Post #15

 As I am taking myself back around 50 years to revisit a modelling format that I enjoyed, slowly as I come across various 'triggers' that start me remembering items. Traction modelling seems to have been around its peak then and modellers were luckier than now in the fact that brass models from Japan and Korea were there to satisfy the needs. I am not sure if there are still manufacturers current that are making model trolleys in brass.

When I was modelling HO trains and I wanted to model New South Wales prototype, then there were virtually no ready to run models except when Lima came to the rescue and provided us with a 44 class diesel, which vaguely looked like one with a poor nose and cabin supplied and then similarly with the 38 class steam locomotive. Really designed for the toy market they were gladly purchased and both became subject of many magazine articles on how to modify and improve the models into something respectable. This is when the first brass NSW locomotive, the 38 class sold by the Model Dockyard in Melbourne became available.

Painted brass Model Dockyard 38 class loco - Bergs Hobbies photo

Although this was the first brass NSW model made, future releases of 38's were able to get a finer model produced.

So although I wasn't modelling NSW railways at the time my decision to go into traction didn't give me much choice except to start buying a few brass models. I was working at the time so it wasn't a big chore to be able to afford some models. Having said that I usually selected single truck models, the birney, sprinkler and freight car as starting models. Later I actually purchased a few bogie trams. I bought a New Orleans car as when painted up in red and silver it looked like the H class trams from Adelaide in South Australia. I had a North Shore car which I don't think ever got painted. I also had a PE Hollywood car which I painted in green and cream to represent a Melbourne tram. A fellow traction modeller Bill Bolton offered to paint it into the prototype PE colours and it turned out great and the only one I owned in prototype colours.

The 70's and 80's were a great era for traction modelling. There were plenty of brass HO models available, the modellers were possibly young enough to still remember the end days of the systems in the states.

By the mid 70's I had constructed my first HO model and as I got deeper into the hobby, you are always on the lookout for research material. As mentioned in an early blog I had a copy of Middletons 'The Interurban Era' and 'The Time of the Trolley', two excellent books. And also mentioned I have been able to obtain again copies of both books.

I can't remember how I found out but there was a magazine called 'Traction and Models' I must have purchased a copy from somewhere as I thought that it was worth subscribing to which I did. Each magazine had a cut out section for your subscription. But this was in the days before the internet and it all relied on posting a letter and sticking a stamp onto the envelope and hoping for a reply within the month. How spoilt are we these days with just a couple of clicks of a mouse it is all done?

So I got the subscription and the magazines started coming in. The magazine was the work of Vane Jones and he was the only name credited inside the front page. If this is so then it was incredible dedication for him to produce. What makes it more remarkable is that it was produced monthly, the guy probably didn't have time for a 9 to 5 job. Inside an issue was a list of back copies available for sale and No.50 is listed as an April 1969 issue. I am not sure of the first and last issue dates.

Back in the 70's there were a few mainly traction modellers who were roped into an group called the 'Model Traction Association'. The driving force behind this group was a guy called Arthur Perry. He was well known amongst the railway fraternity, he had a strong interest on steel wheel on steel rail items but his major emphasis was anything 'electric traction'. One of his true enjoyments was to travel to Japan and ride the rails there. I believe he had over twenty trips there. 

While the MTA continued on, I had decided to change my modelling objectives and after I had collected quite a few 'Traction & Models' magazines, I donated them to the MTA library.

After some time the MTA eventually broke up and sadly Arthur passed away recently in 2022. The magazines had resided at his residence until recently his son John contacted me and stated the magazines were still there and would I like them? 

One hundred T & M magazines

I picked them up recently and have been going through them to rekindle the memory on any of the articles. No memories of articles but what is incredible is that it was over fifty years ago that I donated them and now they are back with me.

As mentioned earlier Vane Jones certainly put a lot of himself into the magazine. Such a mag does not exist today but I suppose we will have to say that the internet has taken its place. It was generally a black and white publication with often a centre fold colour addition. Compared with todays advances in printing, some of the photos were not clear and sharp reproduction but better than nothing. Diagrams were all hand drawn as computer graphics were a thing of the future. But at the time this was all we had and no future comparisons could be made. So treasure any copies of 'Traction and Models' magazines you have, I don't think we will see the likes of them again.

As an added bonus with the magazines I also was given four books that are traction related. The Suydam - Interurban Modelling Handbook is a picture book full of brass trolleys made back in the golden era.

More reading

 

The Adelaide H class tram.

 

 

Post #14

 Well things are moving along slowly but surely. The area that SCT will reside in has been cleared of the previous O scale VR narrow gauge railway. The supporting timbers (that were rejected timbers for a neighbours house build) have been un assembled and are now on the ground waiting for yet another rebuild into the supporting timbers for the traction layout. Talk about recycling, I'm doing my bit for the planet (and hip pocket). 

So the area is now cleared of previous layout but the room still looks like a jigsaw puzzle with various piles scattered around the room waiting for a decision as to their fate. There is still a residual amount of left over O scale items still waiting to be disposed of. Today was lucky, just a chance posting of a photo of the narow gauge layout and a brief mention of some track and points left over led to a substanial sale.

Now you can see why construction on the new layout will be a while. South Coast Traction will reside where the red vacuum cleaner is

 As everything is slowly coming together and a start on the baseboard, I have been collecting items required for the layout. I have collected the trolleys, the overhead requirements (wire, poles, wire hangers). But one item I have collected as I see them are buildings for the town center. At this stage it is all guess work but when I see a building that I like the look of I will grab it. One place that sometimes produces good results are the second hand stalls at the various model rail exhibitions. Unfortunately I live in New South Wales and our exhibitions are few and far between and not all support second hand stalls. It is a lot of work for the organisers but a goldmine in sales when the seller pays 15% commission. As I have only become tractionalised since the start of last year I have only managed to collect a few buildings. Luckily my choice of modelling a US style layout has helped, whereas many are modelling Australian styled layouts and are looking for suitable buildings to match.

I regularly check out Ebay and Facebook Market place for items but they are slim pickings. Just got to be lucky and keep looking.

But I have managed to obtain some nice looking buildings mainly from Walthers. These will form part of the city center with a few impressive buildings for a corner or two. Trouble is the cover with the finished buildings is very impressive, but when you open the lid and see sprue after sprue you start thinking "Oh I'll put it together another day" And then there is the painting. Although some are multi coloured it still takes some various colours on the building to make a striking finish. I managed to get a few fully completed buildings which will save a lot of time. 

So for now I will stop collecting buildings until I get the baseboard in place. Then after the desired track plan is laid out, I can see what space I have left for the remaining buildings to go. The first building I will plan for will be the trolley shed/barn, then the rest can all fit around it. After all they need a place to sleep at night.

Here are some of the buildings I have collected so far for the layout:

 

 

At least the photos on the box give you an idea on what you are shooting for, I just hope I still have a steady hand for doing some of the finer painting.

'Till next time............

Post #13

 Recently I got excited when I found some old 8mm film footage of my 1st HO model traction layout. As the footage wasn't very long I decided to go the simple route and have a go a projecting the film onto a door and setting up my phone on a tripod and see how it goes. Well although the end results weren't brilliant it was clear enough to see what I had done at the time.

The first Youtube upload was just a selection of still shots i.e. nothing was moving. It was great to see how I had made everything fit on a door, this was easy to do in traction modelling. As I always try and do, I like to make the track plan as intersting as possible. With traction unlike model railways doing a lot of shunting doesn't happen and mainly single cars are run. (Unless you are modelling an interurban line that runs multiple units). I never kept any plans of the layout but re watching the video, I can remember how most of it all ran. Another issue was that it was run on DC as DCC was to become a future invention. So to operate the layout I used double pole double throw switches so I could run two trams together at the same time but this still required switching sections on and off or control of a section to the second controller. I am sure DCC was invented by a frustrated DC traction operator.

So eventually my plan is to get my models converted over to DCC so at least the constant movement of flicking switches will be eliminated.

Somewhere now probably lost, I had a few black and white photos of my layout but doubt I will come across them so the discovery of these movies films is special.

But just the other day when putting another random 8mm film through the projector, I came across another film of the layout but this time the trams were moving. There is only one minute of footage but I was happy to find it. It appears that at this time the layout was being run on two rail as there is no footage of a trolley pole up on the wire. I must have started on overhead wiring  construction as well.

Here is one minute of HO traction. I must congratulate Kodak also on producing a very stable product as this film is still as bright as the day I received it from the processors.

 As construction commences on my new layout I will have further footage to post.

#Post 12

The wish to return to modelling traction was probably caused by viewing a nearly fifty year old 8mm film of my collection. At that time I was collecting no particular company or prototype. That ended up with a Pacific Electric Hollywood car, a North Shore car, a New Orleans car and a Birney car which could have come from many cities, you just have to name one. Chuck in a single truck sprinkler and freight car and also a bogie centre cab work freight car and you have a very mixed bag for a traction layout. It wasn't that long really since the tramway system in Sydney had finished and I certainly knew more about our system than any overseas one. And as commercial models of Sydney weren't available the next best was something from overseas.

Brass models were probably at their peak during the 70's to 80's and were gladly received. There was an owner of a hobby store in Melbourne that always got a visit when I got down that way and after heading down the stairs into the shop, you were immediately in 'brass heaven'. As I had not long been working my choices were on the low price side of things, hence the Birney and single truck freight car.

So wind the clock forward and a chance to 'start' again in traction was made by the choice of what was available. This ended up being an entire fleet of painted trolleys sourced from Facebook Market place. And the majority of this painted fleet were from the Chicago. And being from downunder I don't think I was expected to know american geography. I had a rough idea that San Francisco was on the left hand side and New York was on the right. And due to the numerous hurricanes soon learnt where Florida was - bottom right.

I thought that I had better start squatting up on my geography lessons just in case I got some questions on where places were. And yes Chicago is to the left of New York.

Most of the models I obtained were from Chicago and painted in the 'red and cream', I am not sure if there is a more accurate colour classification available but for now 'red and cream' will do.

Wanting to learn more about where my trolleys came from I Googled 'Chicago Surface Lines' and on the Australian Ebay up came a 400 page book titled 'Chicago Surface Lines - An Illustrated History' by Alan R. Lind and as an added bonus it was autographed by the author! And a bargain for just under $30AU postage paid. After a couple of days the book turned up. The cover was a bit torn but what do you expect for a fifty year old book?. It also had that typical 50 year old paper smell and probably had never seen the sun in all that time. So I laid it out on a table outside turning over a group of pages each time I went past hoping to make it smell better. Unfortunately there are no coloured pictures in there but it seems extremely comprehensive covering all aspects of the CSL lines. Not one of my favourite things to do is reading but plenty of good pictures to enjoy.

Another thing I have learned about Chicago is that it was home to the North Shore line and amongst their fleet were two four car trains known as the 'Electroliners' and they operated between Chicago and Milwaukee. My interest in the Electroliner peaked when a friend who was aware of my introduction into traction happened to mention if I wanted to buy an HO painted model of the Electroliner to which the answer was of course 'yes'

Electroliner on the elevated in downtown Chicago

The model was produced by Con-Cor in the early 2000's and is painted, and includes internal lights, seats and head and tail lights. There are four trolley poles, two are raised for travel in each direction. The model is currently DC but DCC ready which will be fitted when the time comes for operation.
 

HO Electroliner as released

It was good I made an early decision to obtain this unit as I haven't finalised the layout design yet and one thing I became aware of is that 10" radius curves are around the smallest this unit works best one, so that will be a determining factor with design. The layout will be more likely be designed around city streets rather than open country side where the majority of the trips were made. But an iconic model that deserves collecting.

Starting point Chicago - internet photo

Street running - internet photo

Heading out of town - internet photo

At the time of receiving the unit I was in the throes of demolishing my narrow gauge layout and decided to take a few photos in amongst the O scale structures and humans, only the absence of overhead wiring gives it away.

 I am sure the model wasn't run much when received so it ended up doing a dozen or so laps around the layout to run it in and one part of the journey over the Thomson River bridge I managed a video.

 This is a great add to my collection and I can't wait to see it 'under the wires' one day.

#Post 11

 While I have been slowly preparing the layout room by selling off the current narrow gauge railway, I have been collecting and planning the future traction layout. The proposed track plan was published in #Post 2. It covered many if the ideals that I wanted to incorporate into a traction layout. While part of the journey is the planning and the building of the layout, once the layout is built then the operation becomes the main agenda.

Operation of a traction layout is going to be way different than the operation of a normal freight railway. A train can be one wagon or one hundred but not so in model traction unless you are set up to incorporate a virtual 'model rail section' into the layout. I am applying these thoughts into what I am planning, I know that I not modelling the Illinois Central. I will be restricted to an 8' x 4' foot board.

So to add some variation in operation I started looking for some type of freight motor that I can use for working on the layout. I called out to the guy I purchased my current roster from and he advised me that he had a model of the Pacific Electric freight motor the 'Electra'. Price agreed and it was soon in its new home. 

Electra crossing the trestle bridge over the current narrow gauge layout.

The switcher was taken down to the shed for a run on the layout, conveniently being On30 that used the track gauge of HO. The layout being DCC had the electrics disconnected and just a temporary old DC controller hooked in for the testing. As with a lot of brass models this one also needed a long run around to loosen things up. I have been led to believe that when models run on DCC then you have a more slower control than with DC. This is a future enhancement when all the models will be converted to run on DCC. Maybe I won't need to get a sound decoder fitted as these models already seem to make their own 'traction' noise.

I am hoping in the final plan of the layout I will be able to use 'Electra' to move some freight cars around the layout, and so introduce some interesting movements.

Interestingly 'Electra' still lives on in California, so maybe one day I might get to see it. It had an interesting history see this link for more details:Electra

The fleet of freight cars has now grown to four so I am thinking that I might need to investigate the building of a separate location to hold them.

Here is a video of Electra on the move:

 Another thing I have done is to join the Facebook ' Traction Model Railroading' group and placed my first introductory post there. I hope it was well received, and for my second post I placed the photo of Electra on the pages, not much is happening yet but I want that to change early in 2025.

#Post 10

 In the State of Victoria there were two well known towns of Ballarat and Bendigo that had local tramways run by the State Electricity Commission.

The town of Ballarat located 115km (71 miles) from Melbourne commenced their tramways in 1887 and didn't close until the 19th September 1971, and Bendigo located 152km (94 miles) from Melbourne commenced their tramway system in June 1890 and closed on the 16th April 1972. Such was the local love of their tramways both cities have retained portions of the original route as tourist tramways.

I was lucky to be able to visit both systems just before their closures. I was in my early 20's and at the time tramways were my main interest so I visited the city after travelling out from Melbourne by train. To record the trams I had taken my trusty Bolex 8mm movie camera. There is such a difference between the technologies of then and now. So after recording as much as I could on the day, I also decided to travel to the second sister city of Bendigo. I wasn't aware of any direct transport and didn't want to travel back into Melbourne and then back up to Bendigo, so I hitched a ride and lucky it only took two car rides to get there.

So the same pattern started, riding all the routes and taking as much film I could afford.

One of the benefits of these trips is that I still have two 400 foot reels of footage from both systems. There are now better ways of sharing material now than way back then. So my plan is to eventually have the film digitised and then uploaded to Youtube so it can be shared, after all it is over 50 years old.

I have been lucky enough to still retain friendship of school mates that I left way back finishing school in 1966 and in 2019 we ventured off to Victoria to a 'rail' weekend. Part of that trip involved a visit to Bendigo and naturally enough it included a visit to the Bendigo Tramway to see the depot and a ride on their tourist tramway.

So these are a few photos of the Bendigo tourist tramway as it still exists and it was great to be able to relive my memories of Bendigo even though I am now much older. One day I will get back to Ballarat and ride their tourist system as well.

Post #9

 Most fleets start with the 'first one' and the number builds from there. My initial tramcar fleet of eight cars has increased rapidly when I sighted a Facebook Market place ad for 'ten tramcars' but what was the most remarkable thing was the price of $50. From what I have read these models were from a deceased estate and I can understand the person doing the selling wants to clear the decks as soon as possible. There was only one picture with various scratch built and modified cars but the one that was at the front of the picture was a Brill sprinkler car. I currently have a 'gold' one included with my initial eight car haul.

This was the Market place ad I saw.

This has quickly doubled my fleet of sprinklers and more importantly this one still goes. The only trouble is that the trolley pole needs to be replaced. 

The two yellow ones in the back row appear to be someones attempt to model a freelance electric railway. The third yellow one in the second back row seems to be a Rivarossi model but is only a trailer.

Two Birney cars

There were also two Birney cars which I think are brass models. Both are fitted with some sort of motor bogie that appears to be on the small side, but at least they go.

I am not sure the origin of these two remaining models but the left hand one appears to have pinched the bogie from one of the Birneys, and as this was one type of model I wanted it may require a bogie transplant in the future.

The sprinkler and model of Victorian SEC car

At least the sprinkler model was painted in green. I think I would be correct if I said all of the brass rolling stock were released as DC only models. They were pre DCC and will now require decoders to be fitted to be able to operate on my planned layout. But ironically these model trams seem to have an 'inbuilt' sound decoder which just turns out to be the gears and motor. A bit different when you are modelling a steam and diesel railway, but with the brilliant sound decoders available now why would you miss out? Fitting of DCC is a bit further down the track in my plans I only hope that they make suitable 'tram sound' decoders. The sound of the gong is very prominent.

I will need to obtain some trolley poles for the trams I need to operate from the States, at least they are still available.

So for a $50 outlay I think I have scored well.