 |
Peter Knife lives in a southern suburb of
the New South Wales capital, Sydney. He is currently building
a layout based on Minnipa on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula.
This layout will be set in 1960-65 era, and is a HOn3.5 layout,
using 12mm gauge track. Peter is also the builder of Anunaka, the terminus of the DBT. Peter has built a number of model railways over the years, based variously in the North West of England, northern New South Wales, and the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. Interestingly until now all the models have been based on fictitious prototypes. He is a prolific builder of rolling stock and is currently constructing a series of vehicles of both 2'6" and 3'6" gauge by use of a casting technique, using latex rubber molds with the finished product being cast using polyurethane. In the photograph at left, Peter is seen researching water pipelines, a dominant feature of the dry South Australian landscape.
|
 |
John Dennis has historically been much more of a railfan
than a modeller. He has started a number of layouts, most significantly
the early (1969) predecessor of the current Dutton Bay Tramway, however none
of them ever reached a stage anything like "complete". In 1997 John completed the "salt pan" module for the DBT as shown at Brisbane in 1997, and in 1998 completed Kelvin, which made its debut at the Liverpool exhibition in October of that year. At the same time as layout construction John is also building vehicles for the DBT - a fleet of HB class open wagons for the gypsum traffic being the project underway at the moment. These follow the "standard" DBT technique: body fabricated from styrene with the underframe being that from a shortened Kato Japanese open wagon (code 8001).
|
| There have been many others involved in the construction and
operation of the DBT. Philip Knife, Peter's
older brother, has always been an inspiration to us, with his fine
modelling skills and enthusiastic support.
Phil was the first Australian to be recognised
by the NMRA as a Master Model Railroader, and has built and
exhibited a number of layouts. Phil has his own
Home Page
detailing his life and other exploits, along with his "Practical Ideas for
Better Railway Modelling" Another who is offering assistance at the moment is Leo Kennedy , like me a life long railfan, but now happily dabbling in construction of freight vehicles for the DBT, and rapidly coming to grips with the mysteries of applying scenery to bare boards. Leo has been the third exhibition operator at each of our exhibitions to date. The fourth member of the crew which exhibited at Brisbane in May 1997 was the late Bruce Turnbull who sadly passed away before completing his large model, upon which it was planned to operate almost every class of locomotive ever owned by the railways of New South Wales. Bruce "looked after" the DBT during a period when Peter had moved away from Sydney. At Liverpool in 1998, the fourth member of the crew was James McInerney. James is a well known modeller in NSW, and his Lambing Flat model is legendary. He is currently publishing on the Lambing Flat web site his research on such items as colour schemes used on NSW passenger cars, and composition of local goods trains. He too has been bitten by the "Narrow Gauge" bug and is now working on his large-scale Rurr Valley Railway & Mining Co, set in Tasmania and built in his garden. The fourth crew member at Hobsons Bay was my son Chris who appears to enjoy the challenge of shunting at Anunaka, and especially the difficult work at Kelvin with the combined gypsum and salt trains. He has been a great help to me in building the railway. |
Last Modified May 10, 2000