New book, new direction

My new book is finally released! Now to channel all that nostalgia into the new layout.

A book launch party for three... Here's a toast to a ten year project!

I wanted to break news of my new book here first. Before the usual trumpeting of such a feat takes on the usual angle on Facebook, or the usual mention is made over on my official author blog at phillipoverton.blogspot.com.au. I'm sure news will follow on these other sites at some point in the next few weeks, but it doesn't seem the norm to break such news accompanied with your own personal thoughts on how producing a book such as this has effected your personal hobby, and vice versa.

I first came up with the idea to do such a project back in 2010/2011 while touring the east coast of Australia with my first two novels. I had just signed what I thought at the time was a good-enough contract with a US based publisher, to take a six month break from working upon the sale of our house, and re-write the entire novel (and sequel which would follow), in American English. Through contacts, I was able to leverage interest in my feel-good beachside fiction to generate a full page article in no less than 29 major regional newspapers up and down Australia's east coast. I thought I was on the verge of having it all, and while travelling through distant towns that I'd only ever heard of but never visited, I would always stop to take photos of any railway stations that we'd come across, and to this day continue to do so.

For a long time, writing, self-promoting and touring had come at the expense of my model railway hobby, and I told myself that one day I would collate all these photographs into a single book, sit back, and build another model railway layout to replace the one I had dismantled shortly after moving to the Sunshine Coast back in 2008. Unfortunately, success never followed. While the sequel to the novel in question was in its final stage of editing, the much-touted book was pulled from sale after only 18 months due to poor sales. And just like that it was all over.

I hope you can appreciate why I can only share something like that here, amongst readers (many of whom I have met or personally email with), whose own modelling skills I admire, and whose criticism I have come to respect. Yet despite the negative overtones in admitting that my writing career never amounted to very much at all, I cleared my head with a train trip to Cairns-and-back before they retired The Sunlander in 2014, and went on to write a further eight, make that nine, railway books in the years that have followed. The model railway layout I suddenly had the time to construct went on to appear on the cover of Australian Model Railway Magazine in 2018, and its' successor has now reached that exciting stage of laying track.

Favourite Australian Railway Stations is available now!

So with the excitement of announcing that my new, full colour, 72 page 8x10" photo book Favourite Australian Railway Stations is now officially available, (pause to take a breath), comes the realisation that this book may very well be my last. I've talked about this often, and arrived at the conclusion that another book can only follow if I have another 10,000 images of entirely different railway stations to sift through in another 10 years time! So for now it is time to take a bow, and leave the stage for someone else to command.

Behind-the-scenes, my nostalgia-filled romp from sifting through countless photos, and recalling the highs and lows of both my writing career and hobby, has greatly shifted the direction that my new layout has morphed into. I don't think it would have been possible for one not to have influenced the other. Even after blogging that I wasn't willing to compromise, came the realisation that in life or a hobby, you must choose what you have when you can't have it all. All those plans I've been blogging about, those ideas of building a split-level bookshelf and even my future model layout ambitions have one thing in common, money. And unfortunately the economic landscape of 2020 is about to change all that for me.

With the year starting with the news of the Coronavirus outbreak, and trade from China greatly effected in the process, I made the call to do a model train shop run to Brisbane with good friend and fellow modeller Anthony. There's nothing like a bit of anxiety-fuelled panic buying to pass the time on a rainy Saturday! We called in at Railco in Deagon before crossing the river to visit Austral Modelcraft in Mount Gravatt. We simply ran out of time to make it the trifecta and visit Aurora Trains as well. With my layout unable to progress any further until I was able to lay the track into position, my wife gifted me $350 from our Christmas fund to get what I needed. Unfortunately there's been a bit of a jump in price since I bought the track for Philden back in 2015. It cost me just under $500 to get everything I needed. So any further purchases are hereby cancelled indefinitely until my model railway budget recovers!

I guess from this point onward, its now a case of being thankful for what you do have, and making the most of what you've got. I'll now reassess where I go from here before commencing any track laying.

It feels great to have the release of my new book out of the way. Its a bit like getting a huge monkey off my back after years of not being able to decide how to lay the book out, or indeed what formula or theme the book should follow. Now that I have something that I am truly pleased with, it sadly also marks the end of an era. All that nostalgia that it has evoked will now see me with only a HO scale representation to follow all those years of work on my book.

Nostalgia. It seems to be the theme for the year so far. From my book, to getting all of my track for the new layout from Ray and Eileen Nunn at Austral Modelcraft, and reminiscing about all those years in between from when I first visited their shop in the mid-1990's. There's just a growing sense of change in the air at the moment surrounding everything. It seems the more we try to keep things the same, the more they seem to change around us, and 2020 has bought us new lows from a summer of storms, bushfires and floods, news of Holden finishing up for good, and uncertainty from a Coronavirus-fuelled economy. When we're so reliant on things coming from China, (insert practically every model train manufacturer here), you begin to feel a bit of anxiety about where our hobby is heading in terms of future pricing and availability. I guess it was just a nice weekend to be able to visit Austral Modelcraft again, and get all the track I needed for the new layout, purely so I can concentrate on stepping back in time with a little bit of nostalgic model railroading for the remainder of the year.

Philden Road Part Seven

...or the one about the blank canvas phobia

Wow. What a difference a week has made. Having a few spare hours in the middle of a work day, courtesy of one of our clients who are yet to return from their Christmas break, meant I was able to assemble the finished benchwork for Philden Road above my work space area. As you can see in the above photo, choosing to paint the timber with white water-based gloss enamel has matched the framework for the new layout perfectly with my existing IKEA furniture. The only thing left for me to do is replace the borrowed dining room chair, with a white and birch office chair from... you guessed it, IKEA. I can then get onto building the two modules that will form the new layout that will sit atop the benchwork. Perhaps.

I say perhaps, because as I stand back to admire the benchwork that my wife Denise and I painted over our summer vacation at home, all those second thoughts regarding final trackplans, levels and making it all fit start creeping into your head. I call it blank canvas phobia.

To outline what I'm intending to do for the sake of those who are new to this blog, over the course of 2019, I effectively dismantled a 2.7 metre long x 320 mm wide bookshelf layout that had graced the cover of Australian Model Railway Magazine, and began the task of replacing it with a 3.3 metre long x 450 mm wide multi-level bookshelf layout. The layout needed to be able to fit into the back of a mid-sized hatchback or SUV, and so was designed to break apart into two 1.65 metre long sections so as to not limit our choice of vehicle when it comes time to updating our car in the near future. The two modules in turn will rest atop the seperate benchwork that you can already see in the above photo. The benchwork itself comes apart in five sections and is held together by just 7 bolts with wingnuts. It takes less than two minutes to erect and will be a huge timesaver when I take the finished layout to a model train exhibition sometime in the future.

I haven't shown the trackplan for the new layout yet, as I have three such versions drawn to 1:1 size on rolls of paper. With my plans calling for a Queensland narrow guage layout to co-exist with my planned New South Wales standard guage North Coast line, a split-level approach as opposed to a multi-deck layout seems to be the order of the day. Occupying an end each, the two lines would cross in the middle, both under and over Philden Road, before disappearing behind each other's backdrop. The key requisite here is that my NSW North Coast line needs to be able to both accommodate a 5 car XPT set at a railway station platform, and still have the room to make it completely disappear from view at the other end. Hence the reason I needed to build the layout to a length of 3.3 metres.

From this point, it becomes a bit of a conundrum with what layout elements I need to omit. Add one element to the NSW end, and I need to omit one from the QR end, and vice-versa. While on one hand I'm itching to get started, until I do its easy to get lost in that beautiful moment where everything seems possible. Once those pencil lines go down on the sheets of plywood however, its a different story. Trackwork, the rise and fall of the landscape between levels, structures and the feeling of space and seperation that you need to place between each element will demmand at least one or two hard calls. For now, everything just looks good on paper.

A flashback comparison to the original Philden layout with the same IKEA funiture squashed beneath.

I guess the best way to appreciate the space I now have to work with is by comparing the photo of the new benchwork at the top of the post, with the photo of my old layout above. Not only do I have an extra 600 mm of length to play with, but I have much more leg room around my desk and work space.

The finished benchwork in place ready to begin constructing the two removable modules that will rest on top.

So while the State of Origin mind wars continue with the positioning of elements on the HO layout on top, with a spare weekend, and a small stash of timber and plywood at the ready, it may well come down to the flip of a coin to decide which end I begin working on this weekend. Either way, until you splash the first bit of paint on a blank canvas, just staring at it can be a daunting prospect. I guess you'll know which State wins out based on my next post. But as usual, that'll be a story for another day.

Philden Road Part Six

...or the one about the summer of painting the layout.

Well, Twenty-twenty is well and truly underway. And by that I mean the year 2020 and not the cricket variety. Although the KFC Big Bash is a welcome way to cool down in the evening in front of the telly after a day at the beach or painting some layout benchwork in the garage! Ironic then that the team I follow happens to be the Brisbane Heat.

This year's edition of summer in Australia has been hot. Days hitting 39 degrees Celcius in Queensland, and none that I can recal dipping below 30 degrees. Which is not a problem when you live on the Sunshine Coast and can be parked at the beach and in the water in only 10 minutes. But while we are still waiting on word of when the repairs to our house will commence following November's freak hail storm that I covered in Philden Road Part Four, at least we have a roof over our heads. Unlike many Australians throughout Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia who no longer have a home, thanks to the worst bushfire season I can recall. When you factor in loss of livestock, livelihoods and the complete devestation of some historic Aussie towns, the road to recovery for many communities is going to be a long one indeed, and it remains to be seen what impact the fires have had on our railway lines in the affected areas.

It was a slow process painting one side of each benchwork section at a time.

Back to my new layout news, and after returning from the beach this morning from my umpteenth swim of the summer, my wife helped me apply the final coat of paint to my benchwork frame. I had to enlist Denise's help with painting the layout on a sheet of cardboard on my garage floor on account of my knee still needing time to recover from the small procedure I had on it in early December. While I'm back moving around without any pain and with more range of movement in the knee than I've had for the past six years, bending down on a concrete floor for twenty minutes at a time was proving a painful exercise. Between us we'd paint one side of the leg frames and top sections, leave it standing against the wall for the day to dry, and the next morning repeat the process on the other side. It took two days to apply each coat of paint.

I used an undercoat when painting the benchwork frame, as I want the finished layout have a furniture-like finish.

I used a 100 ml can of White Knight Splashes water-based undercoat, and a 250 ml can of the White Knight Splashes water-based gloss white to paint the entire benchwork. I applied 1 coat of undercoat and 3 coats of the gloss white to the entire framework. and then took the time to lightly sandpaper the visible outer sides of the framework and apply a further 2 coats. The famework will now lean against our garage wall for the next week to harden before I re-drill the bolt holes and assemble the framework above my desk area next weekend.

The final coat applied to the five sections that will bolt back together to form the benchwork.

Finally after 6 months of frustration, I'll have a visual scope of the size that the new bookshelf layout will be. I can then get to work building the two separate modules that will sit on top of it. It might seem like going about things the long way, but if I ever decide to build another layout down the track, I only need to rebuild or replace one module at a time, and the free-standing framework will never need to be rebuilt. After retiring Philden from the exhibition circuit and stripping the layout bare, I think building the new layout this way will turn out to be a brilliant idea.

One thing I have been pleased with so far compared to when I built Philden, is that painting the layout has proven to be a whole lot easier than using a stain and varnish. There's no problem with trying to match stains when you're just painting it white to match in with my IKEA furniture that will stand beneath it.

So with holidays now officially over for me, and my knee now ready-enough to carefully return to work, I'm hoping the positive mindset of finally making some progress with the layout will continue throughout the year. Despite not getting anywhere near the amount of work done on the layout that I thought I would when we decided to holiday at home this Christmas Holidays, we're all safe and I'll soon have the skeleton of the new layout standing in our living area. Then I can roll out my plans and start cutting some plywood. I've spent the past 18 months assembling a new locomotive and rollingstock fleet, and can't wait to get them running on track so I can start shooting some photos of them for this blog.

Until next time, stay safe, and if you're not in a position to give financially to any of the bushfire appeals that are now running, then please keep our great country in your prayers. We've been coping with bushfires, floods and cyclones since before Dorothea Mackellar wrote the words 'I love a sunburnt country'. So no matter what your thoughts are on climate change, leaders and social media influencers whipping people into a frenzy... take a deep breath... and think of how you can lend a hand rather than where you can point a finger. There's probably quite a few model railway layouts in houses or back sheds that are sadly no more because of this summer. When the time comes, maybe you'll know of someone nearby you can help start over with their new layout. Trust me, it can be quite the rewarding feeling.

Philden Road Part Four

...or the one about bad knees, bad luck and the badass hail storm.

Sometimes things that have absolutely nothing to do with model railroading just seem to find a way of halting progress on your layout, despite your best attempts to do otherwise. In a week when a doctor's appointment following a brush with a little old lady at the supermarket checkout revealed I have further aggravated some quadricep ligament damage in my right knee, (simply from changing the direction of my step at the last minute to avoid possibly knocking her over), Sunday afternoon's recovery session from my son's engagement party the night before soon turned into the hail storm from hell.

Hail storm, Aura estate, Sunshine Coast, Sunday 17 November 2019.

An afternoon on the front patio with a glass of bubbly whilst watching a summer storm roll in over the suburbs of Caloundra, quickly turned into a hobbled dash by Dad to bring my son's car up onto the patio to avoid getting any hail damage. By the time I closed the driver's door behind me, golf ball sized hail stones began pelting me and our entire street with a defeaning roar.

Hail storm damage, Caloundra West, Sunshine Coast, Sunday 17 November 2019.

Not content to pelt the side of my son's car anyway, the storm let loose on the front of our house, leaving the garage door dimpled and punching holes in the concrete rendering on the front of the house. Once inside, frantic calls from my son and his fiance quickly had me hobbling upstairs behind my wife to discover that 3 of the 4 upstairs windows in our bedroom were smashed, and we now had hail the size of golf balls bouncing off our bed and out into the hallway.

Free air-conditioning courtesy of a monster hailstorm that belted our suburb in Caloundra.

By the time we could grab all the buckets and towels we could find, our bed and bedroom furniture were soaked and the full force of the storm had the blinds flapping and everyone was getting struck by inward coming hailstones while stepping over broken glass to try and rescue... You guessed it. Dad's model trains which were stored under the bed.

No it wasn't a drive-by shooting by the mafia, just a Queensland summer hail storm. Sunshine Coast, 17 Nov 2019.

The hail storm was the most badass I've ever experienced, and while I was kneeling down passing my model train boxes and prized XPT set to my son to run downstairs to safety for me, his fiance and my wife were filling buckets and the esky with incoming hail stones and carefully picking up large pieces of broken glass which filled another bucket. Then just like that it was over. A bit of light rain followed, (enough to further soak the carpet), then the sun came out. And so did the gawkers, Instagramers and YouTubers who soon congregated in front of our house.

They don't build houses like they used to. What you think is concrete rendered brick turns out is just concrete papier-mache.

I think we must have been close to the worst hit house in the street, but due to the angle the storm came from and the angle our house faces the road, our house seemed to be the easiest to film. I checked on the elderly lady next door who said both she and her house were fine, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cleaning up the mess. Glass all over the floor and bedding, bedside lamps and furniture all wet and needing to be wiped down and wet model train boxes waiting for me to see to. I guess it's just bad luck that the models and other train stuff that I was selling on eBay were all safely stacked by my desk downstairs waiting to be sold and posted, while my prized models for the new layout were all wet underneath our bed upstairs. The boxes ended up being slightly water damaged, but all the models inside appear to be fine. I guess I should be thankful for small mercies.

My wife Denise was fantastic, and together we had Gaffa-taped the windows with black garbage bags and booked an emergency window repair call-out while the neighbourhood continued to just mill about and walk around filming everything on their iPhones. By eight o'clock that night O'Brien glass had replaced the three broken windows, and I could then move all the furniture to vacuum the entire room and hallway on my hands and knees to ensure not even the tiniest speck of glass remained in the carpet, (broken glass has long been my pet phobia). Denise and I finally put all the bedroom furniture back in place around half past ten, and fell into bed exhausted.

Bad knees, bad luck and one helluva badass storm!

All I wanted to do today was work on my layout benchwork.

Today was supposed to be a free Monday for me to work on the layout. Instead, I thought I'd take Denise out to the Coffee Club down by Bulcock Beach in Caloundra for breakfast. All four of us were amazing when it came to securing the house and cleaning up so quickly, and driving out of our estate the morning after, the roads around Aura were lined with hail damaged cars, more houses with broken windows taped up with cardboard boxes or bags and so-called brick rendered houses littered with gunshot holes. Maybe there's a lesson in there for us model railroaders; nail some blue plastic netting over the top of silver insulation paper, smear it with 3 mm of concrete render, paint it and call it a brick rendered home. It's disgusting the corners people cut to save money yet charge the prices they do for new homes. I've built HO scale model train buildings that are stronger.

Anyway, we enjoyed the peace and quiet of a Monday morning down by a near deserted Bulcock Beach, while back in our estate tow trucks spent all day towing away vehicles with shattered windscreens and trying to sqeeze down ridiculously narrow streets past tradies' utes and glass repair trucks. Although my son's car did get some hail damage down the driver's side door panels, my quick actions at least saved his car from being declared unroadworthy. At least he can still drive it around while we decide what to do about repairing it, given there is a huge excess on the young guy's insurance and he now has a wedding to save up for.

Back at our place, the landlord arranged a building inspection this afternoon and apparently the colourbond roof is so badly beaten up and bent out of shape that the entire roof of the two storied home will have to be replaced. Sometime in the next few months. Meanwhile there is a two day wait for a call-out if you want your window repaired on the Sunshine Coast. Moral of the story; fix it first before you Facebook it!

So, with the bad luck and badass storm now out of the way, an MRI scan this week will determine what course of action to take with my knee. Fortunately our business will soon start winding down towards the Christmas break which should ease our workload, but when I had three weeks planned of simply being at home to work on the new layout, I'm still hoping I somehow get a chance to get the benchwork finished, painted and set up above the desk to start work on the layout itself instead of being told to rest up. I guess I'll learn my fate over the coming week.

Anyway, next post I'll share some good news from my son's engagement party, give an update of all things N scale and reveal the meaning behind the name of my Canadian layout. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day.

Till next time, keep smiling, otherwise the world will send you crazy.