History

 Christmas Creek is an Australian fictional railroad, servicing an outlying sawmill with logs from the distant ranges.
The year is 1935 and the mill is on its last legs.
Aging equipment and isolation is putting pressure on the companies bottom line.
Maintainance is kept to a bare minimum but the mill still manages to produce enough timber to survive.
But for how long?

The Two Truck Shay ( yet to be weathered and numbered #5 ) approaches the saw mill through the "Tunnel" and "Cutting"

The saw mill showing its age while the Shay works its way into the yard.

Late afternoon the Shay's work for the day is nearly done and the wokshop waits for its return.

"Jacko" Waits for the Shay to arrive so that he can start repairs to keep her running.

The Shay in the Enginehouse, ready for a new days work.

Work in progress, the small space available 2100mm x 1800mm in an "L" shape limited the layout.

The photos above show the trackwork the day it was laid down. There is no ballast, no points motors
and in fact the track is not even fixed down at this point. The areas surrounding the track are still bare polystyrene.
The layout was built using "FREE" offcuts from a user of various densities of Polystyrene.
These pieces were joined using PVA glue and layers built up for the hills,
cut down for the small creek ( Christmas Creek ) flowing through it.

The basic layout showing the "Hills" built up from polystyrene.
The area in the photos above as the "Cutting" was joined on to the bottom left hand corner and is 1200mm long
A layer of "Fruggle Rock" ( plaster saturated bandage ) from Simply Glues was layed on at this stage.

Track was simply placed to get an idea of operation.
The back wall is plaster appied to a piece of MDF board and added to the rear of the base with plaster.

A track plan evolved rather than was planned. All track and points are Peco On30

The "Tunnel" and "Cutting" as it was being made. The grade is 4% and the Shay has no problems with the climb.
I used pre cut and shaped inclines from Simply Glues

The next step is to set up the Digitrax DCC system to the layout.
This makes for a simply wiring and realistic operation of this little switching layout.
It also allows the incorporation of sound for the locos.
To anyone new to trains this system of operation is the way of the future,
as all new engines coming into production will feature this capability.

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