Program for 2008

The thirteenth annual Modelling the Railways of South Australia Convention will be held at the Medical Lecture Rooms of the Flinders Medical Centre on Saturday 13th September 2008, again, utilizing the larger of the two lecture theatres.

The convention area can be reached from the southern end of the hospital. Go to the car park at the southern end, and then follow our signs to the area used for the convention. Included in the convention fee is morning and afternoon teas, a hot lunch in the canteen, and of course the magazine quality Convention notes. Three ring folders are available to file the notes in, and together with previous year’s notes including an updated index, they form a considerable reference library. The 2007 notes contained over 150 pages of information, photos and plans including about thirty pages of colour photos. The complete set of notes now consists of around 1700 pages.

Topics to be presented in 2008 include the following:

Modern Era Rolling Stock
Noel Potter spends many hours each week taking photos of Modern Era trains and Rolling Stock. This talk will be of benefit to those of us who like running trains that might contain double stacked container well wagons or flat cars, or high cube boxcars, or 75 foot long boxcars, or triple decked car carriers, all of which are running in South Australia. Noel will also point out which of the many boxcars, five packs, flat wagons, hoppers, etc., are commercially available either as ready to run models, or as kits, that would satisfy the requirements of the modern era modeller.

Crew Cars. Wayne Hoskin will speak on the topic "Crew Cars” . These cars have been converted from old passenger stock of more than one system, former relay cars of the Commonwealth Railways and even Bluebird Railcars from the former SAR, and are currently being used on many long distance freight trains. Wayne also intends to touch briefly on passenger cars for Truck Drivers and relay cars of earlier eras. "Crew Cars” is essentially another topic that will interest the modern era modeller.

Tank Cars Phil Curnow would have, we think, the most comprehensive photographic collection of freight rolling stock used by the South Australian Railways both in historical content and present day usage. In this presentation, Phil will show us some of the many different types of tank cars that have been used in this State. We are hoping to present in the notes, a list of tank cars by owner and number, listing major dimensions including length of the wagons as well as capacity.

Station Buildings of the SAR John Evans is no stranger to the Convention dais, having already spoken about the Hawker line and the Quorn line (and in 2009 we anticipate a talk on the Wilmington Line) and in this presentation, John will tell us about station buildings that were built in South Australia in each decade from the 1850’s onwards. We are looking for good colour photos of South Australian station buildings, preferably taken before they went to rack and ruin, and these will be inserted as a colour supplement to the notes. Plans of station buildings are also being drawn for the convention notes and will supplement the eight plans of station buildings already published in previous years.

Modelling SAR Station Buildings Well know for his high quality modeling expertise and exhibition layout, "Terowie North", Gavin Thrum will deal with some of the numerous aspects of modelling South Australian station buildings. It is mainly the stone buildings that will be dealt with and he will demonstrate his techniques by showing us various models using a video camera to project images of the models onto the very large screen in the Lecture Theatre.

Setting the Scene - Back scenes Some of the modelling done by Des McAuliffe Is truly inspirational and the back scenes to many of the layouts he has helped build are no exception. With assistance from his photographer friends, the photos of railway models built by Des and shown to us a couple of years ago caused considerable comment. In this talk, Des will be showing us how detail and prepare back scenes.

Scratchbuilding Techniques Frank Kelly is one of Australia’s foremost model locomotive and rolling stock builders and is well known to readers of the Australian Model Railway Magazine for the photos he provides of beautifully detailed model railway locomotives. In 2005, he presented to the convention, tips and techniques he used when building a Gd class 0-4-4 of the Glenelg Railways. This year, Frank will concentrate on how he builds rolling stock, and will show us what is involved in building a South Australian Railways G class steel open wagon. Samples of Franks work are shown elsewhere in this website.

Other Information
Expect to see a number of commercial stands at the Convention as has been the case in previous years.

Having tried a longer lunch break at the request of some modellers, so that they could see everything on display, the consensus is that we should go back to the shorter lunch break which will happen in 2008. We have also requested more than one queue at morning and afternoon tea breaks!

As in previous years, the notes may feature additional articles not being the subject of a presentation. The K class steam locomotive is expected to be one such article with another of Peter Mannings great plans to support the article.