Wombat Creek is a H0 (1:87) scale model of a fictional town situated somewhere in the Victorian Goldfields, Australia.
The time is 1963. Geelong wins the VFL Championship against Hawthorn (109– 60). John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. ValentinaTeresjkova is the first woman in Space. The men behind The Great Train Robbery get £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London. The town consists of several buildings. The “Wombat Creek Bank and Gold Exchange” is a prominent building in the town centre. You will also find several other commercial buildings; among them the daily newspaper“W.C. Chronicle”(colloquial known as the "Toilet Paper") and “Wombat Creek Brewing Company” (Famous for the “Wombat Bitter”). “The Big Nugget Gold Mine” is situated at the Western outskirts of town near the small Chinatown. The War Memorial is in a small park along East Street. The town’s mayor Alfred Campbell together with his son David Campbell owns several businesses, including the bank, the pub and the newspaper. AC/DC basically run the town and make most decisions on behalf of the rest of Wombat Creek’s residents, who, on the other hand, are too busy with their own businesses. The mayor’s latest initiative is Wombat Creek Tramways. Wombat Creek doesn’t really need a tram system, but AC reckons tramways will improve the town’s reputation. Partly because of limited funds the tramways' construction and rolling stock depend heavily on second-hand requirements from other Australian and overseas tramways.
The car maker ‘Holden’ has opened a new dealership in Wombat Creek. They a selling their latest model EH. According to my neighbour, who is a car enthusiast (and model railway modeller), puts the time into late 1963. The shop front still needs an awning. Also, the exhibited cars appears to be out of scale compared to the family in the shop. At a later stage I will try to generate a more suitable background. The building to the right of ‘Holden’ is the last building to fill out the space along the backboard.
The Long Tunnel Mine is in operation (sort of). Signs above the entrance and on the ‘Explosives’ storage have been added. Most importantly, though, is the flight of stairs joining the village to the mine. The purpose for the mine is getting some gold out of the ground. The state of the stairs is obviously less important.
Hard to imagine this is working gold mine. At the moment it looks like an abandoned mine shaft and s rusty shed without any access point for the miners.
With the ‘Royal Arcade’ relocated Bridge Road now consists of three buildings. The Toole’s Buildings houses the Italian restaurant ‘Pasta la Vista’ and ‘Bradman’s Foodland’. The inspiration for ‘Bradman’s Foodland’ come from a photo of the namesake in 1960’s Footscray.
The overall photo shows how far back of the layout the buildings are. Very hard to reach, unfortunately. The black cord to the left is a temporary connection between two sections of track. It will eventually be replaced by soldering a cord to the track at towards the left. Not sure how to reach! The buildings will be set into a footpath/pavement, which will stretch all the way out of the photo to the right. This can be finished before a wye set of points is replaced by a right hand set of points resulting in a smooth curve behind the bank. Again, an area very hard to reach.
The construction of The Long Tunnel Gold Mine in Gumnut Gully has commenced. Unexpectedly, the rails for the mining carts have been put in before the mine itself! The gauge is just 5mm (18 inches) and made of timber sleepers and I-profile polystyrene strips. How the ore will be transferred from the carts to the wagons is still to be determined.
Instead of the hair salon, which has moved next door, an Italian restaurant will soon open in the Toole’s Buildings. The interior has been made using chatGPT. You are limited to generate five pictures a day for free. I try to make the first prompt as descriptive as possible and edit along the way. Generating a picture takes quite a few seconds. Enough time to make you excited about the result. The final prompt for the interior of the Italian restaurant is:
1963 vintage Italian restaurant Melbourne front on view deep perspective bar sign at the back entrance to the left tables to the right with people dining waiter chianti wine bottles hanging from the ceiling no windows Italian posters on walls red checked table cloths width greater than height
chatGPT isn’t perfect. You will get spelling mistakes in signs. In this case, I couldn’t prompt chatGPT to leave the pictures without tables to the left. That is the reason the restaurant will move into the Toole’s Buildings. Here the entrance is in the middle lining up with the restaurant interior.
