Philden Road Part Nineteen

 ...or the one about completing the overpass and setting the scene for the rest of the layout.

It's time for an update of how Philden Road is progressing. With a new layout rule in effect which states that neither line shall be placed out of service for more than 12 hours at a time, I've made considerable progress since my last update in November, all while still being able to fiddle-fart about with some small operating sessions to test that everything works as I'd envisioned. It's a case of so far so good.

One thing that I'm beginning to admire about my approach with this layout, is that I've become less afraid to rip out a scene or redo a feature if it doesn't turn out as well as I'd expected. Case-in-point was the namesake overpass that divides the two modules of the layout. After not being happy with how the first incarnation turned out, and taking onboard a fellow modellers advice, I removed the unloved span above the NSW North Coast line and scratchbuilt a new span to blend in with the Rix highway kit section I'd used to cross the QLD narrow gauge line.

Inspiration comes from somewhere, even for a fictious layout such as this. In this instance, I wanted to replicate the rock-proof screen gaurds fixed to the ballustrade of bridge overpasses from about the mid to late 1990's to stop vandals from throwing rocks at passing trains. I'd photographed the road overpass immediately to the south of the railway station at Coffs Harbour with such a screen in place, so used this image as inspiration for my Phills Harbour scene. It is only fashioned from some strip styrene and bits and pieces from my modeller's scrap box, but the end result is something that helps set the mood for the location and era I am trying to model.

Departing south from Coffs Harbour station, this XPT is ducking beneath the Campbelltown St bridge.

I rebuilt the left side of Philden Road overpass to blend in with the Rix highway overpass kit at right.

The rock-proof fence helps set the time period and establish a focal point for this scene.

Once the ballustrade was in place, I turned my attention to the roadway. To give the road a well-worn and patched up appearance, I masked off different squares at a time with blue painter's tape, and painted several different shades of grey. Next I weathered the surface with a few passes of the airbrush using three different mixtures of thinned-down acrylic paint; Model Master reefer grey, Vallejo black wash and Vallejo engine grime wash.

The road surface is going to be prominently visible, so I put a lot of time into making it a feature.

I masked of random squares of the roadway, and painted it in different shades of asphalt.

When dry, I removed the tape, weathered the road and added a concrete sidewalk.

The effect on the roadway is amongst the best finish I have achieved to date on a road surface, and left me glad that I pried my first earlier bridge section from above the NSW North Coast line and binned it. The completed Philden Road overpass instantly set the scene for how the rest of this... err, scene, would look.

A few locomotives soon to be retired from my layout pass beneath the new look overpass.

The next area on the layout I revised was my locomotive roster, and this is one area that has since been revised further after taking these few photos! Initially I wanted to capture the changing 90's era of operations on the New South Wales North Coast line. But 1991 to 2000 is a pretty broad time period to be modelling considering that National Rail was established smack in the middle of that. Even with the locomotives that I'd collected, it soon became obvious that you can't model everything. Keeping early 1990's NSW Government owned locos such as 442 and 80 class diesels on the roster meant creating a separate rollingstock roster of appropriately lettered goods wagons to run with them. Given the scaled back nature of this project, 8 locomotives seemed totally unnecessary for a 3 to 4 track Inglenook yard. I eventually decided upon a 1997 to 2001 era, and ruled a line through any locomotive or rollingstock item that didn't belong.

That leaves me with a fleet of 3 x NR locomotives and my 2 x Northern Rivers Railroad locomotives to cover my late 1990's era, (more on these in a later post), all of which are well suited to run alongside my Countrylink XPT set. For me, my whole NSW North Coast roster is about having some of the locomotives I remembered from when I was a young lad, still working alongside some of the newer Australian horsepower of the time. As for those NR class locomotives? They marked the beginning of a new era when they burst onto the scene in 1996, around the same time that I became a Dad. The NR's, (and my kids) are now around 25 years old! Where has the time gone?

I've just found that modelling an entire decade with this layout would have drained more money from my bank account than I was comfortable with. By moving on any item that doesn't belong between 1997 and the turn of the Millenium, I can now send some money back the other way.

Deciding to leave the cement plant off was a big dilemna... I'll miss this guy's face.

After returning from my summer holiday break with a pair of fresh eyes, the next scene-changer I decided to omit was the cement plant that I'd long planned to recycle from my old layout. As much as I like the familiarity of this structure, it really overpowered the beachside scene. I had to ask myself what mood was I trying to portray with this layout. Was it the industrial seaside scene we'd just seen at Gladstone? Or did I want to capture the fun beachside vibes from past family holidays? The cement plant made it a touch difficult to reach the ground throw beside the signal box anyway. So in the end the good vibes won out. I'll now pack the cement plant carefully away once more in a box, just in case I should use it on another small project in the future.

I guess these two photos can now reside in the Phills Harbour Museum. They can serve as a flashback to the Old Days before the Phills Harbour Foreshore redevelopment of the early 1990's, in much the same way as Coffs Harbour Foreshore was redeveloped following the closure of the railway jetty.

And gone! The final photo before the big foreshore redvelopment of the 1990's.

In its place a Fish n' Chips shop and a Fishing Tackle charter company are already erecting a new two story building. While the council has just completed a concrete esplanade linking the beachfront to the jetty and railway station. The whole project involved hours of marking out paper templates and cutting and gluing 6 mm cork floor tiles to create a seamless transition along the harbour wall. And ignore the foreign Victorian loco that seems to have popped up in the above photo. It was on loan while I measured train lengths and clearances for another top secret micro-project that I have in the pipeline.

I started on the Walker Models Fish n' Chips shop and drew a paper template for the foundations.

I used the template to cut a cork floor tile, and fixed it in place with white caulk, (No More Gaps).

The cork tile needed to be pinned in place while the caulk dried overnight.

The Walker Models Fish n' Chip shop can then be built alongside the beach.

So there you have it. The overpass is essentially complete and the scene is now set for how I will build the rest of the layout. Although I've glued the sub-structures together on some of the buildings, they're not fixed in place so that I can take them off the layout and work on them at a later date, (perhaps on a table in front of the TV when footy season kicks off again). I'm building a footprint that the structures will drop into so that I can keep progressing with the scenery.

I know folks often say stuff like 'next up I'm going to start work on... (insert whatever project here),' but with this layout I'm finding I can wake up on a Saturday morning, go to the beach for a swim and a coffee, and come back not knowing what I'm in the mood to do next. I just know that as long as I do a little something each week, the layout gets that little closer to being finished.

The Great Northern Getaway

 ...taking a break from the layout for an epic Queensland road trip, featuring cocktails, crocodiles, cyclones and the odd train or two.

Me, shortly after photographing this Aurizon/Linfox freight on the Fitzroy River at Rockhampton.

Well, I'm back from an epic road trip along the Queensland coast. What was supposed to be some 'down-time' before a busy year ahead, turned out to be quite the adventure indeed. Three weeks on the road, and a cyclone to chase us all the way home from Port Douglas to the Sunshine Coast!

Now that were back into our routine, it's hard to believe that January is almost gone, and here we are in the year 2021 with COVID-19 still hanging around like a bad smell. Frankly, it was what led me to leave the laptop, the internet and Facebook behind, turn off the news and escape to the clear headspace that only North Queensland can seem to offer. Even though the world's problems were still waiting when we returned, I did manage to forget about them for a while and shoot over 2200 photos, 1500 which were of trains and railway stations!

Only now that we are back, do my wife and I realise how lucky we were to be able to do a holiday such as this. Until we see all this Covid uncertainty disappear in Australia, I've got a feeling that it will be at least a couple of years before we dare dream about planning our next holiday. Its not just state borders that can shut with less than a days' notice, but as we learnt while returning home, regions and cities can declare a lockdown at any time. It might be a better option this year to holiday at home, and do a heap of work on the layout. But anyways... here are some highlights of our trip.

Still wearing QR Broncos colours, this 2300 and 1720 class were sitting idle at Rockhampton Railway Station, December 2020.

Rockhampton was our first stop heading north, and it was hot! Thirty-seven degrees of pure summer heat without the hint of a breeze. The city is quite large, and home to a few historic buildings, but in the twilight of 2020 it looked like a city on its knees, with plenty of closed down showrooms, restaurants and hotels. Covid hasn't been kind to this central Queensland city and on a hot afternoon the only place to escape the heat seemed to be the shade beneath the long railway station platform. For once my wife didn't seem to mind how long I took to photograph some idle locomotives sitting in the adjacent yard using a long camera lens. The next morning we stopped briefly at the railway bridge that crosses the Fitzroy River, and happened to time it with the approaching freight train you see in the background of the top photo. The trains were the only highlight of our overnight stop in Rocky.

On the way to our next stop at Airlie Beach, we caught up to a northbound Linfox freight near Carmila, only to have to stop for fuel. We got in front of it again to photograph it passing through the station at Sarina with the imposing sugar mill serving as the backdrop which was pretty cool. Then an hour or so after stopping for lunch, purely by chance we caught up to the same train again at Bloomsbury where the Bruce Highway parallels the railway line for some 15 to 20 kilometres. I took plenty of images from the window of our moving car.

Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays, was like a party town for oldies our age when we made our next stop for the night. And in a world away from COVID-19, masks and crowd limitations, it was awesome to arrive late in the afternoon and slip into an evening at Airlie's iconic hotel known simply as The Pub. It was nice to remember what it is like to talk loudly over a 7 piece band belting out 80's and 90's pop and rock. A late night swim in the hotel pool under the stars, and I found myself forgetting about the world, and strangely even the trains I had seen that day, or my own model railway layout back home.

The next night we stayed at Cardwell right on the beachfront, and sighting the once every 800 years Bethlehem Star, (the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn) was the highlight of the evening looking out over the Hinchinbrook Passage from our motel balcony while sharing a bottle of bubbles. I was now deep in holiday mode.

Cardwell was a good stopping place for the last leg of our trip north, planned so that we could visit the famous Spanish ruins of Paronella Park and Mena Creek Falls, which is a little inland from the Bruce Highway. It had always been a dream of Denise's to see the gardens since she was a little girl, and after doing a 90 minute guided tour of the ruins, we ventured further inland and up through the Atherton Tableland via Milla Milla Falls, Malanda, the Curtain Fig Tree, Atherton and Mareeba before descending the range near Mossman and turning south back towards our destination of Port Douglas. It made for a very full day of sightseeing.

With my wife Denise at Paronella Park, Mena Creek Falls in far north Queensland.

It had been five years since Denise and I were last in Port Douglas, and although we had our own car to explore the area, for the large part, once we were there we were just happy to stay around the pool and only venture into the main street of Port to do a little shopping or eat out. We joined our Son and new Daughter-in-law who had already been up there for 10 nights on their honeymoon, and they stayed-on for another 2 weeks with us. The heat of December and January is normally the quiet time in Port Douglas, but it seemed the town was full of tourists. Maybe it is simply too hot for Coronavirus up there?

What made the situation odd, was that despite the Port Douglas Marina looking a little sad and empty, (I counted only 4 shops that were still open at the Marina), the restaurants in town were booked out for weeks in advance. With our 28th Wedding Anniversary and Denise's 29th Birthday only a day apart... (she still turns 29 every year), I had to book our tables at some swanky restaurants in town a week in advance.

The Bally-Hooley Railway is no longer running, (a local told me that insurance companies had requested the group spend somewhere in the order of $1.2 million dollars in track and crossing improvements to provide cover of title), and the Ironbar in town wasn't allowed to do their Cane Toad Races on account of COVID-19 restrictions. Despite the effect 2020 has had on our country, every resort, hotel and backpackers lodge had the No Vacancy sign displayed out front, and there were plenty of Victorian and New South Wales number plates and enough foreign accents about town to realise that whoever was up here, had intended to stay awhile!

Hartley's Crocodile Adventures, Wangetti south of Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia.

This was our fourth trip north to Port Douglas, and as my wife gets terribly sea-sick we gave the snorkelling tours out on the reef a miss. Perhaps it was just as well as they could only operate with limited capacity, and whether it was on account of Covid or not, the prices seemed a lot higher than last time we were here. I measure everything with the price of a new HO model locomotive, and it would have cost the best part of 2 locos for us to have a day on the reef! We also gave the Kuranda Railway a miss this time. We've done the train trip each and every time we've come to North Queensland, and it too seemed more expensive than I'd remembered. So we just drove to Kuranda instead one day when it was raining, and walked down to see the station for free after I'd taken Denise to see the Butterfly Sanctuary.

What we did do that was different to previous visits, was the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas, and Hartley's Crocodile Adventures a little south of Port Douglas at Wangetti, (above photo). I've got to say, it was like nothing I'd ever done before. At Hartley's, they stick you in a little tin cruise boat, and take you around a huge lagoon while the boat's operator slaps a dead chicken dangling from a rope on a stick on the murky water. Eventually a huge saltwater crocodile jumps up beside you to snap at it! Then back on land, you sit around a timber seat ampitheatre to watch a park guide step into an enclosure full of angry crocodiles to do the same thing! The whole time I was watching some young lady who must have thought she was Mick Dundee's grand daughter casually throwing the angry reptilians some meat, I was thinking 'where does workplace health and safety fit into all of this?' It was nuts! And true story, I've had nightmares of crocodiles since returning home.

For the large part I just needed some time away after a stressful year keeping our business operating in the face of a Covid-ravaged economy. So I used the time to turn off everything, and not even think about the world's problems, clients, stalled writing projects or anything else that I had been obsessing over throughout the course of 2020. Instead, I read 3 novels, spent a lot of time in the resort pool and each day tried a different restaurant, bakery or cafe in town. When the two weeks of cocktails by the pool finally came to an end, we found ourselves following the weather updates the night before we were due to drive back south. Cyclone Imogen had crossed from the Gulf of Carpentaria, and although no longer classified as a cyclone it sure dumped a lot of rain up north, right up to the morning we were due to check out.

We made it to our first planned stopped at Townsville just as the Bruce Highway behind us flooded in three different places south of Cairns. While ahead of us, our Son and his wife had texted to say they had only just made it through on the approach to the Burdekin River Bridge near the town of Ayr, as it looked like there were signs being set up to close the highway south. Being in front of the worst of it, they decided to just keep driving. As we were four and a half hours behind them, we had no choice but to stop. They sent a text at 2.30 am the next morning to say they had made it safely home to the Sunshine Coast.

Townsville made for a wet evening tucked away inside an old pub before getting drowned hurrying back to our motel. Early the next morning we checked the RACQ road updates on our mobile and the highway south was open once more. We quickly packed, left, and 45 minutes later made it across the Burdekin River with rising water on the northern approach threatening to close the highway again.

It explained why we hadn't seen any trains the day before. There had even been a few small bridges on the adjacent sugar cane lines that were covered in tree branches and debris that had washed right over the bridge decks. Nearing Bowen however, the coal line from the Newlands system crosses over the Bruce Highway at Merinda, and it must take more than a small cyclone to grind the coal trains to a halt. We were able to stop the car safely so that I could photograph a slow moving coalie that was passing over the highway. Just south of the rail bridge was the small intermodal yard at Merinda, where a northbound Pacific National freight was shut down waiting until the line was clear to the north. I can see now how I may have worn my wife's patience thin by wanting to stop to photograph a train, given how bad the driving conditions were. So after a few quick photos, we pushed on south to Mackay where we'd booked our next nights stay.

Merinda on the outskirts of Bowen, Queensland. January 2021. These coal trains from the Newlands line unload a little to the north at Abbott Point Coal Terminal.

And just south of the Newlands line overpass is Merinda yard. This intermodal was holed up waiting for a clear run north. January 2021.

We reached Mackay mid afternoon just as the sky started clearing. That gave us the afternoon to take a little look around town and drive out to the harbour. I thought I could find some train action around Mackay Harbour, but just as is the case everywhere else thesedays, the entrance to the rail and harbour precinct is gated-off. I don't think we'll ever see a return to the days of being able to wander around a rail yard with a camera again. So we drove out onto the public viewing area along the south breakwater before heading back to the motel with some takeaway food. That night the rain bucketed down once more. If ever there was a moment that we should have made the call to head straight for home... it would have been before we got to Mackay.

A quick check of the RACQ site on our phone early the next morning showed the highway south was still open, but there was water over the northbound lanes near Sarina and Carmila. We left in attrocious conditions and made it safely through both troublespots. Mackay to Rockhampton may be the stretch of the Bruce Highway that everyone complains has nothing to see, but we couldn't tell through the blinding rain! By the time we'd reached Rockhampton the worst of it was behind us once more. It was overcast, but still hot and 35 degrees.

Between Rocky and Gladstone however, we passed trains on the adjacent triple track main every 5 minutes! After a driver change at Rockhampton, my wife wasn't going to stop until we reached our final destination of Gladstone. As the line was right beside the passenger window, that suited me just fine. I simply wound the window down and snapped away.

We reached Gladstone having left all the rain behind us, and I told my wife that that was it as far as train chasing went. Tomorrow would be straight home to the Sunshine Coast with our only stop being the Bundaberg Rum factory. Then we checked into our water view room at the Rydges Gladstone, and I had to stop from laughing. There were impressive water views alright. You just had to look out past the railway yard to see them! Gladstone is like the Port Kembla of the north, and its a city of 180 degree industry views! Still, I thought this view of the grain silos would make a cool model railway layout given that it is surrounded by a complete 4 track circle. We had an afternoon swim in the pool and dinner at the pub before getting a much needed night's rest.

Gladstone South grain terminal. This would make a cool model railway layout! January 2021.

We checked out for our final leg home to the news that Brisbane was going into lockdown at 6pm that night because of an outbreak of the UK strain of COVID-19. Given that the Sunshine Coast is just north of the Brisbane region, it was a deflating end to a few weeks away from reality. Our Son phoned us during our final leg home to say that the supermarkets in Caloundra had been stripped bare again due to panic buying, and we thought 'great, we'll be going home to empty cupboards and have to somehow do the food shop.'

Setting off in scattered sunshine, we did a Cooks' Tour via 1770 (pun intended) and drove via Bundaberg for a quick visit to the rum factory. Only due to Covid, the tours were all booked out for the day due to limited numbers and there were no tastings available on account of COVID-19 safe practises. The rum factory ended up being disappointing. Inside was little more than what you'd expect your local bottleshop to be like if they only sold Bundaberg Rum. To make it worse, the rain was back. So we ran to and from the car for all of five minutes looking inside their outlet store.

By the time we hit Maryborough West, we'd had enough of driving in the rain. Only now we had a steady stream of traffic passing us heading north, which only grew as we reached Gympie. It seemed that anyone who had a trailer or camper van in Brisbane was in a mad scramble to head north before the city went into lockdown at 6pm. I remember thinking 'you idiots, we've just spent three days outrunning a cyclone and you think that freedom is going to be found cramped inside your tents or caravans with the kids for the weekend, in the rain, instead of just staying at home?'

We finally made it home at half past six that evening. Tired, but safe and knowing that we'd just had an adventure to remember. We can now say that we've seen all that the Queensland coast has to offer. Every city or town that we wanted to know what it looked like, we now do. And in my opinion, what was the best place we saw? That answer came the next weekend as we drove down to Bulcock Beach for a sunny Saturday arvo swim. Caloundra. I now realise that I live in paradise.

And what was it like to return home and look at the bookshelf layout I am building again? Well, at the first opportunity I had to work on it, I took the cement plant scene out near my Philden Road overpass. If I want to capture the look and feel of a generic harbourside station, I really need to make the layout feel like I'm immersed in the scene. I now have another weekend ahead of me to get some major work done on the layout, and after an adventure like this I'm all recharged to do so. I'll let everyone get over this usually long blog post, and be back next week for a much overdue update of everything that has happened on the layout.

Anybody spot what's new?

Blogging has fallen a little behind the construction pace that I am maintaining on the layout of late, but that's all with good reason. As you can see in the above image there is something new to show, and not just the finished scenery on the sand dunes at Saw Point. The black and white paperback is a compilation of 45 of my own railway poems covering a period of more than 30 years, and features all of the poems from my Last Train series of books. For those who may have baulked at the price of my 8" x 10" full colour photographic poetry collections, Great Aussie Railway Poems at $12.99 plus postage for the paperback edition, or just $3.99 for the eBook make this a much more economical alternative for railway buffs and poetry aficianados alike.

You can read more about this latest release and my other available titles over on my author page at phillipoverton.blogspot.com

With many different projects currently requiring my time behind the scenes, I've also made time to give this blog a complete freshen-up. You'll notice the pages appear a little different and the Top Links page is gone, replaced instead by a Philden Favourites page. For those not familiar with web SEO, the number of links you place on any given post or page can either count for you, or against you. The hundreds of links that I have been kind enough to give to other reader's blogs, hobby websites and the like had reached the point where it was killing search traffic to phildenmodelrailway.

Dead links, inactive posts and add-saturated content all combined to give my blog a negative score, and to make it worse many of the blogs weren't even following this site in return. So the page has been replaced and the links all removed. If you're a loyal follower of my blog, you'll now find a link to your blog on the right hand column where it says Great Blogs I Follow. It only shows the 10 most recently updated blogs and clicking the Show All tab below these will display those blogs that haven't been updated of late. For everyone else... well, I've been blogging this site for 5 years now. I guess you musn't find it interesting.

Creating a blog on a scope such as this takes a large amount of time. Almost as much as self-producing a book. Good blog maintenance is also time consuming, so now that is all behind me I hope to get caught up with the state of my layout real soon. Until next time, safe modeling, and be sure to check out my latest book.

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!