts I am not able to display on my desk or incorporate into my layout's presentation, the balance I will be offering for sale on eBay in the coming weeks, with a live list of links to each item displayed on my collectibles page here.

Purchasing a small part of a railway collection such as what I've shown above isn't a cheap exercise. In my case, the final bill amounted to a little over $700 Australian by the time I paid the buyer's premium and freight costs. But the opportunity to secure a part of history, in this particular case to preserve a small part of the Snelson Collection, in the eyes of a railway collector is priceless. Missing from the above photos were some more modern items, including an original embroidered Countrylink wool jumper as worn by the onboard train service crew in the 1990's. It will become my winter uniform to wear whenever I exhibit Philden at model railway shows in the coming years. Over the summer, I'll be posting a couple of photos of each item as its restored downstairs in the garage before it settles into its new home alongside my layout.

See also; Memorabilia makes modelling better!

Railway Station Part Six

Sometimes a rainy Saturday morning is all the excuse you need to finish that model kit you've been telling yourself you'll get around to completing one day. That day was today, and the kit in question was none other than my railway station building, the one building that is supposed to be the star of the show but had sat awaiting the final finishing touches for sooo long that I'd simply become accustomed to it looking the way it did. Well, not anymore.

I always paint the parts of laser-cut timber kits before assembling them.

There wasn't really that much to be done to the Model Train Buildings NSW A-4 station building in order to say that is was finished. So I got to work painting the fascia boards and strip of guttering for the rear of the building. If you're familiar with building one of Walker Models' laser cut kit buildings, then you'll understand that painting over the blackened edges where the laser has cut through the timber or MDF sections can be a little difficult using a light colour. I wanted to paint the fascia trim white to match the white window frames visible on the rear of the building, but thought the blackened edges could work in my favour if I simply applied a thin wash of white paint so as to let a little of the black show through. It turned out that it worked, with the finished white fascia trim looking a little weathered as though the paint has been faded by the hot Australian sun. The thing I like most about working with timber kits is that you get a much more realistic finish than a plastic model, and they end up looking like miniature buildings rather than model kits.

I spaced the brush strokes when using the Rustall to make the roof resemble sheets of weather beaten corrugated iron.

While waiting for these to dry, I set to work on finishing the roof with a light application of Rustall, following the same process as I outlined when constructing my NSWGR G-2 goods shed. The rear loading dock off the parcels room I finished by painting in assortment of brown, black and grey stripes to resemble timber planking. I simply mixed the colours together on a palette and ensured no two brush strokes were alike. Once complete, I set this aside and started work on the two chimneys.

The chimney sections just needed an angled trim to sit flush on the roof.

The chimneys were tricky little suckers! Although they fitted together with perfection, applying too much pressure with your fingers caused them to collapse in on themselves. Eventually I had them glued square using some fast drying white PVA tacky glue, and sat back to wait for them to dry.

You can't be too perfect when painting aged brick chimney stacks.

Painting them was a three part process. First I filled all the laser etched mortar lines with some white acrylic paint before wiping the paint from the surface of the bricks using some dry paper toweling. Then I could gently dry brush some burnt sienna acrylic onto the surface of the brick pattern by making sure the paint was well wiped from the brush before making each stroke.

Once more I used a silver paint pen marker to work some magic on the down pipes.

I was left with an odd gap on the rear left hand side of the building where I'd trimmed the fascia board too short. Feeling that the building could use a down pipe anyway, I made one from one of those clear plastic nozzles that attach to the end of an aerosol can to give a concentrated squirt of whatever into hard to reach places. I simply painted it silver with a silver paint marker, and when dry trimmed it to fit as shown in the picture below.

I made the down pipe longer than the building so it will spill to ground over the brick foundations the station rests on.

Having a hole in the core of the areosol nozzle tube makes the down pipe look so realistic when viewed from above. However, the silver looked a little too shiny for an old timber railway station building, so I gave it a treatment of rust, once more using the Rustall that I've come to love. You can see the difference in the photo below.

I'm so glad I made the backdrop on my layout reversible so that I can view the building from both sides.

With the chimneys, down-pipe and fascia boards glued in place, the building was ready to put back in place on the platform. When viewed in correct lighting, I particularly like the subtle finish I gave the railway station roof. At first I was just going to glue the fascia boards to three sides of the building, and simply let the imaginary rain run off the platform awning onto the tracks (as shown in the top photo), but the end result just didn't look right compared to how good the rear of the building came up. So I lifted the building back off and added a strip of white guttering to the front platform awning using some scrap birchwood sheeting, and completed the kit by scratch-building a second rusty angled down pipe that you can just see in the right of picture.

And finally, Philden Railway Station is finished!

So there you have it. Thanks to a rainy Saturday morning, I can finally say that Philden Railway Station has joined my growing list of finished structures. While I still may come back one day in the future and add the Station Master, Parcels, Toilet and Waiting Room signs above the doorways, the beauty of having made my structures removable is that it is not going to require surgery to lift the station building back off should I choose to do so.

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

Celebrating the 50,000 Milestone!

Overnight this blog passed the 50,000 hit mark, which is not too bad considering that I only started blogging the step-by-step updates of Philden's construction in May 2015. While I may only be building a small bookshelf model railway layout, it seems fair to say that I've somehow managed to build a somewhat bigger model train blog, (my own page views of course are disabled). So to celebrate, I sent in a last minute pre-order for a set of Auscision Models NODY wagons. Picking out a set of NCTY Tubemakers Structural open wagons with the steel cradles I think is a giveaway as to what new industry I will build on my upper level expansion. With the price of models only expected to climb in the very near future, I thought the special pre-order price of $230 with free postage will be money well spent. They'll look fantastic behind my Freight Rail 86 class electric as they are shunted into the shed road coming off the new station.

Overnight I also received notice of another approaching milestone, its been almost 6 months since I released my book 30 Years Chasing Trains. It only feels like the other day that I was asking fellow blogger Mathew Hughes for some tips on where to shoot some photos of trains during my trip to Newcastle, (and sitting through the 62-0 drubbing the Knights received at Hunter Stadium at the hands of Cronulla!). Although I haven't spoken at length about my book before now, basically I sat down over a year ago to sort through 30 years of my own train photography, realising of course that 2016 marked 30 years since I first ventured track side with my a camera as a 14 year old kid on a BMX bike. Since those days, I've managed to travel the entire east coast of Australia by train and have even ventured across the ditch to NZ to chase trains with my camera.

The book became a 100 page full colour photographic memoir of a train chaser presented in 8 x 10 inch high quality paper. Having been rejected by many of the established railway publishers here in Australia because it didn't fall into an era or location specific genre, I pushed on and published it myself anyway, as a tribute for 10 years of sacrificing a decent working salary while trying to establish myself as a full-time writer. In a sense it was my way of ending a career on my own terms, doing something I've loved on a subject I've always loved. Trains. The book is presented in state-by-state chapter form covering Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, with the cost being kept to only $35 Australian plus postage. The book is printed and ships from Melbourne, London or San Francisco, depending on what country you order from. Watch for regular discount promotions that Blurb run on their websites and you could save between 20% to 40% when adding the promotional code at checkout. I've yet to see any other similar Australian railway book produced for that price. If you're not into online shopping however, Alcoworld in Sydney now stocks the book, as does Model Train Buildings at various model railway exhibitions here in Australia and the Driving Creek Tourist Railway in New Zealand.

Available now through Blurb. 100 full colour 8" x 10" pages.

Until next time, safe travels, and happy modeling.