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 small platform next to the Explosives Factory serves as a connection between the trains and trams. The new sign leaves with no doubt you have arrived to ‘the big smoke’! The train is a small mixed goods with empties bound for the Long Tunnel Mine in Gumnut Gully.
March 13, 2019
October 24, 2025
My neighbour’s name is Geoff. He is restoring vintage cars and building a model railway. What could be a more appropriate name for a auto repairer than ‘Geoff’s Automotive’?
The statue of Queen Victoria has been erected in front of Wombat Creek town hall. She is overlooking Victoria Square with Victoria Street to the left of the photo and Victoria Lane to the right. The Mayor (or more importantly his wife) thinks the Queen looks rather lonely and abandoned. Therefore the staff of the entire town hall has be asked to come up with a plan to beautify the square before summer.
Victoria Square is getting a make-over before the arrival of the Queen Victoria statue. The old toilet/pissoir will be removed. The mayor thinks it is an eyesore next to her Majesty. With the freight tram out of use dure to a faulty motor, the heritage steam tram is used to pull the trailer and load.
The ‘Platform Signage’ packet from Peco contains as the name indicates various signs. The signs are made of white plastic and need to be painted black with white lettering. As a test I painted ‘To the TRAINS’ all black and later scraped off the paint on the edge and the letters. I came up all right. It is not needed at the station in Gumnut Gully, but instead of ‘wasting’ my work the sign went up at the tram stop near the Explosives Factory. It is rather redundant since there is only one way out from the tram stop.
During the last two and a half months Wombat Creek has been covered. Not by snow, but some white sheets. My wife and I escaped the Australian winter. Instead, we spent a warm and sunny summer in Denmark occasionally venturing by train to Germany, Sweden and Finland.
Monday September 1 is the first day of spring and I will be back in/with Wombat Creek. The updates will be in ‘real’ time again.
In Victoria, no decent town with ‘Victoria Street’, ‘Victoria Square’ and ‘Victoria Lane’ can do without a statue of Queen Victoria. A friend got his son to 3D print no less than four statues. Which one will be chosen by the mayor to erect in front of the town hall in Wombat Creek?
