A plug

While I am thankful for a reasonably good memory of my time on the NSWGR which includes seeing pretty standard patterns in work & train operations, I am glad also of the photo's that I took along with old super 8 movie film to record a lot of the passing era.  All of this is a help as I try to portray what I can in the layout, however even with all of the memories, & my own photo's it really is limiting when considering the overall workings of the NSWGR both in my time & the preceding years to which I am modelling.

As a result of those limitations, I watch out for relevant books that fill in a heck of a lot of missing details.  For me, & I think for anyone seriously looking at developing their layouts a decent library is essential, after all if one sits down & does their sums on how much they spend on the layout & then filling it up with all the items they need & want, in the end the layout will generally reflect the amount of research that is done regarding what they are trying to achieve.

I actually believe that its just as vital to spend a proportion of money, be it a percentage of what is spent on the layout itself on a good support library, for that reason I am glad that over the years my library has evolved with a fair few books that no longer are in print, & even now still get a good go over, certainly some more than others.

Of these books, I have generally enjoyed all the Train Hobbies Landscape books on the NSW system, well those that deal with the era I am modelling anyway, in particular those dealing with stations, loco depots, & the various branch lines each are scanned fairly often in order to pick up the small things that are featured in the overall photo.

I have just received the latest branch line book Volume 2 of the Harden - Blayney line, & just like the first one its a wonderful book of photo's, all bar one are clear & well focussed to capture a wonderful amount of detail that can be included in a layout.  In the section on the Grenfell branch there are 2 photo's that stand out for me, the first owing to what is really quite rare, & that is an S truck with a load of bailed wool without any tarp over it, & on a train ready to depart.  I have to admit to never having seen such a thing, nor a photo of it happening.

Wool loads simply had to be tarped in order to protect the wool from the weather, although its likely that tarps were not available at Grenfell so it would get tarps at possibly Cowra before the night forwarding journey took place.

The other photo was one of Grenfell station itself, taken highish, & from the road side of the station, & I was amazed at the neatness of the station, while photo's show how neat & tidy the station at Wattamundra was, here is the terminus of a branch line that is indeed a picture of classic beauty. It looks not that long after being painted in a pale green with railings & other framework picked out in clean white trimming.

Except for the weatherboard construction, & the definite NSW rural scene, with an old truck at the station & a 30T in the yard, it would have looked not out of place on some English countryside layout.

These 2 photo's jumped out at me, in just the first skim through, now I sit down & sift through & take in the scenes at leisure.

Highly recommended.