Australia Anybody?

forum sponsor Dave Allen, the o gauge guy

http://www.theogaugeguy.com/

Trevize, A have a friend in Perth. He buys a majority of his O scale items in the U.S. and  uses Airmail shipping...Figure on $8 to $10 a pound to ship by air....It was nothing for him to spend an extra $40 to $60 for 4-Lionel PS-4 trailer flats....You can use land shipping but it might take 2-months before you receive the package....

Dennis  

Enjoy the cute animals that can kill you.

Oh, boy...Australia has Africa and India beat when it comes to venomous critters...snakes (fierce, Tai-pans, tiger), spiders (redback and Sidney jumping), even trees you can't touch

I'm pretty sure the Prairie above was built in New Zealand for PRB.  You may be able to find one.

You ought to take a break from Santa Fe and get into Darstaed.  Great stuff.  Seriously, that's what I would do.  Dave Allen has a post announcing these A4 Mallards

Australia; another one of those great places to visit but,,,,,,,,,,,,,.

Well, 20 million people live there and they are all very proud of it.  It is a great place to live.  And, lots of real trains to ride, steam and diesel.

Steam?????

We've been to Australia 6 times in the last 10 years, a lovely country with really nice people.  It has very good intra and intercity train service, so it's easy to get around, we've never been bitten by any creature, great or small.  :-)

As far as O gauge trains Dave- the Ogauge guy can fill you in on how to obtain them.  There is a train club in the Sydney area that Dave belongs to that has a fairly large layout and next time we go we will visit it  (Maybe this coming February, March I hope). 

Cannot speak about O scale trains, but one thing I do know is Australia has one heck of allot of AC6000 for their mining operations. These locomotives work in some of the most hostile and remote places on the planet. Makes going to the moon look like child's

play. LOL

So, if you like rail fanning, you will not be disappointed "down under".

Pete

Great country (continent) to visit but Australia is a long long long way away from just about anywhere except for several countries in Southeast Asia. And yes, the AT&SF Prairie above was built in New Zealand for PRB several years ago. If you can afford the cost of air shipping O scale stuff its definitely the way to go - good luck.

Australia is home to some truly massive Beyer-Garratt engines. I'd love to have a three rail model of one of them!

Trevize, there seems to be a good O gauge community down under. 2 and 3 rail O. We have been selling our turntables down there. Couple have been 3R and a couple in 2R. Shipping and taxes seem to be the biggest problem. 10% goods & services tax on items coming in. Check out the AMRA model train club. They have a 34" turntable on their club layout. I was told they have 700 members.

You will love the friendly folks there. Only been there twice but it seemed I was leaving a thousand friends. Looks like someone from the Penn visited once.  Don

Great people. Very friendly.

Lots of good info!   Thanks for sharing!

Presently we're looking at Alice Springs.   

Alice Springs is in the center of the country, and the Outback. I don't know of the modelers there, but the north-south mainline runs through there; it is basically the halfway point between Darwin and Adelaide. I just saw a program about that line, which focused on a freight train that ran cross country. The locomotives are painted in Genessee & Wyoming livery, as the rail company is part of that group. Also, one of the most famous luxury passenger trains, the Ghan, stops there. 

http://www.greatsouthernrail.com.au/site/the_ghan.jsp

Trevize,

Sounds like an interesting move... lots to learn!

I would suggest the book:

"In A Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson

I'm listening to the audiobook in the car and it's not high adventure, but lots of interesting facts about Australia in an interesting narrative... bit of humor along the way.

"What's this got to do with trains?", you might ask.  I learned some interesting info about trains in the book, like the fact that, until recently each area of the country had different track widths, so you had to keep switching trains to traverse the country!

Ed

I was in Alice Springs this past February.  Alice Springs is in the center of Australia.  It was 114 degrees F when I was there in the middle of the Australian summer.   Alice Springs has surface water only when it rains.  It sits on top of an aquifer.  

I found a robust O gauge community in both Sydney and Melbourne.  Most people concentrate on Australian and British modeling.  Three rail O gauge is alive and well among the Hornby collectors.  The Hornby Collectors Club is the Australian equivalent of our TCA.  I would contact them to get an entrance into the hobby.

The best hobby shop I have ever been in is called Hobby Co. and is located in the Queen Victoria building in downtown Sydney.  It has 3 floors of models of every description - planes, trains, ships, castles, combat vehicles, soldiers, etc.

O gauge trains at Hobby Co. were very expensive.  For example, an Atlas O gauge box car that goes for $40 in the USA was selling for $140 in Australia. They did have a full shelf of USA equipment.  The HO offerings were much more reasonable in price.  

Here are some photos that I took of Alice Springs.  This is the entire town taken from a hilltop overlooking the city.

The photo below is the original Alice Springs.  The original spring was under this rock.  It sits next to a dry river that only has water during the winter rains.  The town was founded next to this rock to support a telegraph station linking the north and south coast.  The original telegraph station is a few miles outside of the current town.  The third photo is of the river bed.  I can't recall the river's name.

The Ghan - the trans-continental train linking Adelaide on the south coast and Darwin on the north coast was in Alice Springs when I was there.  The Ghan was named in honor of the Afghan camel drivers who helped build the original telegraph line linking Adelaide and Darwin.  Australia has large herds of wild camels today.

Of concern, is the Voltage/Frequency of the ower.And.Appliances.html" target="_blank">electrical supply in Australia/New Zealand.  I believe we had discussion on this before. You would have some converters to purchase to run your  model train equipment.   230 volt/50Hz. 

My guess would be that Dave Allen is the expert on this part of the transition.   

Hi all, and especially Trevise, when you are planning to come here, just contact me. I live a little north of Sydney, we do have a train club in Sydney with a 3 rail O gauge layout, our club has branches in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Not all cater for O gauge. If you are planning on bringing your trains with you, they will work fine, with a few exceptions. All MTH and a lot of Lionel work fine here, exceptions being older TMCC and some Lionel older transformers. We are 240v 50hz. I actually sell some US products here and overcome expensive air mail by bringing in bulk quantities, usually by Fedex. If you are planning on importing US trains yourself, I would advise you to keep some US dollars aside, otherwise you will lose twice with exchange rates. Better still buy up what you want before you come and stick it in the container if you intend shipping furniture etc here. Don't bother bringing anyt electrical goods, Tv's etc.

As others have said, there are some great train rides to be had around the country and many preserved steam locos.

Trevise, do you know where you might be living if you come over?

Sky's the limit at present.   My wife and I are trying to decide IF this is something we want to do.  Once that choice is made I'll start looking for a job and we'll see what comes up.   Alice Springs keeps coming up since every time I do a job search there are lots of openings there for what I do.   We're thinking we want to avoid Sydney as housing seems to be as expensive as Boston there, but every where else seems reasonable.

Trevize, if you do move buy as much equipment and layout material as you think you will need. Before we moved to Maui I checked out the hobby shops on the island. There were and are none. I stocked up on as much as I could. I assume you will be shipping a container over with all your things. I packed as much in as I could. Both shipping cost and shipping time are high and long. If there's an engine or cars you are thinking of buying, get it for shipment in the container. Don

Sydney is a beautiful city.  The economy is booming and there is construction everywhere.  Australia is probably one of the few places that has full employment.  Prices are high for just about everything in Australia.  A can of Coke was $8 to $10.  Beer was cheaper.  High wages tend to offset the prices.  I believe that the minimum wage was about $20 per hour.

I have been to Sydney 4 times.  I have always found the city to be a vibrant and very exciting place.  I would go back often if it wasn't an 18 hour flight from the West coast.  The Sydney area would be my first choice as place to live if I was going to move to Australia.  My second choice would be Melbourne.  You might guess that I prefer city living.  

Did I mention that Sydney has an awesome train system with both commuter and long distance trains arriving and departing frequently.  

Good Luck on your job search.  Joe

Try Melbourne. Great commuter rail plus an excellent streetcar system though there was a lot of complaining when the system was privatized. Go to YouTube and check out: "Dumb Ways To Die",a cautionary tale on rail safety.

May I ask what industry you are in? Alice Springs is an interesting place, but there's not much there outside of work in tourism related areas, and it is in the middle of a desert, very dry and hot in summer and cold in winter. There are many places other than there I'd want to live.

That's Blasphemy!

Never!   Santa Fe all the way!

I'm a UNIX/SAN engineer at Harvard Center for Astro-physics.  I have a degree in Astro-physics and flip flop playing with the computer systems and studying Astronomy.  Seems, most often I'm fixing the computer systems to make our studying go faster :-)

I'm from Colorado originally, so the high sierra desert/dry type living is something I'm used to.   I presently live in Boston and am rather tired of the big City bustle, crammed in living style and the driving everywhere at 1/2 mile an hour.  Though, I do enjoy Boston's train system as my primary method of commuting.  

Melbourne is certainly on the list!  Sydney seems to be a straight across swap for Boston.

Alice Springs has a certain draw though, as it would appear to be a great place for star gazing.  Where I live now it is more then an hour drive to get a decent way away from the Boston light pollution and even there the seeing is still terrible compared to what it was in Denver.  Boston is one of the worst cities in the world for light pollution unfortunately.  My telescope rarely sees starlight these days :-(

A friend of ours emigrated to Aus. She is a nurse in the Casualty dept. (Emergency) in Alice Springs Hospital. She had to do extra training to be brought up to speed on all the crawling nasties.  

She came back to the UK to visit and told us a funny story about being on night shift when a drunk guy brought in what he thought was a snake. It was actually a harmless legless lizard.  After trying to explain it was not a snake and they were not Vets and he really ought to take it away. She ended up taking it home to release. Leaving in a box with air holes on the kitchen table she went to bed. Only to be awoken a hour or so later when her Mum who was visiting from the UK and her friend opened the box and started screaming!

She did mention some of the locals falling asleep on the railroad tracks.... 

Nick

Wild and free, have fun. 

Trevise, if you are looking for a place without light pollution, then most of Australia away from the eastern seaboard is going to work for you. There are some great optical telescopes here.

http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/observa...g-spring-observatory

http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/observa...-stromlo-observatory

http://www.australiangeographi...alian-observatories-

Maui has some of the finest telescopes in the world. Right on top of our volcano no light Pollution. In fact you can't have large lights shooting up at the volcano at night. We found that out the hard way years ago when we were doing night shots for a TV special. It' a nice place to live also. Also, no snakes of any kind. Don

Don, is this a competition? You may not have snakes, but we don't have active volcanos.

I know what I'd rather live with.

Hope you like Vegimite sandwiches!  There are some amateur astronomers that do quite well in Australia- you can check out the Southern Cross!

Stack 

This was my group's guide in the rain forrest on Australia's north coast.  He said he has lived in the forest for 40 years and has never seen a poisonous snake but he did admit that they are there.  The second picture shows the forrest floor.

This doesn't mean that Australia's dangerous critters won't bother people.  Our group also saw this.  There was a newspaper account of a tourist being eaten about a week before we were there.

Dave, the volcano is on the big island of Hawaii, a hundred miles away and remember you have to eat Vegimite like Stack said. But really one of my all time favorite cities is Hobart on the island of Tasmania. I felt like I was back in the 50's. Couldn't pay for a beer. Vicky has never been there and one of these days were are going. She would love it. Don