Winter is a Cummin...

All,

It has been a strange week.  Treatment for the latest ailment, an aggressive tumour of the Parotid gland no less, has begun in earnest this week...(hmmm I am unsure how with all of the chlorinated solvents and petroleum hydrocarbons that I ingested in my "working" life that anything could grow inside me )....School holidays has meant that I have a house full of screaming female hobbits, the business has been left to it's own devices apart from the Laser Rail Bits development ( gotta get the priorities right ) and I have spent some time on the layout.  Now I hear that the first snow has fallen in Thredbo soooo it would appear that winter is fast approaching. 

Seems strange that I spent the majority of my life living and working on the coast and now at the ripe old age of 52 I eagerly look forward to the Tableland winters.  Certainly for around 5 to 6 months of the year there are plenty of excuses for not indulging in outdoor activities especially on the sub zero evenings and mornings that we frequently get.
Is it any wonder that the G gauge empire in the backyard gave way to a hasty return to indoor HO... Yes I love the winters... the colder the better!!!  There I never thought I would say it and this admission certainly fuels the speculation as to how I ended up with The Retard as a long standing and universally used nickname...I should add right here before the "political correctness police" have me for breakfast is that the nickname derived from some light hearted name calling following a bout of brain tumours some years ago and how I was temporarily incapacitated for a period of time following this..... I wear the nickname with pride!!!

But I digress....

I have finalised the NGPFs as per the last posting and finally got them to Ebay... Mixed feelings were experienced but hey...if they don't fit the era then it is pointless using them as bookends.  Now that the airbrushes have been retrained and the lids on the paint jars have been unstuck...I thought it time that I carried on with another project that has been waning and that being the fuel tanker fleet.  Of all of the rollingstock available in NSW I would admit that my favourite is Oil Pots...Maybe my working background has a lot to do with it coupled with my early years living close to the Botany line... but they have always fascinated me and while I have been purchasing most examples of RTR versions as they are released, making them layout ready has fallen behind big time. 

And so this week I have attempted to address this situation and bring them alive as best as I can.  I suspect that I have far too many fuel wagon examples ( with more on the way ) and wonder whether anything else will fit on the layout when it is completed...but I am having fun and isn't that what a hobby is all about!!!

The period I have chosen to model is the sixties and seventies and this period was certainly a "greyscale" time in the rollingstock world and at times it is difficult to get the juices flowing where weathering is concerned...most items of rollingstock were just a differing shade of grey/black and one has to look deeper for the subtleties to break the monotony and of course the majority of period reference shots are black and white or were converted to this format for printing.  Yes there are the publications that contain colour shots and I find it possible to spend an hour or so on just one colour photo looking at the small variations in shades based on area of wagon employment, wagon uses and rust or corrosion patterns.  Armed with this info...it is then a matter to attempt to transfer and reconstruct all of this to the finished model....I guess that is why we have such a diverse and great hobby as it never fails to challenge us...

I have added a selection of shots showing progress on the fleet...I could not resist the first shot showing a completed "original with walkway" NGPF...these units will be sold...

The three unliveried 4 wheelers in the last shot are to be an experiment in weathering utilising the salt method to add some variety and I will post a follow up with the findings as they are presently in first coat awaiting the process

 Have a great weekend...