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 narrow gauge railway serving Wombat Creek Consolidated Mines Pty Ltd is now operational. The missing link between the Explosives Factory and the Big Nugget Mine has been constructed under the Main Street. The engineers used the ‘cut-and-cover’ method for the tunnel.
As a train may stall or derail in the tunnel access to the tunnel will remain from the top by moving a building or two.
The gold panner is still trying his luck; now in the shade of some gum trees and under the watchful eyes of a couple of koalas.
This part of the layout is almost finished. The backdrop needs to be replaced with a proper one. Unfortunately this will involve disconnecting wires, disassembling sections and moving the whole layout two inches to the right.
The Big Nugget Mine is not up and running yet, but you may find gold in Wombat Creek. A gold panner is trying his luck near the end of the tram line.
May you all strike gold this Christmas.
Well, not really. Despite the ground cover is made of tea leaves from used teabags it doesn’t smell at all. The logs obscure the creek coming straight out of the background.
Given the urban setting of Wombat Creek the layout will not have many opportunities for ‘landscaping’. The small embankment along the railway is made with scrap pieces of foam-board painted a base brown. A ground cover of tea leaves will form the topsoil before some Australian native will be planted.
The turntable is now ready for use – I thought!
To paint the sides of the well and add sand to the bottom I had to take the drive and the bridge apart. The green railings at the bridge look a bit ‘flimsy’ with the handles just stuck to the top. Have a look at this video from the West Coast Wilderness Railway and the turntable in Dubbil Barril and you will see, I am not far off!
Assemble it all again should have been easy, but it wasn’t to be. The cogwheel in the drive just slid around the axle without turning the bridge. The friction between the pick-ups and the curved rail was too much. Since I probably wouldn’t need to turn a locomotive, I hard wired the bridge. It sort of solved the problem, but now the tracks don’t line up! Everything has to be taken apart again.
When life serves you lemons, you make lemonade. When life serves you polypropylene plastic, you … don’t make a turntable!
Nothing seems to stick to this sort of plastic (except the label), so I had to start from scratch with the turntable. His time I used styrene plastic and the outcome is far better. The turntable still has to be painted and railings fitted along the top.
The turntable is turned with a worm drive. The axle is a knitting pin kindly donated by my wife. The turntable can be turn fully 360 degrees, but this will rarely happens. Because of a steep (and invisible) incline near the Little Nugget Mine all locomotives will run chimney first towards the mines to avoid the top of the firebox being exposed.
The tracks are down and powered. Unfortunately my first attempt got a couple of wires mixed up. As a result a steam locomotive ended up in the creek twice! All is now sorted. The locomotive shed houses the two large steam engines. The smaller one will require a second shed at the track to the left of the bigger shed. This track will also be used for a coal stand and a water tank.
Construction of the turntable got under way today. I planned to take a few photos of the process, but I got carried away with the work itself, so I have only a few photos to show. The project is progressing as expected but not as fast as I had hoped for.
The first image is of the container lid,, which will form the pit for the turntable. The ‘bridge’ is cut from the bottom of the container. A slim 50 mm bolt has been put through the centre of the ‘bridge’.
The second image shows the pit in place.
Quite a few stages were done before the third image. A section of standard gauge track was cut into two and forms the guide rail at the bottom of the pit. Probably slightly over-size, but I expected it would be too difficult to keep a smaller rail in place. Two length of narrow gauge rails have been super glued to the ‘bridge’. Wires have been soldered to the rails on the bridge and in the pit. The ‘pit rails’ will be powered. The ‘bridge wires’ will somehow glide on top of lower rails and thereby supply power to the ‘bridge’. A slim sheet of plastic has been slit in place along the wall of the pit to conceal the threads of the lid. The third image shows the turntable and the tracks leading towards it installed. Also the track into the shed is in place.
The final image is similar to the third, but with the shed in place.
Tomorrow’s work will include laying the remaining track and power the tracks and the turntable. Finally the turntable has to be detailed .
