Waimea Plains Railway

As an early rail modeller, I'm fortunate that 15 minutes drive from where I live, a small dedicated group of individuals is recreating a piece of early New Zealand Railway history. The Waimea Plains Railway is recreating the Mandeville goods/freight yards. The Trust owns an 1878 Rogers locomotive K92 imported from the USA in that year for use on the New Zealand Government Railways. The group restored/rebuilt the locomotive to working  condition a number of years ago and on the 20th and 21st of October they fired it up and held an open day for the public.

I took the kids out for a look and we had a great time. Presently, the railway has only a few hundred metres of track and one operable coach , which was first built in 1892! The locomotive was in service for 48 years and during that time it's original wagon top boiler and russia iron boiler jacket was replaced.

The locomotive is slightly unusual in that it is a 2-4-2 wheel arrangement or "Columbia" type. Two of this type were procured from Rogers in 1877 as a trial. Their arrival caused quite a stir in New Zealand, which up until that time had only used British built locomotives. They were quite a bit different to their British counterparts, with bar frames, Gothic style wooden cabs, locomotive bell and the usual kaleidoscope of colours typical of American locomotives of that period.

The first two locomotives were a success and six more of the class were ordered from Rogers, including K92.

The image below (linked from the Waimea Plains website) shows K92 in what was probably her original form. The wagon top boiler and Russia iron jacket can be readily seen. The steam dome is also closer to the cab, typical of American locomotives of that period. Coincidently, this very turntable is also in the possession of the Trust and it's restoration is well underway.

At the end of it's life K92 was pushed into a local river to help combat riverbank erosion. It lay there for many years until it was retrieved and restored. You can read more about K92's story and the Waimea Plains Railway here.

 

K92 today. The highly polished boiler jacket reflects the blue sky and the green fields around Mandeville. The firebox is noticeably more square and the steam dome is above the second driver. The reconstructed wooden cab is also less Gothic in style.

The great little train show

Today the children and I took a trip to Invercargill, a 40 minute drive, to see the annual model train show. The Southland Model Engineers Society covers a variety of modelling interests including trains, RC boats and cars and aircraft modellers. There were also exhibits by some other groups like the local woodworkers guild and the Southland Lug group (Lego).

Most of the train exhibits are typically of a British, European and occasionally, American flavour. Being an early rail modeller, I usually don't find anything for sale in the stalls that fits my era and theme. However, I enjoy browsing the exhibits. I tend to look for scenery ideas and techniques that I can use as scenery is not usually dependent on one's chosen modelling era.

One layout I particularly enjoyed was the New Zealand Railway Model Railway Guild's 1:64 NZR layout depicting typical scenes from Southland and Otago. There are not a lot of products available in this scale, though there is one business in New Zealand that does produce rolling stock kits. The locomotives are all limited run kits and are hard to come by. There were only a few buildings on layout, and all appeared scratch built or heavily kit-bashed.

A great feature of this layout was the sense of space the builders had created. A lot of the space was devoted to open pasture land and rural scenes. In the one urbanised area, the buildings were realistically spaced and because of this, there they were relatively few and far between. A distinct advantage when you have to scratch build everything! The scenery was nicely done and used a variety of products to create a pleasing scene. The

 The realistic weathering on the steam locomotives and rolling stock was also another highlight. It really was enjoyable to rail fan the trains on this layout.

Here are some photos of that layout that I snapped on my phone:

Pacing an NZR A class

A passenger train headed by the NZR A class snakes its way through the country side

A typical rural scene form New Zealand. Flax and scrub litter the pasture land. 

Some different models

When I was a teenager I used to build 1.72 scale model aircraft. I kept these models in a shoebox that has somehow managed to follow me around my university days and first 10 years of marriage. I dug them out earlier this year to show my son who is nearly five years old. He was very taken with them and I thought it would be cool to work on a kit with him. Even though the skills were not there, his enthusiasm certainly was. I welcomed the opportunity to for a different modelling challenge.

We started with a model of a Corsair, (Skipper if you have ever watched Pixar's movie Planes). This was pretty easy as it was mostly one colour and was made up of only a few key pieces. My Son did well with this kit. He would sit on my lap, I'd load up the flat brush and he would paint where I directed him. I would take over every so often so as to smooth out some of the imperfections (I couldn't help myself), but he certainly earned his kids wings.

After this, I decided a twin-engine bomber kit would be good for him because it has more surface area right? easier for him to paint? Well no. I chose a nice Revell JU88 kit, of course, a JU88 has a lot of glass to mask off and you see more of the interior made up of little bits and pieces. Nevermind. When he was in bed I spent a few evenings doing the itsy bitsy bits and masking the canopy. He and I then assembled the plane and I masked the camouflage pattern and we followed the same technique as the Corsair.

After the models were complete, we took photos of the models. We mounted the planes on a stick and my son held a hair dryer up at the planes to spin the propellors. All photos were taken outside in natural sunlight. All in all, great projects.

But back to the trains now...