Wombat Creek Tramways

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The year is 1963 somewhere in Victoria, Australia

I, Claus Ellef, have built model railways since early childhood in Denmark. As a son of an railway employee and living next to a main railway line it is to no surprise. So far I have started – but never fully constructed – four model railway layouts. The last one was rather substantial but ended up been abandoned for around 20 years. My spare time was instead spent with a heritage railway. In 2014 it was finally dismantled. I put the buildings and rolling stock in storage. The tracks were donated to a local railway club.

The reason for the above decision was a move to Australia with my Aussie wife. Being a train and tram enthusiast the journey from Denmark to Melbourne went by rail trough Russia, Mongolia, China and South-East Asia. The only flight was from Singapore to Darwin. The whole journey is recorded on http://www.payne-ellef.dk/

Before leaving Denmark I had already considered getting back in to modelling. This time it had to be a portable lay-out, not occupying to much space and related to our new home town, Melbourne. So the obvious choice was a lay-out with a trams. The result is 'Wombat Creek Tramways'.

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.


After two years of modelling, phase one out of three is coming along. The tracks are down and most of the buildings (kits and scratch builds) are in place. The kit buildings stem for some part from my old Danish lay-outs and the scratch builds are inspired by real buildings in Victoria Victoria. Due to the fact the trams mainly run in direction I have chosen to build an analogue lay-out. Only shunting into the depot requires the power supply to be reversed.





'Wombat Creek Tramways' have their own web-site, wct.payne-ellef.dk. On the website I show the latest progress in writing and photos. I also – with great in-frequency – put out issues of the 'W.C. Chronicle' with news-stories from Wombat Creek. The last article was about the Seekers' concert at the 'Mug Punter Hotel'.




Cheers,
Claus
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Very good, Claus.  You certainly have embraced the Ozzie vernacular.  I haven't heard the expression "mug punter" for donkeys' years.

Let's face it; all punters are mugs.  You'd hafta be.   :lol:

Nice layout.  Looking forward to more installments of the story.   :cool:

Cheers
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Ed is in the usergroup ‘Super-moderators’
:hi Claus, welcome to the club.

Interesting looking tram layout, looking forward to hearing more.



Ed



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Hi Claus,

Welcome.

When are AC/DC performing at the Mug Punters? Do all the muggins in town use the hotel for a punt? Sounds a chancy place to be.

Nigel

©Nigel C. Phillips
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spurno is in the usergroup ‘Super-moderators’
Welccome to the club Claus. :Welcome

Regards

Alan


Born beside the mighty GWR.
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Hello Claus,

Welcome to the club.

Jeff

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Hi Nigel,
Unfortunately AC/DC will not perform at the Mug Punter Hotel. In Wombat Creek time has come to a stand-still - the year 1963. In Wombat Creek AC/DC refers to the mayor Alfred Campbell and his son, the editor of W.C. Chronicle. The only performing and singing they do will be at the local watering hole 'The Wombat Cave'.



Last edit: by Claus Ellef


Cheers,
Claus
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Hi Max,
Many of the shops, businesses and venues in Wombat Creek are named with a bit of a twist! The dentist is dr. Molar and the local GP is dr. Paine. The interesting fact is, they do excist in real life. Just try to google.

Below is a few other examples of appropriate names.



The Bell Brothers use the slogan 'Best in the Ground'. They did consider 'Heaven or Hell - Ring Bell'!
The painters at the brewery are busy repainting the big sign for 'Wombat Bitter'. Well, two are not so busy painting. Instead they are testing the local brew! If the logo looks familar it is not a coincident. VB - Victoria Bitter - has been inspired to do a similar logo (or perhaps it is the other way around).

Cheers,
Claus
http://www.wct.payne-ellef.dk

Cheers,
Claus
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Hi Claus

My late uncle Charles was an optician/optometrist.

He had a sign C.WRIGHT on the wall of his shop.

Fair dinks.   :cool:
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Good day Claus, very nice layout, I build card trams have considered building a diorama sometime, your layout looks very clean and organised, well done.
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Great work. Well done

Cheers
Evan
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 Two new houses are been constructed along the East Street. The are designed as 'fibro-houses', which later will infamously known for the use of asbestos cement as a wall material. I have adapted the history behind the designs from the following website: http://architecturebulletin.com.au/autumn-2015/a-home-for-every-taste-the-nsw-small-homes-service/  
  
  
  The Small Homes Service was instigated in Victoria by Robin Boyd and The Age newspaper in 1947 and later introduced in NSW. The Sydney Morning Herald and Home Beautiful lobbied to establish a service along similar lines to that established in Victoria. In New South Wales building costs had doubled between 1939 and 1946 and building materials were very hard to get. There was up to a two-year wait for bricks in some areas with no brickworks.

  In September 1952, designs from the Victorian service were published in the Sun Herald. The aim was to raise the standard of home design. Designs were in brick (S/B), brick veneer (S/BV) and timber (S/T). The total number of designs in September 1956 was about 40.
  
  It was among the timber house series that the more modern designs could be found. Despite considerable effort by Bunning to promote modern architecture the public seemed to prefer the more conservative designs.
    
  While the New South Wales service overall may not have been viewed as a success, the regular publishing of designs had an impact. The combined living-dining area ‒ initially the result of the need, in the late forties and early fifties, to plan houses in a compact manner to meet official size restrictions ‒ became widely accepted. Living areas opened onto paved terraces. Designs contributed to the idea of informal living for which Australia is now known internationally.




  
  The designs of the two houses in Wombat Creek are S/T 632 and S/T 663. I found the designs on a website from https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/post-war-sydney-home-plans-1945-1959 . The picture shows an original advertisement from 1956. The designs may be compact but they still take up a fair part of the to 'blocks of land' next the tramway depot.
  
  Instead of using the infamous fibre-cement 'Durabestos' I will use cardboard as the main building material. I will try to keep to the colour scheme as seen in the advertisement. So far the walls have been cut and glued together. Next steps are to glue thin strips of paper over the 'gaps' along the walls and to apply some coats of paints.





Cheers,
Claus
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Lovin' this! You have to have a wombat featured somewhere, a bill-hoarding, a 'Wombat Soup' perhaps?

Doug

'You may share the labours of the great, but you will not share the spoil…'  Aesop's Fables

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin


In the land of the slap-dash and implausible, mediocrity is king
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Hi Doug
Thank you very much for your comment. I certainly going to feature a wombat somewhere on the layout. It will probably have to wait a few years when I get to the more rural part of the tramways.

Cheers,
Claus
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Hi,A photo shows the slow progress on the fibro houses. The walls have been painted in colours close to the ones in the add. The green is a little darker, though. The window frames are cut from a white 0.4 mm styrene sheet.



Last edit: by Claus Ellef


Cheers,
Claus
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Hi all,


The construction of the fibro houses is slowly progressing. One of the features of the houses is the rather larger windows allowing a lot of light into the interior. Unfortunately the windows also allow you to have a good squeeze into the houses!


I usually don't model the interior of the buildings with the exception of shop windows, which are fully decorated. In the case of the fibro houses I find it necessary to put up wall paper in the lounge rooms and hall ways.


So I have been on the internet to find good pictures of 1960's designed wall paper, curtains and doors, They have all been through Photoshop before being printer on ordinary paper. The outcome is visible in the photo.




Cheers,
Claus
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Hi again,
 2 weeks of holidays enables me to start on a major project at Wombat Creek Tramways. This time it is the long waited tram barn at the depot. The 'foundations' and the floor were put in place a long time ago. Now I have the time and materials to erect the building.






The model is inspired by the former Victorian Railways' tram depot in Elwood. Between 1906 and 1959 VR operated a broad gauge tram line between St. Kilda railway station and Brighton Beach railway station (VR also ran standard gauge trams between Sandringham to Black Rock and Beaumaris).  In March 1907 a fire destroyed the barn and the entire fleet, but both the barn and the fleet were rebuilt later the same year. To read more about the Victorian Railways' tram lines go to http://www.hawthorntramdepot.org.au/papers/vrtram.htm
The new barn in Elwood was clad in corrugated iron and featured some very distinctive inward leaning windows, which will be the main feature of my model.






In real life you will attach the wall to the already placed posts and beams, but I have taken a different approach. I have put the walls together, cut out openings for the windows and attached the posts and beams to the finished wall. Instead of working from the inside and out, I have worked from the outside and in!






All the posts are slightly longer than the walls allowing them to stick into pre-drilled holes in the foundation. Which allows me to move the building from the layout – giving me easy access to the building itself and the interior.






So far walls and windows are finished. Since the ends of the barn will be quite open for glances of the interior I have modelled the window frames on both sides with the help of a white paint marker straight onto clear plastic. It works quite well.






Next step is the rafters and the roof. This time I will do it the 'proper' way around – first getting the rafters up and later lay the roof.


What has happened to the fibro houses? Well, literally the are both in the shadow of the barn! But both houses are progressing well. Whilst I am waiting for paint or glue to dry on the barn I work on the houses. They are both under roof and just need gutters, downpipes and supports under the carports.



Last edit: by Claus Ellef


Cheers,
Claus
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That is coming along nicely! Looking forwards to the next set of pics
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Hi all,

A couple of pics to show the progress with the tram barn. Putting the rafters together was a bit 'fiddly' but I think, they came up all right.  :lol:





I have no idea how the double-decker tram turned up in Wombat Creek. The only Australian city with double-deckers was Hobart, but they didn't look like this one. Well, the tram is used to make sure, it is possible to run a double-decker tram into the middle road of the barn.

Last edit: by Claus Ellef


Cheers,
Claus
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I'm enjoying this Claus.   :thumbs

I love your sense of humour - as Max said, you've picked up the local vernacular extremely well.  I particularly like the vision of  AC & DC running WC ………………….. :lol: :lol:

'Petermac
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