Railway Station Part Six

Sometimes a rainy Saturday morning is all the excuse you need to finish that model kit you've been telling yourself you'll get around to completing one day. That day was today, and the kit in question was none other than my railway station building, the one building that is supposed to be the star of the show but had sat awaiting the final finishing touches for sooo long that I'd simply become accustomed to it looking the way it did. Well, not anymore.

I always paint the parts of laser-cut timber kits before assembling them.

There wasn't really that much to be done to the Model Train Buildings NSW A-4 station building in order to say that is was finished. So I got to work painting the fascia boards and strip of guttering for the rear of the building. If you're familiar with building one of Walker Models' laser cut kit buildings, then you'll understand that painting over the blackened edges where the laser has cut through the timber or MDF sections can be a little difficult using a light colour. I wanted to paint the fascia trim white to match the white window frames visible on the rear of the building, but thought the blackened edges could work in my favour if I simply applied a thin wash of white paint so as to let a little of the black show through. It turned out that it worked, with the finished white fascia trim looking a little weathered as though the paint has been faded by the hot Australian sun. The thing I like most about working with timber kits is that you get a much more realistic finish than a plastic model, and they end up looking like miniature buildings rather than model kits.

I spaced the brush strokes when using the Rustall to make the roof resemble sheets of weather beaten corrugated iron.

While waiting for these to dry, I set to work on finishing the roof with a light application of Rustall, following the same process as I outlined when constructing my NSWGR G-2 goods shed. The rear loading dock off the parcels room I finished by painting in assortment of brown, black and grey stripes to resemble timber planking. I simply mixed the colours together on a palette and ensured no two brush strokes were alike. Once complete, I set this aside and started work on the two chimneys.

The chimney sections just needed an angled trim to sit flush on the roof.

The chimneys were tricky little suckers! Although they fitted together with perfection, applying too much pressure with your fingers caused them to collapse in on themselves. Eventually I had them glued square using some fast drying white PVA tacky glue, and sat back to wait for them to dry.

You can't be too perfect when painting aged brick chimney stacks.

Painting them was a three part process. First I filled all the laser etched mortar lines with some white acrylic paint before wiping the paint from the surface of the bricks using some dry paper toweling. Then I could gently dry brush some burnt sienna acrylic onto the surface of the brick pattern by making sure the paint was well wiped from the brush before making each stroke.

Once more I used a silver paint pen marker to work some magic on the down pipes.

I was left with an odd gap on the rear left hand side of the building where I'd trimmed the fascia board too short. Feeling that the building could use a down pipe anyway, I made one from one of those clear plastic nozzles that attach to the end of an aerosol can to give a concentrated squirt of whatever into hard to reach places. I simply painted it silver with a silver paint marker, and when dry trimmed it to fit as shown in the picture below.

I made the down pipe longer than the building so it will spill to ground over the brick foundations the station rests on.

Having a hole in the core of the areosol nozzle tube makes the down pipe look so realistic when viewed from above. However, the silver looked a little too shiny for an old timber railway station building, so I gave it a treatment of rust, once more using the Rustall that I've come to love. You can see the difference in the photo below.

I'm so glad I made the backdrop on my layout reversible so that I can view the building from both sides.

With the chimneys, down-pipe and fascia boards glued in place, the building was ready to put back in place on the platform. When viewed in correct lighting, I particularly like the subtle finish I gave the railway station roof. At first I was just going to glue the fascia boards to three sides of the building, and simply let the imaginary rain run off the platform awning onto the tracks (as shown in the top photo), but the end result just didn't look right compared to how good the rear of the building came up. So I lifted the building back off and added a strip of white guttering to the front platform awning using some scrap birchwood sheeting, and completed the kit by scratch-building a second rusty angled down pipe that you can just see in the right of picture.

And finally, Philden Railway Station is finished!

So there you have it. Thanks to a rainy Saturday morning, I can finally say that Philden Railway Station has joined my growing list of finished structures. While I still may come back one day in the future and add the Station Master, Parcels, Toilet and Waiting Room signs above the doorways, the beauty of having made my structures removable is that it is not going to require surgery to lift the station building back off should I choose to do so.

See also; Railway Station Part Five and Railway Station Part Four and Railway Station Part Three and Railway Station Part Two and Railway Station Part One and Building a Station Platform

Celebrating the 50,000 Milestone!

Overnight this blog passed the 50,000 hit mark, which is not too bad considering that I only started blogging the step-by-step updates of Philden's construction in May 2015. While I may only be building a small bookshelf model railway layout, it seems fair to say that I've somehow managed to build a somewhat bigger model train blog, (my own page views of course are disabled). So to celebrate, I sent in a last minute pre-order for a set of Auscision Models NODY wagons. Picking out a set of NCTY Tubemakers Structural open wagons with the steel cradles I think is a giveaway as to what new industry I will build on my upper level expansion. With the price of models only expected to climb in the very near future, I thought the special pre-order price of $230 with free postage will be money well spent. They'll look fantastic behind my Freight Rail 86 class electric as they are shunted into the shed road coming off the new station.

Overnight I also received notice of another approaching milestone, its been almost 6 months since I released my book 30 Years Chasing Trains. It only feels like the other day that I was asking fellow blogger Mathew Hughes for some tips on where to shoot some photos of trains during my trip to Newcastle, (and sitting through the 62-0 drubbing the Knights received at Hunter Stadium at the hands of Cronulla!). Although I haven't spoken at length about my book before now, basically I sat down over a year ago to sort through 30 years of my own train photography, realising of course that 2016 marked 30 years since I first ventured track side with my a camera as a 14 year old kid on a BMX bike. Since those days, I've managed to travel the entire east coast of Australia by train and have even ventured across the ditch to NZ to chase trains with my camera.

The book became a 100 page full colour photographic memoir of a train chaser presented in 8 x 10 inch high quality paper. Having been rejected by many of the established railway publishers here in Australia because it didn't fall into an era or location specific genre, I pushed on and published it myself anyway, as a tribute for 10 years of sacrificing a decent working salary while trying to establish myself as a full-time writer. In a sense it was my way of ending a career on my own terms, doing something I've loved on a subject I've always loved. Trains. The book is presented in state-by-state chapter form covering Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, with the cost being kept to only $35 Australian plus postage. The book is printed and ships from Melbourne, London or San Francisco, depending on what country you order from. Watch for regular discount promotions that Blurb run on their websites and you could save between 20% to 40% when adding the promotional code at checkout. I've yet to see any other similar Australian railway book produced for that price. If you're not into online shopping however, Alcoworld in Sydney now stocks the book, as does Model Train Buildings at various model railway exhibitions here in Australia and the Driving Creek Tourist Railway in New Zealand.

Available now through Blurb. 100 full colour 8" x 10" pages.

Until next time, safe travels, and happy modeling.

Memorabilia makes modelling better!

It was railway adventurer and TV personality Scott McGregor who once said, "the thing I like about trains is that there's the trains themselves, and then there's all this other cool stuff." For someone who has envied the amazing places that one of my all-time favourite celebrities has traveled to on a train, I couldn't agree with him more. Yet despite not being able to emulate Scott's feat of decking out his property near Mudgee with a private collection of former railway carriages turned sleeping quarters, I haven't let my own space limitations and small model railway layout become a barrier to collecting 'all this other cool stuff'. Soon after delving into the underground world of train timetable collecting, I discovered that railway memorabilia makes modelling better.

By incorporating my small collection of railway memorabilia into my layout, be it station signs, signal lever plaques or timetables and pamphlets displayed to recreate the appearance of a Station Master's desk, I have made my small New South Wales bookshelf layout feel like it is a part of something bigger. It becomes so much easier to picture my HO scale model trains connecting somewhere beyond the layout, when there are signs pointing in all sorts of directions.

So what exactly is the value in collecting all this 'cool stuff'? Well, considering that I've been able to run some Countrylink timetables, incorporate some authentic snacks for operating sessions and create my own Station Master's desk, with what I've collected, I'd say the personal enjoyment value has been fairly high. But seeing just a small sample of my own railway memorabilia collection on display in the photo at the top of this post, most people, whether they are railway enthusiasts or not, become curious as to what dollar value it holds and where do you find such things. So after years of hunting for forgotten railway relics from Australia's yesteryear, I thought I'd share my thoughts of what I've found to be popular items among railway collectors, and what I am prepared to pay for them as my top asking price.

First up, there are more places to look for railway memorabilia than just eBay. For the lazy collector, it is a little too easy to just sit back in the comfort of your own home, search through the railroadiana category and bid on items that ultimately get delivered right to your door. Sure, I've bought my fair share of railway collectibles from eBay over the years, but even on eBay there is an art to browsing categories where you wouldn't think that railway memorabilia exists. To be honest, I've snapped up some absolute bargains on eBay by searching for items listed under some fairly vague descriptions. Old sign is just one search word that springs to mind. Had the items in question used the words railway, station or NSWGR, then I wouldn't have been the only person bidding on them. People also occasionally list items in the wrong category, and a rare railway item may be listed under Home and Garden instead of Transport or Railroadiana. Another favourite trick of mine is checking for misspelled words. Believe me it happens.

Recently I was put onto an online auction site called Invaluable.com by a reader of this blog. Invaluable is different to most other online auction sites in that it searches, lists and catalogues hundreds of the world's leading auction houses on the one convenient site. As a result, it is easy to search for railway memorabilia among the huge range of collectibles listed by auction houses such as Sotheby's, NY Auction Gallery and Sydney Rare Book Auctions. Of course there is the added advantage of being able to sort the online auctions by country, depending on where you are prepared to pay the shipping cost from. Auction houses work differently to eBay. Instead of fees being deducted from the final amount that is payable to the seller, the buyer will have to pay on top of the final price what is called a 'buyer's premium', which in the case of the item I am currently looking at on Invaluable is listed as 20%. So you really need to factor that into your price. Just like eBay, you'll need an account before you can bid on a live auction, and just like eBay you'll need to check the shipping terms listed by the auctioneer. In the case of the item I am looking at now, packaging can be arranged by the auctioneer for a small fee and postage is charged at cost. Best of all, Invaluable has an Australian presence with a listed phone number in Sydney that is available to contact 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

If you think that an elite auction house is mainly for rich people auctioning stuffy old paintings worth millions of dollars, think again. I've saved my favourite search words on Invaluable and am emailed every time that auctions matching my description go live. Among a wide variety of railway collectibles are frequent listings from Ardent Auctions in Fyshwick, ACT, that range from station signs, railway chairs, light fittings, locomotive builders plates, signal arms and signal box repeaters. Best of all, Ardent Auctions only use Invaluable's website portal for live internet bidding. Watching a professional auctioneer call the bids streamed live over the internet is a bit of a rush, and hearing your paddle number called out as the winning bidder becomes a bit addictive. So set a budget! The collections will each have a starting bid price and an estimate price of between X and Y dollars for what the item has been professionally valued at. Personally, I find this a lot better than sorting through the over-valued prices being asked for on eBay by people who can easily list an item for free, yet have absolutely no idea of the costs involved in restoring some of these pieces to their former condition.

Some signal box plaques from Sydney that I picked up for a song on eBay. They are now cleaned up and mounted on my model railway layout.

So in the spirit of someone who loves "all this other cool stuff", as Scott McGregor so coolly puts it, I present my own armchair guide to what I have been prepared to pay while amassing a small railway memorabilia collection to accentuate my bookshelf model railway layout. All prices are shown in Australian dollars $AUD. While I am still dreaming of one-day converting a pair of old railway carriages into accommodation on a large block in the country, I have limited the below threads to items that would fit into a traditional model railway room, or man cave as our wives like to refer to it these days.

• Timetables - a personal favourite of mine. They easily fit into a drawer or look great sitting alongside your model train bench and historically explain when and where the trains we model ran to. As a rule of thumb, anything less than 10 years old is worth only around $2 to $5. After 10 years however, the value can be calculated at around $1 per year, meaning I'd pay $10 for a 10 year-old timetable, and up to $50 for a 50 year-old timetable, depending of course on the condition. My best buy has been a NSW country train timetable from 1956 that I bought online from a bookshop in England of all places for just $38 including postage to Australia. Think a 1997 CityRail timetable is worth nothing? Next year they will be 20 years-old, so this is an area with a lot of potential collecting value.
• Railway Tickets - unlike timetables, this is an area that you have to know the history of each railway line that the ticket covers. A cardboard ticket stub to a far flung destination on a long closed line is always going to be worth more than a suburban ticket from the same year given the frequencies of trains and the amount of tickets likely issued in that time period. However, cardboard ticket stubs disappeared from Sydney train stations with the advent of Ticket Vending Machines between July 1992 to July 1993. Usually, a cardboard ticket stub from the 1970's to 1980's is worth around $2 to $3 each, with rarer destinations easily reaching $5 to $6. Tickets from the 1940's, 50's and 60's however, especially tickets where the date and destination were handwritten by the station attendant, or the station itself has long disappeared into history become more of a grey area. Expect to pay around $10 or more, depending on how badly you want it. I've seen single war-era tickets sell for upwards of $40. Now, thanks to the top-up ability of the Opal card, even the magnetic strip Ticket Vending Machine tickets are a thing of the past, so expect these to increase in value also. A bundle of magnetic strip City Rail tickets for less than $10 might not be a bad investment.
• Station signs - such as the aluminium station name signs that existed on the manual platform indicator boards at suburban stations are really cool to collect. A large number of these surfaced on eBay for $10 each in 2015 after the final roll-out of computer destination screens across the Sydney Trains network. I only wish I'd bought more, as these will be impossible to find in the future and will certainly be worth more than $10 each that I paid. Large platform signs are a different matter. In NSW these were either cast iron or made of concrete with cast iron letters. The sheer weight and size of these things make it near impossible to have delivered, and also becomes a matter of where do you put such a thing? Old timber platform signs usually deteriorated to a point of no repair when the railways replaced them with metal signs. Any large cast iron or concrete platform sign will usually sell for anywhere between $300 to $600 depending on the condition and the rarity of the location. Thanks to the large number of custom-made and replica metal signs available on the market today, the original metal railway station signs actually hold a better collector value. Still, expect to pay between $100 and $200 each for an original. The modern Countrylink 'coaches' sign that I made the feature of my staging shelf is actually engraved and painted clear perspex. I picked it up for less than $50. Expect to see more of these types of signs become available when NSW railway stations are refitted with NSWTrainLink signage.
• Locomotive plates - are genuine one-off collector's items. The heavy cast iron builders plates were attached to the side of steam locomotives, and later diesel locos used more lightweight aluminium builders plates as a way of identifying where and when each particular locomotive was built. As such, genuine locomotive plates only come onto the market when a locomotive is scrapped, and only after a local preservation society or museum passes on the chance to add it to their collection. Many early steam locomotives in Australia were actually built by the North British Locomotive Co. in Glasgow, and these genuine cast iron builders plates will sell for between $600 to $1,000. The aluminium diesel locomotive plates from local builders such as Goodwin-Alco and Clyde-GM will still command between $100 to $200. Diesel locomotives in Australia also had the illuminated number boxes at each end, and the painted fibreglass or perspex numbers also make a great item that can be framed and/or illuminated from behind for a great effect. Usually there were 4 number boards per locomotive, making their value a little less, but still expect to pay around $40 to $100 each.
• Signal box memorabilia - makes an excellent feature of any model train room. I picked up the engraved black perspex signal frame lever plaques that I have pictured above for less than $5 each, and they are now cleaned up and mounted on my model layout. While I've yet to come across any of these perspex plates again, fibre-glass pull lever plates fetch around $15 each, while brass or cast metal signal frame lever numbers will sell for around $30 to $45 each. I've yet to see an actual full cast iron working signal frame lever for sale, but I imagine that would be a cool talking point of any model train room. Signal box repeaters are valued at around $120 to $150 depending on their condition, while the signal box bells fetch for around $180. A one-off working signal box diagram on the other hand would set you back around $1,000. These were large framed diagrams that hung above the row of signal frame levers and showed the mainline, passing loops and refuge sidings as controlled by that particular signal box, with working lights to indicate the road that was set for the approaching train. However, I've seen plenty of model railroaders who simply chose to build their own working diagram, with LED lights controlled by how each point is set on their own miniature railroad.
• Railway station memorabilia - includes a vast array of stuff such as former Station Master's desks, chairs, telephones, lamp fittings and other platform signage. Timber railway office chairs can be picked up for around $80 each, which is a bargain considering that they were made by the railway's own workshops and are still a functional piece of furniture. Today they would just put out a contract for office furniture imported cheaply from China that is almost guaranteed to fall apart every 12 months. A NSW guards indicator platform light in good condition is valued at around $170 to $200. Old enameled railway station safety signs are valued at between $80 to $140 depending on condition. Whereas original cast iron station signs ranging from 'No Way Out' to 'Beware of Trains' are bound to fetch upwards of $140 even in the poorest of conditions, and even more if it relates to penalties when the currency in Australia was still measured in pounds. Recently a one-off cast iron sign pertaining to a specific location fetched over $1,000 at auction here in Australia. Although you should beware, there are a flood of reproduction items on the market. More modern metal railway station safety signs such as 'No Smoking' are generally worth between $30 and $50. While at the budget end of the collector's scale, there was a multitude of paper forms, parcels stamps, luggage tags and posters that can all add some nostalgic value to your model train room.
• Lineside memorabilia - Painted aluminium railway crossing crossbuck signs are actually more plentiful than the average collector cares to admit. The reflective signs need to be highly visible so therefore are replaced when they begin to age. As such, their true value is probably closer to the $90 to $120 range, not the exorbitant prices being asked at times on eBay, and of course postage is going to be out of the question. You're going to have to collect something like this yourself. The 'stop on red signal' and '2 tracks' signs that go beneath them therefore are worth a little less at around $45 to $60 each. The older cast iron mile post numbers and 'W' signs that are found lineside are valued at around $45. As with any cast iron sign the weight is going to significantly increase the cost by the time you pay postage. Modern metal enameled marker post numbers can be picked up for around the same price. Signal blades on their own are valued at upwards of $80 without the coloured lens arm that attaches to the end. The original coloured glass ends on their own are a lot harder to come by and are valued at around $180, making a complete signal arm highly collectable. Steel dog spikes, although a cool item if you are wanting a railway themed coat rack for your train room, are quite heavy and not worth the cost of postage. You're much better looking for a discarded dog spike by the side of the line when you are out railfanning your favourite locations.
• Railwayman's memorabilia - I have in my collection one of the NSWPTC solid brass TS railway locks, although it is nicely buffed and polished, without the key it is only valued at around $20 to $30. With the key, it could probably fetch up to $70. The NSWSRA Station Assistant badge that can be viewed in the top photo, I picked up for below the $30 it would be valued at. The curved hat badges on their own would be worth around the same. If you could find one of the smart-looking NSW Station Master's hats complete with the badge however, it would be worth anywhere up to $150. Other items such as battery operated lamps once used by guards and shunters are worth around $30 to $70 and for that price can still be picked up in working condition. The older kerosene metal lamps however can fetch up to $150 as they look fantastic when restored and make a great decorative centrepiece on a study table or bookshelf. One item I'm still looking for in great condition is a NSW Railways Gladstone bag, once used by railwaymen to carry their belongings to and from work. The over-sized leather carry bag was unique in shape and similar to the old-fashioned doctor's bag, although you can readily purchase new bags in that same style today.
• Carriage memorabilia - Old railway carriages evoke strong memories of overnight travel to visit distant relatives, and any items salvaged from a scrapped wooden passenger carriage always attract a considerable price tag. From the solid brass carriage door holders that were floor mounted and operated by foot that fetch around $30 a pair, to original brass overhead luggage racks valued at around $100 to $200 each and everything in between, they are normally the most sought after by railway collectors. An engraved glass N.S.W.T.D. mirror is valued at between $90 to $120 whereas the carriage mirror and wood panel would be worth around $180 to $200. The ornate glass overhead light shades found in older style railway carriages make a great restoration project to turn it into a lamp for your desk. If you can find one that is. Glass was normally one of the first things to be destroyed by vandals when carriages were first withdrawn from service and placed in out-of-the-way railway sidings. Cast iron carriage builders plates are popular too, and like the locomotive builders plates only come onto the market when a carriage is sent to the scrappers. They tell where and when a carriage was manufactured in Australia and can fetch between $70 and $150. Cast alloy signs warning against flushing toilets when train is stationary are always a novelty collector's item. Just be warned that there are more fake reproduction versions of these items on the market than there are originals.

So there you have it. My brief run-through of what I would call small-scale railway collecting. Of course the United Kingdom and United States would both have just as much of their own unique railroadiana to keep a collector occupied online for days. But just as our own railway adventurer Scott McGregor once said, "the thing I like about trains is that there's the trains themselves, and then there's all this other cool stuff." For a writer such as myself, I have to admit that collecting railway memorabilia has indeed made model railroading better.

My small bookshelf HO model railway captures a lot of charm thanks to the memorabilia I have incorporated into its construction.

You can also keep an eye out for my own range of railway designs that I will continue to release online through Redbubble.

See also; The Station Master's Desk, Running some Countrylink timetables and snacks for operating sessions.