Late last week I was planning my modelling activities for this week. I was going to be reviewing the dimensions of a future model of the Cassino Station building. I was provided copies of plans a while back and I thought I had everything ready to rumble. However, while reviewing the plans last week, I realised that the distance between the left hand Station Building and the right hand Refreshment Rooms, and their Breezeway in between did not look right. So on Monday I double checked the Station building plans and everything was scaled to HO size correctly. When I looked at the Refreshment Room plans, I realised that these were drawn to a different scale compared to the station building. Never assume! That was the reason that my scaling of the Breezeway between the two buildings was incorrect. It was supposed to be a hairs breadth under 105mm in HO scale. My original figure was 66mm wide. I could hear those alarm bells. Now when I adjust the Refreshment Rooms to be at the correct scale, the breezeway works out almost exact. Problem solved.
So on Tuesday morning after mowing the grass, and before visiting Barnacle Bob (whom was entertaining Clinton and Peter), I was able to visit Office Works and get the plan of the Refreshment Rooms scaled up by 345% to print the plan in HO scale. So maybe 340 might have been good enough, but it is close enough. So when I got home, I traced the outline of the Station Building and Refreshment Rooms and took that down to the shed and overlaid that onto the platform at Cassino. Whoops! Basically my selective compression has made the station platform just a tad short. The Station Building with its roof overhang needs to start at a particular place on the platform as the platform takes time to widen out to fit everything. The Refreshment Rooms roof is also slightly wide for the rest of the platform.
So I think I need to do a couple of things. I might reduce the width of the Station Building roof by about 5mm on each side. I think the Refreshment Rooms are enormously wide. In my first attempt, I will potentially reduce the width down to three/quarters of the actual width. I will also reduce the roof at this part by 5mm on each side. The station length is long enough to take the full length building. But I will need to do a scale mock up out of 1mm styrene for the building before I make any more decisions.
So on Wednesday I put together the scale mockup of the model of the Casino Station building. I have yet to reduce the roof line by the 5mm on each side. But I have affixed the roof to the square temporary rectangular base. I also started building the Cassino Refreshments room model. The base and the roof are currently the full width. I have the platform side joined to the base. I also have added some styrene placers on the base, so I can fit the rear wall 25mm in from its actual position, without glueing it in. The rear wall just slots into the placers. By adding more of these styrene placers to the base at other locations, the rear wall can be positioned at other locations to produce a narrower Refreshments room model. This will help me work out how wide this building will be.
On Friday morning PK picked up Barnacle Bob and we all went down to
Casino to catch the LVR 620/720 railmotor from Casino to Glenapp Loop and back in the
afternoon. I was going to measure up some things in Casino on Friday
before my trip on the Lachlan Valley Railmotor. On our way down through
Tamrookum, we saw some railway workers with a high rail vehicle on a bridge just north of the Tamrookum
Loop. I immediately thought that there might be a broken rail at that
location. As we travelled a few hundred meters further south, we saw two
NR class locos and a freight train sitting in the Tamrookum Loop waiting to come north. They
were not scheduled to be there, so I knew something was up. We continued
to Kyogle where we wanted to photograph one of the morning trips from
Casino to Kyogle Loop of the Railmotor. While there I took the
opportunity to take a few measurements of things on the platform at
Kyogle. It also appeared that the northbound railmotor was running
late. We heard an announcement at Kyogle that the south bound XPT was due
in 45 minutes. It should have been through a couple of hours earlier, so
it looked like it had been caught up in ‘our assumed’ broken rail
incident. In a few minutes a northbound Aurizon freight carrying mostly
sailboat fuel (air) went north. I thought that the XPT would cross it at either
Kyogle Loop or Loadstone Loop if there wasn’t a train in Loadstone. We
were then met at Kyogle platform by a husband waiting for his wife to arrive on the
southbound XPT from Brisbane. He had been advised by her that there was a broken rail
causing a track signalling issue, delaying their train. That confirmed
exactly what we had surmised.
We then decided to head to Casino as we would get a better photo there. As we went south, we saw the railmotor in the distance heading north. It was trying to make Kyogle Loop. I thought it would have time to terminate and reverse and head back to Nammoona Loop to allow the southbound XPT to overtake. So when we got to Casino, we did what any normal person would do, and started to measure up many of the buildings, to compare them to the plans that I have. We measured the width of the Station building. The width of the Breezeway. The width of the Refreshments Roof building and then took lots of photos. At Casino, we waited and waited and about 4 hours and 10 minutes late the XPT arrived. Boy were those people going to get in late to Sydney. Thinking that the railmotor might only be 6 minutes out we waited for the railmotor. But it was about a half hour late when it eventually returned to Casino and left north again.
The first return trip to Glenapp Loop then left immediately, but it was about 1 hour and 30 minutes late. We hadn’t checked into our Caravan Park cabin for the night so while we were offered to run early on this trip, by the very helpful LVR crew, we waited for our trip. We went and got something to eat and then checked in and returned to the station. The earlier trip returned and we jumped on. It had made up a few minutes. Only 5 people were in our compartment, there were more in the other half of our trailer car. It was a good trip, but being so late, we missed seeing most of the sights heading north as it was just too dark. Heading south it was completely black, even though the moon was out. Given our lateness, we thought that there was going to be as issue at Casino station. The night time XPT was in at Casino getting there at 18:40pm and remains there until 19:30pm (before departing south) while we were also due in there at the same time, due to our lateness. Thankfully a smart Network Controller allowed our train to enter the end of the platform at Casino while the XPT was also there. We arrived at 19:15pm. What a great day! Football, Beer and Pizza followed, but in reverse order.
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