A bit more

The SFRSD room is empty.
     After almost 22 years (the SFRSD was started in October 1994) she no longer resides at 1 Dalkeith Road. One last look of an empty RR room that has given so much pleasure.

Were did that go?

Guthrie & Flynn used to reside here.

     The big move took place on the first Tuesday in June under slightly threatening skies. John the new owner and I had concerns the portions of the RR would not fit so he wisely hired a rental truck with a van body for the move. 9.15 am sharp the truck arrived with many of our mates to lift portions of the layout already on the floor into the van. We could only get two or sometimes three sections into the van so once the first lot were in, off the van went to Johns house where another team of guys were in lace to remove them and lift them into place.

     Here is where they need to go in the fully refurbished upstairs of Johns house. Remember walls have been removed along with a lot of painting and such.

 and this is how they got upstairs. I am very glad is was back loading the van.

    
    Two guys outside and two inside guiding the sections through a 700mm wide window. All sections got in safely and with not too much damage with thanks to all our mates who pitched in to help.




   
   

     And when that was done we all sat down for a well earned lunch.

Hmmm Pizza

Stay tuned for the assembly of the SFRSD in it's new location and with a few changes.
Rod.

More of the dismantling process

Its coming apart.
    I'm going to have to go back a bit with this post as I have only just been able to get some additional pics of the dismantling of the RR.
    Almost all of the wiring to sections of the layout where through BDL's and SE8C's so there was a great deal of thought about where to cut the layout and which wires needed to be put into terminal blocks.
     John C the new owner made the call and so he together with John F attacked the wiring whilst I did the cutting of the track, roadbed, scenery, L Girder and backdrops. We tried to keep the sections as long as we dare and the cuts as neat as possible so the sections of the layout could go back together as well as possible. The main thing on all of our minds was how are we going to get all of this up into Johns second floor considering the style of stairs and the lack of room in which to move in the dining area below the staircase.
    First lets see some of the work done in the old Shed (layout Room if you will).

Here is the new owner John C cutting and joining wires at the bridge between Udall & Winfield.

John F still working on wiring on the SFRSD after all these years cutting and joining at the Exit of Augusta.

     Here is me adding temporary legs to support the two sections ( Winfield and Hackney) before being cut.

     More cutting. This time removing some of the backboard at the end of the Winfield / Red Rock peninsular.

    

     No matter how I tried I could not cut through the Magic Water it is just too tough. So it had to be prised out of the way .

     One of the 4 BDL's neatly tucked away before the lift.

Next post will show the BIG lift.
Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.

Way too long

First post for a while.
     Well my wife of almost 50 years and I moved out of what has been our family home for 37 years come November. Of course you know that this also meant the moving of the SFRSD which has been the subject of much discussion.
     This is what the SFRSD room looked like as Noel helped dismantle almost all of the fluros on a Tuesday evening.

All the fascias and Valances have been removed. Braces have been installed to support the layout where the layout has been sectioned.

Guthrie on the left and Flynn on the right have been put on the ground.

     John C the new owner and Big John did most of the wiring terminating whilst cut the tracks, base board and L Girders where John C thought would be helpful.
    

Looking vary bare.

     And now how the room looks now that it has gone. Almost 24 years of work to build and gone in several weeks.

     Thanks for all the years of help from many friends in the form of scratch built AT&SF style signals, kit-bashed model trucks, layout construction, track laying, keystrokes for the JMRI signalling and block detection system, installing countless Tortoise motors, wiring boy was there loads of that, operating the RR over too many years to remember, along with countless hours of pleasure that the SFRSD gave to me and many others over the course of the past 24 years.

Thanks Rod.

I didn't want a duckunder anyway

Deconstruction begins
     After the turbulent weeks leading up to the auction of our house I thought it was finally time to make a start on dismantling the SFRSD in readiness for its move to Little Johns. The dispatchers desk was first on my list while John was preparing his up stairs room. However before I add some images of my room here is some of what we did a few weeks ago at John's house.

 

    This was the store room that once housed shelves on the inside and a gas heater on the wall facing into the room. We had already knocked down one of the bedroom walls and door frame the week before. The bare wall was then covered with the same timber paneling to make it look all the same. Lots of fiddling around however it turned out really good. John then set to to have all the gaps in the ceiling where the wall top plates had been removed re plastered. He is now in the process of painting the ceiling and all of the timber paneling white. 

Okay so now onto the dismantling of the SFRSD. 

     The dispatchers desk

We had speakers in the desk to give us the sounds of the relays as the turnouts and signals were activated. It sounded kind nice if not turned up too loud.

Remove locos and rolling stock.

    

     Next I started by removing all of the locomotives and rolling stock along with the many cars, trucks and construction vehicles. 

     Locos and rolling stock well and truly gone here.

 

 

    Next on the list to go was the fascia. This will enable us to see where to cut the layout and cut and rejoin the wiring. We are using special plugs to allow us to cut one wire at a time add it to either a R/H side or L/H side wiring block. These will be numbered so it will make it easier to rewire when the layout is installed at Johns.

     Augusta East and Augusta fascia gone it was time to take out the duck-under.

      And here is the duck-under on the floor with Augusta East already taken out. Now that it is gone I still keep ducking as I enter the room funny about that and I'm not the only one LOL.

      Stay around as more work is carried out on dismantling of 22 years of layout building.

Thanks for looking in.

Rod.

The house is sold

The SFRSD home has been sold.
     After almost 37 years the house that houses the SFRSD has been sold. Our house went to auction last Saturday after several hectic weeks of open house and house building inspections by prospective bidders.
     That done and dusted I can now relax and start adding to the SFRSD blog that has been neglected for quite a while.
     The good news is that my very good friend John has purchased the SFRSD in its entirety. The layout, rolling stock, buildings and all road vehicles. So a big thanks to John for that as that was a total surprise.
     Knowing this, back in late March I invited the regular crew to come for the last operating session and to bring some of their own road Locos and rolling stock for one last hurrah. It was a very casual night, Greg was dobbed in to be the dispatcher and nobody took any notice of him that much such was the mood of the night.
     It was also good to see so many good looking locos strutting their stuff on the rails as the night wore on.
     Here's a few shots from the nights action.

Big John at Hackney

Brendan pondering

The last train I ran with one of my beloved SD40-2 snoots on the point.

One of Dennis's Chessie locos

Noels locos got another run

Greg's L&N locos in the background

A couple of Brendan's D&H sharks  leaving Flynn

Big Johns reworked Minitrix Fairbanks Morse loco. It got a full clean out, a decoder along with NWSL wheels and it runs like new. Not bad for a freebee.

Little Johns 4 8 4

Oh dear, Brendan dropped this train in the dirt as it headed to Winfield.

The group at the last session on the SFRSD

    Thanks for coming over guys. Many fond memories of nights past on the SFRSD and it will be good to see the Railroad in operation again in its new location.
    Update.
   Work on the room where the SFRSD will be moved to has commenced. So stay around as we dismantle walls, attack the wiring and section the SFRSD getting it ready for the big move.
Thanks for looking.
Rod.

What next

Time to move on.
     My wife of almost 50 years Helen and I have decided to sell what has been our family home for the past 36 years and move into a yet to be built townhouse. So what does that mean for my beloved SFRSD. Well as is the case with many large model railway layouts it was going to be scrapped. I sent out one of my usual SFRSD bulletins to all of my regular operators and friends both interstate and overseas to let them know what we were about to do. Many of my close friends have helped build and work on various portions of the RR over several years so some for very good reasons have ownership in the move.
     During our normal Friday get together I told the Friday group what Helen and I were planning to do. A lot of "what is going to happen to the layout", "you cannot move we will not have a layout to run on at your new home". It was during this discussion that one of the group mentioned that I should see if some of my mates would be interested in purchasing the layout and several names were suggested. I did not think too much more about that until!
     I received many nice comments from all over about the move and several expressed and interest in purchasing items off the RR and some the layout itself.
    After the dust had settled down John a close friend and one of our Friday group who lives close by  started to ask more questions than the other guys interested about purchasing. What are the dimensions of walls, how high are my fascia and backdrops and as this started to intensify I began to realize that John was getting very serious about a potential purchase of the SFRSD.
    How much is this and how much is that as emails were flying back and forward between us over several days until finally I had to ask "Are you serious about purchasing the SFRSD" . "Yep sure am" came back.
    Well that was a great surprise and one that will see the SFRSD be moved only 7 minutes away from our home and still be available for all the guys to continue to operate. How Cool is that!
    John has purchased everything, layout, Locos, rolling stock along with all of the buildings, signalling and the CTC computer screens and software.
    This is a fantastic result and one that I did not see coming.
     So whilst it will be sad to see my beloved SFRSD go it will be reinstalled into a new location and I will get to assist in both the dismantling and installation plus operate in a new environment. Cannot get much better than that.
    Stick around as we start the move.
Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.
   

So long ago

Been a while since I last posted.
    Over the past many many years I have held my operating sessions on the last Friday of the month. I usually host about 10 sessions a year leaving out December and January which is when we mostly get really hot weather and we have annual holidays. Well the holidays have not been an issue for me as I have been retired for almost 15 years however I have found that I have been getting a little weary by the end of the week. I am also a member of a group of fellow modellers who meet every Friday in a round robin affair. Five of us have decent N Scale layouts, one has an outstanding HOn3 still under construction and last but not least is Bills Sn3 exceptionally large beautifully scenicked layout with lots more still to do.
    So I decided to now hold my ops sessions on the third Tuesday night of the month and as it turns out last night was the first for this year. It is hard to believe that it is almost 4 months since we ran and I updated this blog.
    Not all of the guys could make it last night however those that did had a good night.

    Here are just a few images from the session.

    Barry getting ready to run the Flynn / Aug grain from the Flynn yard. John F was in charge of the yard for the night.

    Same train sitting at the signals waiting for clearance from the dispatcher. Brendan was the dispatcher for the evening. Did I see a game of Mine Sweeper on the dispatchers screen. Surely not during an ops session. Hmmm. Custom painted SD40-2 in the lead with weathered FP45 trailing. Brendan also started to set up some train following using JMRI on the panels. Very clever.

   

    A few of the guys putting batteries into their throttles ready to get underway. Vic in the foreground and I shared the build of our Thompson River Canyon N Scale display layout some years ago and we are both founding members of Melb N Trak Model RR club. Dennis on the left was also a founding member way back in 1988.

    My beautiful E8 A&B units sitting in the storage tracks at Augusta East. These locos have the best sound of all my Locos.

     A snap of the grain complex at the Left of Guthrie. All of the rigging was scratch built. Dolese Sand and Gravel is in the foreground along with a heavily weathered SOO box car. The idea for Guthrie Feed came from an article in MR many years ago. It is all scratch built.

     These two geeps have just returned to Winfield after running the cement train to Guthrie and return. You have seen the Kodachrome in earlier posts. One day I hope to get some sound in her.

     The Flynn / Aug grain is just about to pass behind the ADM grain elevator at Udall. Next stop Augusta. The grain trailer is from GHQ.

    Just a few of the locos idling away in the loco yard in Augusta. These tracks can hold up to 18 locos.

     Well that's it for this post. Thanks to my usual operating crew Greg, John F, John C, Brendan, Dennis, Barry and Vic for helping the night to run so well.

Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.