#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.