Today Ray and I had the great pleasure of visiting Kym Harvey in Ballarat Victoria, to run a few trains on his Victoria Southern layout. We started out by catching the VLine Regional train to Wendouree station where Kym picked us up.
Southern Cross (Spencer Street) at 7.45am 🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶
Kym is building a fantastic layout in his rather sumptuous shed, the back end of which, he has a sealed room for a doubled tracked dog boned loop layout with numerous towns with switching opportunities aplenty. He runs a radio controlled Lenz Command Station with Yard Panels operated through Traincontroller SmartHand add-on. (I liked it) The rolling stock is a mixture of VR, SAR, AN and some of the more modern names floating through Victoria over the last 50 years or so. He runs things he likes (what a concept).
Kym had prepared a mini Operation session for us. I ran his newly acquired Overland around the layout twice, to orient (indulge) myself, before doing a couple of switches jobs. Ray just dived in the deep end doing switch jobs from the get-go. I ran my locos with sound on so the throaty roar of 900’s pulling the Overland and 800’s switching was a joy for me. Ray isn’t so keen on sound. He ran in stealth mode.
Kym’s wife Lynette provided a wonderful Morning Tea and Lunch for us all, which was greatly received. But, we had to be on the 1438 back to the big smoke so we headed back to Ballarat Station and the trip back to Melbourne.
Ray and I had a great time, catching up with Kym and playing on his layout. Thanks mate. We will all meet again on Platform 11 at Southern Cross tomorrow at 9.20 for the trip to the Showgrounds and the 2025 AMRE Exhibition.
The entrance to Kym’s Train Room ( side note, the two lamps were the last two tail lamps operated on the SAR before they were removed from service)
SmartHand Control Panel (just touching the point and it throws)
Ray in his element
A bit of Foreign Power heading to Yimpi Flat
Dyson Yard
It must have been cold for Ray to wear long trousers !
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