Review: Last Train poetry books

From the October 2018 edition of Australian Model Railway Magazine.

The October 2018 edition of Australian Model Railway Magazine featured a review on two very obscure, and quite possibly never-seen-before, books on railway bush poetry. If you're wondering who is responsible for trying to mash-up some traditional Aussie bush poetry with photographs of surviving relics from our railway past, then I'm going to own up. It was me.

  

The books in question are both self-produced, and I say that with a sense of pride as they feature my own photography, my own original poetry and were laid-out, edited, proofed, blocked and had the covers designed by me. The only thing I haven't done is handle my own distribution. I've set that up to be fully automated through Blurb.com. As for the lack of posts on this blog over the past month, that can be attributed to my working on the next instalment, the cover of which you can see above.

The review by AMRM was much appreciated. Overseeing a project such as this is time-consuming to say the least, and the next book to follow in the series is the result of my adventuring through the Southwest of Western Australia over the summer of 2017/2018. The costs alone in going out of my way to photograph abandoned railway stations and bridges on the other side of the country will ensure that the next Last Train book will never return a profit, given that a modest sales expectation for any kind of self-published poetry book would be no more than 100 copies. For a niche project such as this, no publisher was ever going to touch it. That makes getting a review on the book so important. So what were some of the kind words that editor James McInerney had to say?

"Some of the photos are visually quite stunning, capturing the atmosphere of the scenes with great artistic flair."

"...I enjoyed reading the poems and they certainly convey a very effective 'word picture' to go with the images." 

Although I've often reviewed other company's products and models on my blog, I could never bring myself to review my own work. So kudos to the kind words from James Mc.

While this may all seem like a bit of self-serving hoopla over something that anyone could do if they really wanted to, I've looked at the past few years of my writing and blogging about trains and model railways, in much the same way as an Actor or Actress taking time away from acting to work on another project. Eric Bana stepped away to film a documentary about his muscle car, and followed it up with some part-time rally driving. Come mid next year, I'll have a small body of railway books to look back on fondly in old age while sitting on my couch and sipping cups of tea. As for my next move? I feel I owe it to myself to finally have another crack at writing that blockbuster novel I've always dreamed of, (however long that takes). Hopefully in the years to come, these self-published railway books will all become an interesting 'before they were famous' story!

With October already in full swing, this weekend I'll be attending the 2018 Modelling the Railways of Queensland Convention. Following that, I'll be applying the new photo backdrop to Philden, getting some more work done on the Travel Centre for the beach extension and hopefully, (yes, hopefully) seeing the post man arrive with the 442 Class loco I'm waiting on. I suppose it's nice to always have something that you're waiting on. So from that point of view, I've added a 422 Class loco in Northern Rivers Railroad livery to the waiting list, (even though I did say I was done with pre-orders and adding anything more to my NSW layout). It seems there's always room for one more model train isn't there? Oh, and did I say I was about to start building a new layout? Thought so. But as usual, there never seems to be enough time. So I'll let that be a story for another day.

Stay tuned to this and my author blog at phillipoverton.blogspot.com as I'll have a big announcement to make regarding my books in May 2019.

My books can be purchased directly online through the following outlets

 

See also; Retiring a good series

Exhibition #7 Redlands 2018

The recent Redlands Model Railway Show was somewhat of a homecoming event for Denise and I to draw the curtains on a busy model train show season in south east Queensland. The 4th and final exhibition for Philden of 2018, saw us once more head south down the Bruce Highway with our country playlist blaring with everything from Morgan Evans to Kenny Chesney in the car. This time we continued south over the Gateway Bridge to an area that was once so familiar to us. The Redlands.

The calm before the crowds stormed in on Saturday morning.

Held in the Smith Street Hall in the bayside suburb of Cleveland, 2018 marked the 7th anniversary for the Redlands Model Railway Show. There was no model train show in the Redlands back when Denise and I were living in the nearby suburb of Capalaba a decade ago, so to be included in this year's show was special, in that it gave me the chance to bring my layout down to the shire I once called home. We also have family still living in Redlands, so the weekend also became a chance to catch up with Denise's brother and his family, and dine out on the Saturday night at an Indian restaurant at nearby Wellington Point.

The Lindfield station indicator board sign was a new addition for the Redlands Show to complete the presentation.

For once I was able to turn up early for the opening day, cashed-up and with a shopping list of what I wanted to buy. Normally the timing of exhibiting my layout at a model train show doesn't coincide with me necessarily being able to afford to buy anything whilst there, and the expense of taking my layout to a show, (especially if a couple of nights accommodation is required), only further eats away at what I can justify as 'hobby money'. Instead, I only added another pair of 20' foot side door containers to my roster from Don at Railco before the doors opened to the public.

From the opening 15 minutes on the Saturday morning, there was a constant stream of paying public marching through the door on account of it being a rainy weekend in Brisbane. So before it got too hectic, I walked the floor to take these few photos of some of the layouts on display over the weekend.

I was set up beside Clive Collin's Snap Shot layout. Each square was a different scene from around the world.

Turnpike Land, featuring London's underground, is still a crowd favourite on the south east Queensland circuit.

The Urangan Pier at Hervey Bay was across from my layout with its cool blue water...

...while Philden stood opposite with its scorching hot outback sunset lighting effects.

The view looking across the hall inside the Redlands Model Train Show as the doors opened on Saturday morning.

Inside the hall became quite crowded during the peak Saturday morning and afternoon periods, and Sunday turned out to be busier still, as the wet weather gave the locals something to do on a rainy day. There were still paying customers arriving at 2.30 pm on the Sunday afternoon. The organisers surely must have been very happy with the numbers over the two days.

Being positioned up on the stage gave me the best view of the venue, and a chance to watch what was going on down on the floor below. While it is inevitable that some of the 'old timers' will always succumb to some shut-eye at some point in the afternoon, a visit to the bathroom on the Saturday made me laugh when I recognised the sound of snoring coming from one of the cubicles. Some-one had fallen asleep on the toot-er!

The new extension once more doubled as hidden staging for the weekend, and while the layout and trains performed faultlessly, the inevitable finally caught up with me when I had two wagons take a dive off the layout onto the timber floor. The first occurred when I hurriedly steadied the layout after a young child tried avoiding being caught by her parents by running beneath the white safety chain to hide behind the curtains of my layout. With one hand on the layout and the other quickly cutting the power to the train that was running at the time, my own knee caught on the wiring that ran from my LED lighting, which in turn whip-lashed the cement hoppers that you can see in the photo above. While the NPRY bounced on its side with out damaging any of the walkways or ladders, I later stepped on a piece of the under frame detail that obviously came loose. The second was just one of those accidents when my wife had her jacket sleeve catch on the steel train as she reached in to throw a toggle switch. Turns out those NCNX wagons don't bounce so well as you can see in the photo below. I've already rebuilt this model once after it arrived in the post in worse condition, so I can easily rebuild it again. I'm just fortunate I found all the pieces.

Some minor post-show repairs waiting for me to see to.

Two exhibitor plaques in the space of two weeks! Now for a well-earned rest.

Philden safe back home once more after two model train shows in just two weeks!

So having just spent two full weekends only two weeks apart, running trains up and down my 9' foot long bookshelf layout, Sunday pack-up couldn't come quick enough. Despite it only taking just over half an hour to pack-up, load-up and be driving out of the car park, its the long drive back to the Sunshine Coast and the trek up and down the stairs from our beach-side apartment that is the most exhausting part of taking Philden on the road. Sure it's a great feeling of accomplishment when its all over, but after such a busy 2018, I've promised Denise that we will only take Philden to one exhibition next year. That now looks like being the Brisbane Model Train Show in May, which gives me 8 months to enjoy having my layout stay still long enough to complete it like I'd first envisioned.

Redlands marked the 7th exhibition that I have taken my layout to, and as you can see in the photos above, the exhibitor plaques have nicely accumulated along the front timber fascia of the layout. There's only room for 3 more plaques to be mounted on the front side, that only doing one show per year will take me through to 2021. By my own reasoning, that might just about do it for this layout.

What's wrong with this picture?

Another funny thing to occur from the Redlands Show, was that somewhere over the course of the weekend I screwed up my shopping list, and threw it in the bin. With my paid-for 442 class loco waiting only on word of its arrival, I took another look at what I had written down on my list, and decided that the pair of 20' foot side door containers I'd bought before the doors opened on Saturday was enough. As far as adding anything new to run on Philden goes.... I'm done. It's time to start planning a new layout.

As for what? Look closely in the picture above and you can probably work out what doesn't belong. And for that I can blame the Redlands Model Railway Show. It will go down as the place where I screwed up one shopping list, and ultimately replaced it with a bigger one! But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

See also; Exhibition #6 Stafford 2018

Building the Beach Station

Work is continuing on my layout during the two week break that I've had between model train shows, with the former two track staging yard now looking more and more like a finished diorama.

I was also lucky enough to find another brass-coloured station name to match in with the four other NSWGR destination board signs that are already mounted on the rest of my layout. Lindfield, for those who aren't familiar with Sydney, Australia, is a station located on the North Shore Line via the Harbour Bridge.

The foundations for the brick platform edging were laser cut by Stuart from Walker Models.

Constructing the curved brick platform for Phills Harbour was a lot more difficult than the platform that I built for Philden Station three years back, but was made a lot easier by the fact that the brick platform edging was laser cut for me by my good friend Stuart from Walker Models up at Coolum Beach. All I had to do was paint it, which consisted of nothing more than mixing a white-ish wash of mortar mix to swear over the brickwork and gently wipe away before it completely dried, leaving it congealed in the mortar lines only. The bricks are simply unpainted MDF board, (that with the white smear of paint) are a great match for the modern orange-cream brick that was used on Grafton Station on the North Coast Line.

I used two A4 sheets of paper to trace the outline for the top platform area.

I made the platform surface from 4 millimetre MDF board, and to work out the clearance and overhang for the rail side of the platform, I simply used two pieces of A4 copy paper to outline the platform edge with a lead pencil. I then cut the outline using a pair of scissors, and traced the outline of this with a lead pencil direct onto the MDF sheet, which was then cut using a sharp hobby knife before sanding the edges smooth with some extra fine sandpaper.

An overhead view to test that the 2 car Xplorer actually cleared the platform edging.

The single piece platform was then placed into position to test the clearance with my 2 car Xplorer train, (the longest piece of rollingstock which operates on my layout).

The single piece 4 millimetre MDF board platform showing the cut out area to house the lighting.

I want the station building, or in this case the Countrylink Travel Centre, to be removable for if I ever need to change LED lights which I will install from beneath once this scene is completed. So I cut a large opening beneath where the structure will stand on the platform before I began painting.

The overpass at the southern end of the station area includes these cool banana trees from Modellers Warehouse.

While I kept coming back to apply several thin coats of acrylic paint to the platform over the course of a week, I also rebuilt the concrete overpass that disguises the number 2 mouse-hole entrance/exit between the two layout sections while I had my layout in pieces. With the third track now removed and the remaining tracks straightened out into a more gentler curve, there was no need for me to have the concrete walls fanned out into such a noticeable angle. Especially with the larger locomotives such as the NR and L Class locos I once had on my roster now long departed. What that required however, was for me to build the concrete abutments double-sided as you can see above. I painted these to match the concrete abutments on the other side of the mouse-hole highway overpass that leads to Philden Station at the same time that I painted the platform.

Once finished, I glued the new highway overpass into position, patched the ballast on the areas beside the concrete abutment, and super detailed the rock scenery with over 200 individually applied grass tufts and the great banana trees you can see in the photo above which I purchased from Modellers Warehouse at the recent Strathpine Model Train Show.

The finished platform glued into place showing the box housing for the removable Travel Centre.

The entire station area then had the same scenery treatment applied, with a couple of gum trees added in areas that won't impede operation, some rubbish bins behind the far end of the platform and another of the fantastic palm trees from Modellers Warehouse added down at the beach level. I almost used all of the 420 grass tufts I bought on this extension alone. Finally, I then glued the single piece platform into place and stood back to admire the scene so far.

The first look at my Countrylink Travel centre sitting snugly on the platform inside the box housing.

I used unpainted white polystyrene strips to build the box that will house the Travel Centre on the platform, and the base of the structure fits perfectly inside. I've never worked extensively with styrene before now, but its something I'm going to have to do as there are no Australian models available of anything that resembles the modern era Countrylink Travel Centres that were rolled out in the early 1990's, around the same time that my 2 car Xplorer train was introduced into service. As a starting point, I bought a cheap one-colour plastic kit for $10 on eBay. For that price it was cheaper than buying a single sheet of 4 mm styrene and included the postage price from China! At least it gave me 4 walls that I could use as a starting point to construct my model around.

I then stocked up with the other sheet styrene I needed at the recent Strathpine Model Train Show, and can now begin building the platform awnings and angled roofing that will cover the road coach set down area that you can see in the photo above. The roofing will all connect to the rectangular Travel Centre building to create the effect of being one big, modern monstrosity.

The view from what will be the front of the beach extension.

So with next weekend's Redlands Model Train Show being Philden's final outing for the year, it seems I'm agonisingly close to having the new extension completed in time. Only, once more I will have the layout displayed from the other side, and the new extension will remain hidden for now from the public behind the reversible backdrop. After the Redlands Model Train Show, I will have a break of 8 months before I exhibit the layout again, which will give me plenty of time to complete the extension to my liking, including adding lighting, figures, more palm trees and finishing the Travel Centre with a complete interior. By the time I display my layout again at next year's Brisbane Model Train Show, the layout, including the new extension, will be as finished as it's ever going to be! And then I can move onto my next project.

See also; Straightening the Beach Extension