Most tramways will have scrubber cars and Wombat Creek Tramways is no different. ‘Real’ tramways will convert old trams into scrubber cars but Wombat Creek has no surplus of old cars, so I came up with another solution – a diesel locomotive and a tank wagon. I know it is not a solution, you will find at an Australian tramway, but it will serve the purpose here in Wombat Creek. The tracks will be cleared of dust!
On a holiday in Austria some 40 years ago I bought the Kleinbahn locomotive. It has not had a lot of use being in storage most of the time. The wheels and gears had become stuck but a dose of WD40 made it running again. The number ’56’ comes from a small Victorian shunter, V56, with the same wheel configuration and an almost similar look. It was once used to shunt Metro trains through a washing complex. And yes, the gauge is not right! You may think the colours are the old VR livery, but it is not. They symbolise Wombat Creek with the blue being the ‘creek’ and the yellow being the gold.
The tanker is an old Jouef track cleaner. The decals on both the locomotive and scrubber are home-made and printed on an ink-jet printer. The first attempt didn’t do too good. I chose to print without a background colour (transparent) which made the decals very visible. The second attempt with a blue background is far better but not perfect. The colours could have been a bit brighter, but perhaps they have faded in the Aussie sun! Another ‘issue’ was the white print in ‘Scrubber no. 1’. Of course ‘white’ on a printer is ‘no ink’, so it turned up transparent. Well, that was sorted with white paint before the decals were attached.
