Philden Road Part Sixteen

 ...or the one about leaving room to expand my track at a later date, and how a year like 2020 and COVID-19 has changed my plans for this layout and the next.

All the track is down, and I'm waiting only on some LED lights to arrive to begin wiring everything up beneath the layout. Just when they'll get here is anybody's guess. It is after all 2020. For a year that I think we all wish would hurry up and end, we've at least made it through to October. Even though the promise of brighter days being just around the corner is beginning to sound like a broken record.

This week I happened to re-read an old post I wrote back in March, sounding a warning to prepare for modelling lockdown, expecting to cringe as I sometimes do. Only it turned out I was right. While we're fortunate up here in Queensland to be enjoying something that resembles a normal life, both my sisters in Victoria have been in lockdown since July 8. Its no lean feat considering they've each been homeschooling three kids while working from home.

By comparison, my wife and I have had it pretty good. We run a local small business on the Sunshine Coast and have been fortunate enough to have continued to work right through the COVID pandemic while qualifying for some Australian Government Jobkeeper assistance in the process. It enabled me to have an unprecendented amount of spare time between jobs to work on my layout while we waited for things to return to normal. This week we found out what the 'new normal' is. Our business has recovered enough to no longer need any Government assistance going forward, which is great news in a way. But still being down some 15-20% compared to last years' figures means you need to look at where you can make cuts and compromises somewhere in your household budget. Turns out that hobbies are a luxury.

Laying track is the very last moment to decide what to omit, and what to include for the future.

While I was happily working away on Philden Road and feeling grateful for the list of models I have been able to purchase for the new layout this year, the reality of what is going to be the new normal for the forseeable future does make you stop and evaluate your hobby. How much do you get out of it? And how much time and money do you put into it? I'm sure I'm not the only one asking myself these questions this year.

I'd reached the point where I had laid all the track for the rationalised Phills Harbour yard arrangement that I talked about in Part Fifteen, when I stopped and thought about what next year may bring for our hobby. In some ways 2020 has been kind to Aussie modellers, with new models still being released, a plethora of still available models to choose from, and a host of sales being offered over the course of the year. It will probably go down as the year that I spent the most on my hobby, ever!

But for someone who usually only wants one or two of the same type of wagons or rollingstock on his modest layout roster, having to buy freight rollingstock in packs of four and be bothered listing, selling, packing and posting the rest on eBay has long been an expensive and rather annoying way of going about it. By the time you deduct postage costs, eBay fees and PayPal fees from the sale price of the models you move on, it often ends up to be a rather uneconomical way of going about it. I for one much prefer the individual wagon approach that everyone else in the world seems to be able to do except for Australia. Although I did snap up a few of the repackaged individual wagons that Australian Modeller had released during one of their 20% off sales. When I read that Auscision Models were having to put their prices up because of cost increases from their China factories, any thoughts of taking the same approach in the future went out the window. If a $260 4 pack of freight rollingstock has gone up $40 to $300 per pack, its a big risk to take on just to get the one new wagon you're after! And if that's the case, you can rest assured that in 2021 a $335 locomotive is going to increase at least $40 also to somewhere around $375. It seems that in 2020, plastic has just become the new brass.

One switch or turnout, if installed now, was going to future-proof any expansion plans.

I never started constructing this layout with a budget in mind, but 2020 will ensure that I now finish within budget just the same. Prices going up when household income has come down, became my jumping-off point in the hobby.

So... the solution to future-proof my hobby should I get the opportunity to expand it in the years to come, was to take one of my omitted left hand PECO turnouts and cut it into the jetty siding at an angle that steered the track towards the layout edge. As you can see below, the position will allow for a sharp right hand curved turnout should I eventually expand Philden Road into an L-shaped layout. Its a feature I didn't incorporate into my last layout Philden, and one that if I didn't incorporate now would be an opportunity lost. I can then build the jetty to the shape of the future track extension, and simply leave the rails off from the straight section of the turnout to resemble an old wharf that has had part of its' rails removed. The rails will simply join to the existing turnout if I do proceed with an extension at some point in the future.

It is a much more budget friendly outcome than planning for another layout post this one. Building materials would be minimal, as would track, and it won't require any further rollingstock or locomotives other than the ones I have now.

For now I'll cut the rails at the edge of the layout, but the switch is there should I extend in the future.

The rationalised and COVID-influenced track arrangement then came together rather quickly, and I next soldered the rail joins and wired the toggle switches to the blocks I'd created within each insulated track section. The narrow gauge tracks will operate independently from the standard gauge, with the standard gauge blocks being divided into a platform/yard precinct, a jetty precinct, (wired for both present and future) and the Saw Point visible mainline staging at the other end of the layout. I could then paint the rails up and continue with construction once more.

I airbrushed the track with 3 shades of Model Master acrylics. I'm starting to love my airbrish!

I stuck blue painters tape over every pair of point blades before airbrushing.

Finally I airbrushed the sides of the cork tiles in aged concrete

The completed Phills Harbour track arrangement, with a split-level QLD and NSW yard.

With the track configuration completed, I next looked at what I could recycle from my old layout. As you can see, with the platform track now flipped to face the front of the layout, there was room for me to place Philden's old station building from the August 2018 cover of Australian Model Railway Magazine beside the modern Countrylink Travel Centre that I'd built as part of my Beach Extension. I think they'll look great together as some sort of 1990's station upgrade program, and although the detailed interiors will face away from the viewer, I can still see most of it when I peer through the windows. Recycling quickly became the theme for 2020, and the signal box from Philden will soon occupy the area to the left of photo between the NSW and QLD lines.

Next up, I had to come up with something that would future-proof my interest in the layout long after it is finished. The track arrangement had already been simplified to the point where the operational aspect was effected also. So I turned to YouTube and an excellent video put together by Steve's Trains. If you haven't seen his small layout videos or the 21 part series on building the Tulsa Spur, check it out. It's a track plan I would gladly have copied if it wasn't for me trying to incorporate two layouts in one.

Instead of just having a 3 track yard alongside Phills Harbour station, Steve's warehouse idea would give my QLD line a sense of purpose, by moving loaded fruit wagons from the siding at the Saw Point end of the layout to the refrigerated warehouse at the Phills Harbour end. By delivering each loaded wagon to the correctly specified door, I could extend switching moves for each carded running session by as long as I'd like. The Wuiske Models QLX wagons have two doors on each model, and the Walthers Modern Cold Storage kit that features in the Tulsa Spur video above, has a modular approach to make positioning the doors easier. More importantly, I only have about 15 mm of space between the back drop and the rear siding to play with, so the kit could be built as a flat to run the full 520 mm along the rear siding, with only the rubber door seals protruding from the buildings' wall. I could construct it to have the 6 warehouse doors line up with the 3 QLX wagons that would occupy the siding, while the track beside becomes the workable siding while positioning each wagon at the correct door.

I couldn't track down this specific kit anywhere in Australia, so I had to order it direct from Walthers website and get it posted from the other side of the world. There will also be enough leftover components from the kit to kitbash a modern addition to the side of my recycled goods shed for the Saw Point siding, and whatever I decide to build as part of my jetty extension in the future. In doing so, this became my very last purchase for this HO scale bookshelf layout....ever!

With 2021 indicating that a move back to a small apartment is going to be on the cards for my wife and I following our Son's wedding, I don't know when, or even if for that matter, I'll ever get around to building the jetty extension. But at least I've included a provision to do so. 2020 on the other hand has probably killed off any plans or ideas for another Australian outline layout. At least for the next few years.

Thoughts now turn to the N scale layout that I've been constructing to sit beneath Philden Road. To future-proof my interests with it, I've moved the setting from Canada's canyons to an urban scene on the fringe of Chicago. Modelling an urban scene with a lot of structures is going to take a lot longer to complete. And I find building structures is a more enjoyable aspect of the hobby compared to building benchwork or wiring. So with my existing fleet of Canadian Pacific locomotives and modern-era rollingstock, I've gone and aquired a Chicago Metra passenger set and an armful of N scale Walthers kits. That little bit of spending now, will need to justify a whole lot of non-spending in the years to come! Especially considering N scale prices in America are now jumping through the roof also! However, I was lucky enough to find online a Metra Operation North Pole Christmas set marked down by 40% and buy the last one.

It will be nice to rekindle my fascination with Chicago railroading, given that my first exhibition quality layout was my C&NW Overton Subdivision back in 2002! And as a whole, My QLD/NSW Philden Road layout, and the CP/Metra as yet unamed Chicago layout beneath it, will provide me with a whole lot of fun in the years to come, without taking up any more space or budget. But as usual, I'll let that be a story for another day!

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.