Have ya got a Ciggy?

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the majority of people (including my dad)  smoked despite the long term damage to one's health. Smoking was promoted by advertising cigarettes with celebrities endorsing the product. Paul Hogan made TV commercials for Winfield cigarettes. I also remember the large billboards along Moore Park road where the Sydney Showground use to be located where smoking was seen as cool, sexy and for the sophisticated. Nowadays it is unfashionable. 

But since my layout is set in the 1970s I needed at least a few billboards of cigarette brands. I definitely wanted a billboard with the renowned Hoges but also wanted to include some other not so well known. brands. 

 

Above: Completed infamous Winfield billboard with repurpose generic street lamp leds from Ebay

The Build

I purchased and used the Walthers plain billboard as the basis for the Australian billboards for my streets. I used two of these on West Wardell. One on the "Parramatta Road" and kept in green and the other I painted white and placed it on top of the building. I also had some other spare simple billboards lying around and used them too.

Sourcing advertisements

I had to research the internet for photos of buildings and posters of cigarette brands. Many photos sourced were graffitied as a result of the BUGAUP campaign in the early 1980s1. 

As a result I had to photoshop to clean them up to look more like 1970s era. 

Above: More Billboards of Escort Cigarettes and Winfield blues. 

Adding lighting

I wasn't intending to add lighting but had a surplus leftover of generic street lamps that I used on the West Wardell layout and were too modern for my 1950s section of the layout and decided to re-purpose them. 1000K resistors were added to each of the positive side of the leds to ensure that they would not be too bright and also not blow with the 15 volt power supply. 

After adding the Lighting to the billboards it looks like I was also need to add lights for the advertising on the Arnotts bridge as well as car lights to give the section of the layout more balance.

. 1. https://www.bugaup.org/

A Little Ray of Sunshine

O ne of the major drawbacks of the location of West Wardell in the model railway room was the lighting. There was currently no lighting over West Wardell to showcase that section of the layout. Furthermore the room was lite by three bays of old fluorescent lights. I decided to upgrade the lighting to LED battens with a dimmer and also have add a set of LED battens over West Wardell.

The outcome has been remarkable to say the least. 

After Shot

Before shot

Locomotive running on West Wardell

After a long absence of running trains on West Wardell, the Stay at Home restrictions across Australia since late March 2020 have meant that I have been able to repair some of the trackwork where it crossed adjoining baseboards and didn't align. I used track pins instead of glue as it gave some flexibility and also has the ability to remove if the trackwork needs replacing just like the prototype.

Here are two view of  42 Class hauling a military load through West Wardell

Enjoy!!

Christmas 2019

Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for 2020. Hope to get more work done on Wardell 1950s section of the layout. Here is a typical Aussie scene. It Looks like dad got a new Aussie Charger for Christmas.

Juicing the Frog

Powering the Frog

I had heard all this talk about powering the frog and it wasn't until I started to retest the West Wardell section of the layout that at the points the locomotives would sometimes just stopped. 

An Internet search found these Frog Juicers from Tam Valley Depot I bought a pair of Dual Frog Juicers to power my four points on this section of the layout. One of the key reasons for using them as that I still wanted to hand-throw the points and still have power in the frog. . 

Whilst I had thought they were fairly expensive, I found them easy to install and faultless in design in ensuring no short occurs when using DCC electrofrog points. 

Above: Unopened Dual Frog Juicer

Road testing the Frog Juicer 

Here is a video of the test loco going through the points

Bottom view of Frog Juicer 

View of the frog juicer in action with the lights changing.

 

Buy a Chrysler Valiant. For All the Right Reasons

Recap of the Valiant Cars

Following on my previous post in June 2018 in getting some 3D prints of Chrysler Valiants, I finally made a model of my local Chrysler Dealership which was Boyded Chrysler Lakemba. It was situated on 804 Canterbury road. The building is still there but the dealership is long gone.

Above: My complete version of Boyded Chrysler on my layout.

Building the Model
Walthers has a Car Dealership Kit called the Wayne Bros. Ford Dealership and I used this as the basis for the Chrysler Dealership. Like all Walthers kits the footprint is far too large for my layout so I did not include the rear workshop building and used styrene to add the missing rear wall. 

Above:Unopened kit of the Wayne Bros. Ford Dealership Kit by Walthers

Above: Commencement of the build as per the kit 

Change to Australianise the kit
I decided to detail the interior with period advertising, furniture and available scale model Chrysler cars.
I also change the Ford emblem, add streamers across the car yard and replaced the Ford signage with a custom built a Chrysler/Dodge/Valiant signage both based on vintage photos available on the internet.

Above: Pictured left to right : Road Ragers Chrysler Valiant VH, Road Ragers Valiant VG Pacer,  Reel Rides Plymouth Fury convertible 1967 GTX , Masterpiece Plymouth Fury 1968 aka Dodge Phoenix and  Ricko Plymouth Hemi Cuda

Adding further realism

To give the finishing touches, I included period sale advertising on the windows of the showroom with the "Hey Charger" and sticker price. Car salesmen and customers were added and their clothes were painted in 1970s brown colours. 

To coincide with the street lighting, I used 2 x Faller white light interior lights for the interior of the showroom and also added LED to the signage and used LED Street lamps purchased from EBAY.

Final Remarks

Whilst the slogan to flog Valiant sedans and wagons with "For all the Right Reasons"did not appear to work and they were never as popular as the Kingswood or Falcons,  what did sell well for Chrysler Australia was the masculine image car, the Valiant Charger. With its catchy slogan  "Hey Charger"1 , the unbelievable can happen to you it kept Chrysler sales buoyant throughout the 1970s. 

Above: Evening Shot

Blast into Coles New World

Concept

I saw a  model of the first Coles New World Supermarket located in the Melbourne suburbs at an exhibition of retailing at the State library of Victoria in Melbourne a couple about a decade ago. 

Supermarkets were starting to take hold in the late 1950s and by the 1960s they were sprouted in many suburbs in Australia.  The space race and the first landing of the moon in the late 1960s encouraged Coles to include the rocket ship on the front of the supermarkets with the New World Supermarket theme. 

I wanted to include one of these supermarket on my layout. 

Here is a photo of the Geelong Coles sourced from http://han dle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/359701

Researching a suitable model

I search the internet to find a suitable model that could be used to represent the mid-century architecture of the Coles supermarket and found a possible use of the Santa Fe Station by Walthers for a kitbash to use in the required space on my layout. I used most of the window sections of the kit.

Above: Modern brick Santa Fe Station from Walthers Cornerstone Part # 933-4064

 Sourcing parts

Apart from the the main supermarket building, I also used the Faller shop interior fitting set to give the model some interior features. 

I made my own signs and decals including period grocery prices from Supermarket ads from the early 1970s as this is the period when the layout is set. 

By far the hardest part to source was the 3D lettering on the front of the Coles Building. I used Times Roman Font and was able to make a coloured decal sign but wanted it to be 3D lasercut. I found a supplier on Ebay that could produce this at a height of 20mm high but found that this was too large to fit the words across the building.

I contacted two local suppliers and found that modelsnmore could do it and I received the laser cut lettering in a week. I am pleased with their work and highly recommend them. Below is the finished painted signage .

 Completed Model

 I added a backdrop, period figurines, period cars to the carpark as well as a fence, Below is the completed model I have yet to include the space rocket which I had sourced but misplaced it