The new OnTrak newsletter is out now, just click on the link on the side panel.
The Photo gallery has been updated quite a bit lately. There are over 150 photos there now. The most recent additions are to the 547 album (mostly of recent workdays) and the 361 album (some old images including its first workday). Click on the link on the left top to access the gallery. It will keep growing as I have time to add more images.
The Photo Gallery has been updated with many new (actually old) photographs added. There are photos going back to 2002 now. Nearly one hundred images and still growing. I will add more as time allows.
Many of the photos were taken by me but some were taken by other members. If you have photos taken at the site of work on our carriages and other activities there please send me a copy so I can share them with everyone.
The TRAK Calendar has been updated to include NSW Public Holidays and school terms. This may assist our workers in checking if they can make it to our workdays.
The workday on the June long weekend has been moved to the Monday so some of our people who aren't available on Sundays may be able to come for the day.
Just click on the heading of the calendar to see the full calendar, it can be viewed for the day, week or month.
Some photos of the heritage items have been added to the album I started with the last post. These are still in their as received condition. We intend to give them a thorough inspection and clean up over the next few workdays. See the photos here.
Hopefully there will be a workday this weekend. the forecast is hopeful, Sunday will be the first fine day for a week if the BOM is right.
StateRail has begun the immense task of sorting out their Heritage Collection. Items that are not considered part of the core collection are being distributed to various Rail Heritage groups. We were invited to tender for some items and were successful in obtaining a number of them. We had to collect them from the Heritage store on Sunday.
As there were a few large items, desks and cabinets etc. it was decided to hire a small truck to move everything in one go. Kevin was appointed trucker, John his offsider / navigator, Jim drove the crew car with Alan and Paul as labourers, David assisted with unloading and arranged storage for some items. The collection was loaded in the morning and delivered in the afternoon. Some of the items have been left at the carriage site for cleaning up so they can be displayed at the Museum display in Kurrajong village.
There are a couple of photos here and more of various items will be added later.
TRAK has been given a number of items that are considered excess to the SRA Heritage collection. Several other rail groups have also obtained items. This Sunday we will collecting them and moving them to storage. We intend to make many of them available for public display.
Consequently the regular workday will not be held this weekend.
I knew I would forget to add something in the list of site updates. And I was right.
The new Carriage Report (PDF file) has been added. Click on the link on the left to download it. The new OnTrak newsletter is on the TRAK website to. Click on the link on the left and go to the updates page for the download link.
There have been some changes to this site over the last couple of weeks. You may have noticed some of them.
First the map option on the calendar works for most events. The exception is the Workdays. The carriage restoration site is private property and so the address is not made public. All other events have a map although some are not real accurate. Just click on the event and the information screen has a map option, click on it and you will see a Google map with the location marked.
Second, the Meet our Carriages page has some more information and photos added. Although it is a little technical most people will find it interesting. Some more additional info like this may follow.
Speaking of photos many posts from now on, the workday reports at least, will have a link to additional photos. They are stored on our Picasa site. Hopefully some old ones will be added there later and then a link will be added to the main page.
I think that's all the recent changes. Please let us know what you think of them and what else you would like to see on this site. Your comments are appreciated.
The Carriage page has been updated again. Some history details have been added for each car. Click on the link on the left to view the page.
There is no facility on that page to leave comments. however if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions please leave them here. Any ideas to improve this site or the carriage page would be appreciated.
Another change to this site is the addition of a "Meet Our Carriages" page. Click on the link under About us to view details and photos on all of our cars.
There has been some updates to this site and more are planned.
The most obvious update will be the labeling of all posts. On the left under labels you will see a list of the labels used. These labels identify what each post is about. Click on 683 for example and you will see each mention of 683 in this blog.
Maybe a quick explanation of what each label means is in order. The carriage numbers are obvious but the others may not be as clear.
Links are other sites our members and visitors might find interesting.
Misc. is for entries that aren't easily classified, this one for example.
News posts cover information about TRAK or news in general that might affect TRAK.
Plans will let you know what we intend to happen at the carriage site in the near future.
Reports will let you know what we did on our most recent workday.
If you think there should be other labels please let me know, (leave a comment). Do you find the labels useful?
What else can we do to the blog to add to your reading pleasure?
Keep visiting here as there are some more changes coming, very soon I hope.
Here is any interesting site that details how some rail equipment works. It is US based but some of the technology was used in Australia. In NSW for example we used the belt driven electrical power and steam heating. Our cars have the belt drive system. It was called the Stones system as that is the manufacturer of much of the gear.
It is based on the drawings of a retired New Haven employee who spent his career working on rolling stock. He is recording what he remembers so it won't be lost.
At the last meeting we played a tape of the Glenreagh Mountain Railway. I have just found this blog of a filmmaker who has made a documentary on the volunteers there.
A reminder to all our workers there will be no workday this weeekend as it is the Kurrajong Scarecrow Festival and we will be there. The next workday will be next Sunday 5th November, check the calendar on the left for other dates.
In the mean time have a look at Derailed for a great video.
Nothing to do with carriages but plenty to do with our workdays, especialy as they are usually held on Sundays.
See this site
Enjoy
In our continual search to make this blog more useful for our members (and because I thought it was cool) a TRAK calendar has been added to the site. I have added events into 2007. If you notice any errors, I swear I put them there to see if anyone uses it, please report them in the comments. So far I have only added events TRAK is part of. If you would like any other event listed just let me know.
It is pretty straightforward to use but here are some things to get you started. Just click on the link and a page will open showing the calendar for the current month. You have the option of viewing as "Agenda" which shows a list of events. The arrows at the top left allow you to scroll through months. Click on an event to see more details, I have not added details for workdays, only other events.
That's it, have fun and let me know if you find it useful.
For those that appreciate the weird and wonderful, Blogger provides a spellcheck facility (that I usually forget to use) but it doesn't recognise the word "blog"!
Our carriage guru Wayne Dempsey contacted us recently and gave us a little of history of our carriage. 547 was part of set 12A, the set still existed the first time TRAK tried to buy it. We made an offer on the complete set of three cars before it was split up.
12A had been in service at Campbelltown and was stored at Flemington for a short time. When set 25 was withdrawn it was decided to transfer the toilets to 12A. The original centre partition was retained and the toilets added. This explains the unusual offset toilets and the difference between the two dividing walls. We had noted this.
Wayne also noted that the seats are different. We have original Hale and Kilburn seats and some marked NSWGR Clyde and some with no markings. The Hale and Kilburn seats could date back to the original shipment from as early as 1890. The railways copied them and cast their own at the foundry at Clyde.
Thanks to Wayne for some interesting info.
You may have noticed that a couple of icons have been added to the site recently. The wheelbarrow is from AustralianBlogs which as the name suggests is a site that links to Australian Blogs. It has keyword search capabilities and is worth checking out. New sites are added each day. I choose the wheelbarrow icon from all those availalbe as it looks like something that would be at home on our restoration site. It is a little old battered but still pretty useful, much like most of us! Our carriage Site will be added there after it has been announced to the membership in the June OnTrak.
The other link is to FireFox the best browser no matter what operating system you use. Nothing to do with carriages but important when you are checking on the site. Not only is Firefox safer but also more useful, check out the extensions available.
The TRAK site has had some changes too so follow the link to it. There are some updated links on the links page and an exhibition page has been added with a list of exhibitors which will be updated regularly.
