Quite a big month just passed with Great Southern Steamup which meant that there was of course a flurry of activity to finish last minute projects!
It all started after last years choice to run a lashup of 3d printed Australian prototype carriages behind some large modern image diesels which were surprisingly well recieved. This left us of course scratching our heads about how to push the envelope even further for this year and the theme of "Live Electric" was born! Of course this isn't too much of a problem for Alexander (Melbournesparks) who uses 40v overhead at home but for me practically this meant I was going to be building some sort of trailer. The choice of prototype was a bit of a no brainer. Alexander has a roster of Melbourne trams and we had both built broad gauge rollingstock previously so it was a no brainer to build a set of Melbourne Surburban Electrics.
I'll leave the details of the Tait M car and the Swingdoor M and D cars to Alexander to explain in his own thread but my own contribution was the T car which was built to a running state in 4 very crammed nights (and it shows!) Alexander very kindly contributed massively to the build as well by mounting the bogies and couplers as I was rostered on the big stuff the day before GSSU
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The 4 car set in all its glory! The T car is still missing glazing and the bogies were being held together with wire as they got broken in transit. The T car is also working quite well hiding the 18V tool battery thats powering the M cars while they're away from the wires. If you look close enough you can see the crocodile clip sending power to the pantograph
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The Tait was later seen towing a mixed goods train of Queensland, Tasmanian and Western Australian wagons
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This was because I'd purchased this...
Of course having owned an array of various secondhand live steam locomotives that had all ended quite poorly I thought the easiest thing to do to avoid stress was to purchase a brand new locomotive, which I would then have to run while I continued faffing around with fixing my Aster shay, If only I'd known! As soon as it was lit the locomotive immediately had a blocked jet and after quite a lot of fiddling it was discovered that it simply wouldn't run without the smokebox door open or the fire would go out.
After some troubleshooting It was decided that there was a good chance that the factory had fitted the wrong size gas jet but thanks to the support and advice of David Fletcher it did manage to cut quite a few laps solo and with a few wagons hooked on.
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Bringing the wagons wasnt a complete waste of time as they ended up getting a good workout behind stalwart Cockatoo Creek Tramway Locomotive; Robin.It trundled around happily for over half an hour with them looking quite nice. Overall GSSU was a great experience and it was great to meet and briefly chat to so many inspirational builders. This will probably be my last GSSU for a while though as I find it quite stressful particularly running a manual loco. Predominantly building and modelling diesels and RC steam locos means that I don't really have that much in common with most people there!
There was a brief twilight run at a mates house where the suburban set continued to put in Stirling work and the Mabel even managed to run for another 60 minutes!
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Rounding the embankment. To me if you close your eyes juuuuuuuuust right it almost looks like its coming onto the approaches to Flinders street viaduct
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The Mabel Pulling the goods train.
I have to hand it to the team at Accucraft they've produced a beautiful model here. nice big boiler, gauge glass with drain, water top up valve, big gas tank and nice fine regulator. Support for 1:24 scale live steam models that are roughly Australian outline is non-existent so when I saw the preproduction model I was quite excited as it looks like it had quite a lot of potential this particular Mabel will become an NEVR Baldwin Surburban tank. Think Unitah Railway 0-6-2 but as a 2-6-2 and NA styling. Dimensions have been compared and a second one is being acquired to become a well loved Geelong narrow gauge saddle tank which will be a whole adventure on its own!
