Progress so far...

I am trying to model The Newman-Port Hedland  railway line - but it is difficult to fit it into 217cm x 286cm (7.2ft x9.5ft) space!

Although i am modeling in HO, there was not enough room for the whole railroad, so instead the area contains only the Newman end of the railroad, and if i succeed with this, i will expand into the adjoining (much larger) room with the Port Hedland end, which is double the size.

So Newman is in the smaller room, which i have been developing (very, very slowly) into the model railroad i hope it will someday be. So far, the benchwork has been built, track and ballast layed, mountains and tunnel built with styrofoam, newspaper, plaster cloth, and has been painted in a burnt orange colour. Both tunnel portals have been built (although i wish to redo the first one), the background and clouds painted, the fascia attached, and a practice model of applying and using plaster rocks has been built.


BHP Billiton Train coming out of tunnel:

A look at the mountains:

The tunnel portals: (the right one needs redoing as it was a practice portal)

The Buffer (Great practice for building with wood)

The next 2 pics are of the practice model i made to try applying and texturing plaster rock molds - the rocks on the left 'sceniced' side of the model were made from aluminium foil molds - which i wasn't happy with - so that i will try rubber molds for the right half. 

I couldn't help showing off the train:

Although the track is already laid on my layout - the design is not close enough to the prototype for my liking. It was built how it is so that if i did/do not expand into the next room, i could still have the train running in a loop and have viable operations. I'll show the layout design in a later post...

As you can see by the pictures, i am using Bachmann's BHP Billiton train set. I tossed the E-Z track and decided to use the BHP railway as the theme for my model railway. Although locomotives in train sets are generally thought to have less detail - i must say that the one I have actually looks pretty good compared to other train set locomotives I've seen.

As a beginner at model railroading - i wish to share my failures (so you don't make them), my success (so you can copy), and experience (you can never get enough experience).