Frank’s Layout
A few days ago I was enjoying just running some trains on my Pennsy layout. Two J1 class 2-10-4s were starting a lengthy freight train; using DCC with sound they were nicely out of sync. As they moved onto the main line and were back in sync. I began to think about how much the hobby had changed in the 50 or so years since I got hooked. Of course now the possibilities seem almost endless, but then I wonder if inevitably we’ve also lost some things as well.
I was in primary school in the western suburbs of Melbourne and there were persistent rumours about a ‘train set’ that one of the kid’s fathers had in a shed. At the time I was the proud owner of a Tri-ang diesel that ran on a loop of track in my bedroom, but in my mind it was crossing mountains, valleys and bridges. I’m not sure how I got to know the kid with the ‘train father’ but eventually David invited me to his place to see the trains. We walked down a garden path towards the shed and I noticed in the garden there was an abandoned track bed, an O gauge railway that continually suffered from dirty track, leaves and the deposits of the local cat. A decision was made to abandon it and move indoors with an HO layout.
I stepped through the door and fell in love, it wasn’t just the scenery, even the smell of it was intoxicating, and then they started to run the trains! The ‘train father’ was Frank, a delightful generous and talented man, he was a tool and die maker who had produced the dies to stamp out the first pull top beer cans. But his skills were most impressive when applied to model trains. This was the mid 1950s and there was virtually nothing available commercially. So Frank scratch built whatever he needed or imported from the US via his wife’s sister who had married an American serviceman. A diesel streamliner glided past a pool with swimmers and a waterfall and then disappeared into a tunnel to emerge on a different level. It wasn’t a particularly large layout, barely the size of a single car garage, and by today’s standards the curves were rather tight, but it just didn’t matter. Needless to say I became a regular visitor over the next 10 years, not only working on the layout but also travelling with David and Frank to photograph the real thing, a pursuit that I continued into the 21st Century in China. (Many of those images can be seen on my web site Charlespagephotography.com)
They eventually decided to model Australian prototype, a mixture of NSW and Victorian, a decision that really highlighted Frank’s skills. Locos were re worked to look more Australian and a 38 class was built on the chassis of an English model, primitive I suppose but they looked remarkably good. He decide to mass produce VR GY trucks, so working from original plans he made the dies during his lunch breaks at work, these really were excellent and would sit comfortably on a contemporary layout. The correct colour was an issue until he realised that his daughter’s boyfriend was an apprentice at the Newport workshops, a can of VR brown duly arrived.
However I think his zenith was a fully operational set of VR crossing gates and semaphore signals, all metal with exquisite detail, the four gates would swing shut against the traffic as a train approached and then magically open again after it passed. I looked underneath and the workings were very Heath Robinson, a conglomerate of motors, gears, wires and levers.
He designed an electrical system to replicate the transition from day to night, as the ‘daylight’ faded a ‘moonlight’ blue light would bathe the countryside. I’m not sure how it worked but it did involve a container of salty water that seemed to fizz and crackle a lot. Another frequent visitor was Peter Nielsen who still sells CDs of his train recordings through magazines and the ARE shop in Melbourne. Peter was an electrician and upon seeing the new lighting effects immediately declared the system a death trap and disconnected it, he then designed a safer way to achieve the effect. As the layout and rolling stock expanded a holding yard was built across one end of the garage that was next to the layout room. However rather than a fixed yard he built a type of cantilever system, so that when the storage tracks were full the entire yard would move out from the wall and rotate on its support through 180 and then fit back in so neatly that all of the trains were now ready to re-emerge onto the layout. Of course the car couldn’t be in residence when this manoeuvre took place.
Each Christmas, the family would spend their annual vacation traveling through N.S.W. in their elderly Citroen photographing steam operations. On one such trip they discovered Tumulla, a steep grade in western N.S.W. that required banking engines on most goods trains. So enamoured with this operation were they that part of the layout was rebuilt to replicate the scenery and include banking locos. Peter devised a circuit that allowed separate control of the front and rear locos. using numerous relays and sectioned track, as trains ascended the bank you could hear the relays clicking away and as the summit was reached the banking loco. would drop off just like the real thing.
There was also a small narrow guage component. Influenced by the Victorian narrow guage lines. They began by ‘narrow gauging’ a Tenshodo tank engine, track was hand laid to 2’6” and models of the rolling stock were produced, of course the bogies were custom made. Eventually a Na class loco. was scratch built, but unfortunately a proposed G class Garrett never eventuated.
I suppose the hobby still demands innovative solutions, but I feel that we now have many alternatives, we have a main and reserve parachute while Frank only had a bed sheet.
The J1s are rolling along the double track main and meet a T1 passenger east bound and I’m impressed with how realistic it all is. But one of my favourite train running times was when Frank built an extension for a short branch line with a small yard at the end. The rheostat controller was on the control panel and clunky switches operated solenoid point motors, but I loved running that branch with a tank engine and five or six cars.
I’m about to extend my layout by another 28 square metres; a major feature will be something I haven’t had for a long time, a branch line.
Regrettably Frank’s layout no longer exists.
A few days ago I was enjoying just running some trains on my Pennsy layout. Two J1 class 2-10-4s were starting a lengthy freight train; using DCC with sound they were nicely out of sync. As they moved onto the main line and were back in sync. I began to think about how much the hobby had changed in the 50 or so years since I got hooked. Of course now the possibilities seem almost endless, but then I wonder if inevitably we’ve also lost some things as well.
I was in primary school in the western suburbs of Melbourne and there were persistent rumours about a ‘train set’ that one of the kid’s fathers had in a shed. At the time I was the proud owner of a Tri-ang diesel that ran on a loop of track in my bedroom, but in my mind it was crossing mountains, valleys and bridges. I’m not sure how I got to know the kid with the ‘train father’ but eventually David invited me to his place to see the trains. We walked down a garden path towards the shed and I noticed in the garden there was an abandoned track bed, an O gauge railway that continually suffered from dirty track, leaves and the deposits of the local cat. A decision was made to abandon it and move indoors with an HO layout.
I stepped through the door and fell in love, it wasn’t just the scenery, even the smell of it was intoxicating, and then they started to run the trains! The ‘train father’ was Frank, a delightful generous and talented man, he was a tool and die maker who had produced the dies to stamp out the first pull top beer cans. But his skills were most impressive when applied to model trains. This was the mid 1950s and there was virtually nothing available commercially. So Frank scratch built whatever he needed or imported from the US via his wife’s sister who had married an American serviceman. A diesel streamliner glided past a pool with swimmers and a waterfall and then disappeared into a tunnel to emerge on a different level. It wasn’t a particularly large layout, barely the size of a single car garage, and by today’s standards the curves were rather tight, but it just didn’t matter. Needless to say I became a regular visitor over the next 10 years, not only working on the layout but also travelling with David and Frank to photograph the real thing, a pursuit that I continued into the 21st Century in China. (Many of those images can be seen on my web site Charlespagephotography.com)
They eventually decided to model Australian prototype, a mixture of NSW and Victorian, a decision that really highlighted Frank’s skills. Locos were re worked to look more Australian and a 38 class was built on the chassis of an English model, primitive I suppose but they looked remarkably good. He decide to mass produce VR GY trucks, so working from original plans he made the dies during his lunch breaks at work, these really were excellent and would sit comfortably on a contemporary layout. The correct colour was an issue until he realised that his daughter’s boyfriend was an apprentice at the Newport workshops, a can of VR brown duly arrived.
However I think his zenith was a fully operational set of VR crossing gates and semaphore signals, all metal with exquisite detail, the four gates would swing shut against the traffic as a train approached and then magically open again after it passed. I looked underneath and the workings were very Heath Robinson, a conglomerate of motors, gears, wires and levers.
He designed an electrical system to replicate the transition from day to night, as the ‘daylight’ faded a ‘moonlight’ blue light would bathe the countryside. I’m not sure how it worked but it did involve a container of salty water that seemed to fizz and crackle a lot. Another frequent visitor was Peter Nielsen who still sells CDs of his train recordings through magazines and the ARE shop in Melbourne. Peter was an electrician and upon seeing the new lighting effects immediately declared the system a death trap and disconnected it, he then designed a safer way to achieve the effect. As the layout and rolling stock expanded a holding yard was built across one end of the garage that was next to the layout room. However rather than a fixed yard he built a type of cantilever system, so that when the storage tracks were full the entire yard would move out from the wall and rotate on its support through 180 and then fit back in so neatly that all of the trains were now ready to re-emerge onto the layout. Of course the car couldn’t be in residence when this manoeuvre took place.
Each Christmas, the family would spend their annual vacation traveling through N.S.W. in their elderly Citroen photographing steam operations. On one such trip they discovered Tumulla, a steep grade in western N.S.W. that required banking engines on most goods trains. So enamoured with this operation were they that part of the layout was rebuilt to replicate the scenery and include banking locos. Peter devised a circuit that allowed separate control of the front and rear locos. using numerous relays and sectioned track, as trains ascended the bank you could hear the relays clicking away and as the summit was reached the banking loco. would drop off just like the real thing.
There was also a small narrow guage component. Influenced by the Victorian narrow guage lines. They began by ‘narrow gauging’ a Tenshodo tank engine, track was hand laid to 2’6” and models of the rolling stock were produced, of course the bogies were custom made. Eventually a Na class loco. was scratch built, but unfortunately a proposed G class Garrett never eventuated.
I suppose the hobby still demands innovative solutions, but I feel that we now have many alternatives, we have a main and reserve parachute while Frank only had a bed sheet.
The J1s are rolling along the double track main and meet a T1 passenger east bound and I’m impressed with how realistic it all is. But one of my favourite train running times was when Frank built an extension for a short branch line with a small yard at the end. The rheostat controller was on the control panel and clunky switches operated solenoid point motors, but I loved running that branch with a tank engine and five or six cars.
I’m about to extend my layout by another 28 square metres; a major feature will be something I haven’t had for a long time, a branch line.
Regrettably Frank’s layout no longer exists.