Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Ghan in the early 1990s






Hi All

AN decided to overhaul long distance passenger services in late 1980, and the program continued into the 1990's. The first train to be overhauled was the Ghan. Basically this meant that various coaches were taken out of service and overhauled and placed back in service in a defined campaign. This also included an external face lift. In the window panels had PVC stickers applied that faded from yellow to red. Additionally a stainless steel name panel was applied to the coach side.
In later years, the cleaning products used attacked the red sections of the PVC stickers, leaving the appearance a little ratty.

Lima has made the IP cars for good on 30 years, and for its age is a surprisingly satisfactory model as is.
For the Barcoola version of the Ghan, we have used the standard IP coaches, repainted to include the yellow to red fade. The Power car was modified to include the radiator section and exhaust.
Kadee couplers have been fitted, 8ba screws and nuts have been used to ensure reliability and strength.
The cars as is are too light, we have added weight to the underneath of each coach, using a zinc coated fitting from Bunnings in their screw and bolt aisle. It is menat to be used as a flat joiner, between to lengths for steel. It is called M/Plate reinforcing PN: RMF126 size 126.5 X 19.5 X 2.5mm. Thus this can be siliconed directly to the underneath of each coach, way too easy! We modified the whole coaching fleet in an afternoon.

They are also a perfect size for putting weight into 40ft containers.

At the time of construction there were no decals available. I tried a couple of different solutions, including a colour photocopier, which back then turned out way too expensive. At the time I was working for a company that made their own decals for their operations. I made up a detailed master for the side name panel and the AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL decal above the windows. Funny thing is that when the decals were finally available, our company made decals were more detailed!

The wheel sets were replaced with Steam Era wheel sets.

The future, I would like to fit bellows at the communication door ends, and some form of interiors, lighting might be an option, if we can find an eays way to accomplihs this.

Anyway please see attached some model and prototype pictures of the Ghan Cars circa 1990's

I have included some new model pictures enjoy.

Enjoy

Scott

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