South Brisbane Interstate Station

Sometimes when I get to look back on the week just completed, I forget what I have been up to.  On Monday and Tuesday I had to work, but when I was home I was reading one of the Australian Railway History magazines that I scored on Sunday last week from Mark.  The one in particular that I read had an article about South Brisbane Interstate Station with some diagrams.  As I have that location on my layout, I was very keen to see what was written about it.  It was nice to hear what sorts of trains made their way to South Brisbane.  The article also said that there were many light engine movements, to and from Yeerongpilly Loco.  In particular, the article said that a 73 class loco was sent from South Brisbane late at night to Yeerongpilly Loco to refuel.  A couple of hours later it ran back to South Brisbane Interstate early in the morning.  I base a 73 class loco at South Brisbane Interstate as a shunt engine.  Looking at my layout operations timetable, I did not have these two light engine movements included.  So a quick glance shows that I can fit these two movements in.  So I did.  They may have been about 30 minutes later than real life but I now have two move trains in the timetable.  While there were a few goods trains coming and going to South Brisbane Interstate, my timetable had them at different times, but similar trains.  That was good enough for my modeller’s license version of the timetable.  The train that left newspaper wagons at Park Road, actually went all the way to South Brisbane.  I had that train terminating at Park Road Sidings.  Again that is good enough for me.

The most significant arrival and departure from South Brisbane each day is the Brisbane Limited Express.  That train was always in my timetable.  My arrival time, may be up to 20 minutes later than historically timetabled, but departure time is spot on.  Most of the goings-on that occurred at South Brisbane Interstate has been sort of replicated in the timetable.  While I shunt trains from the platform to the various sidings in the yard, I do not have a lot of tracks to play with as I leave some spare wagons sitting in some of the outer tracks of South Brisbane Interstate.  So I did look at consolidating some of those spare wagons to Acacia Ridge Yard, to allow me more flexibility with the tracks available to use at South Brisbane.  I will consider that in the future.

On Saturday morning I did consolidate some wagons in track 8 at South Brisbane Interstate.  So track 7 is now available.  I did find one VR wagon in track 8 had some very dodgy wheels.  The tyres where off the tread and the wheels were under gauge.  So a little bit of super glue was applied and an NMRA standard gauge was used and everything seems back to be working when I pushed the wagon through some trackwork.  The wagon does need couplers so I will get around to that.  Speaking of couplers, the last Tuesday Nighter’s meeting was held at Geoff’s place.  As he is one of the main protagonists of KD coupler dropping on my layout, I thought I would strike early and strike often myself.  So two KD’s may have found there way onto his layout.  He found them and sent me the photos.

I did spend some more time on Saturday afternoon on my Armidale Presentation.  It is pretty close to completed.  However, I did think of something early Sunday morning when I woke up, but I have since forgotten what I was pondering.  I might have to sleep on it again to see if I can remember what it was.  At the time I thought it was a good example to include in my Presentation.  That part I do remember but that was it.