Category: Transportation

Planes, ships, trains, trams, cars. If it moves it is in here.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Cars & Trucks

Highway Trucking

I am a bit late getting this post up but decided to do it anyway because cars and trucks are a fun subject to photograph. I took these this morning when I took Cindy for a short walk to the local football ground. It is about 300m from my house and the intersection is a good spot to photograph the big log trucks as you can hear them coming from some distance away and they have to slow down to get around the corner. The Huon Highway is not a highway like the big ones that many of you overseas are used to. It’s not even much of a road compared to the Bass or Midland Highways here in Tasmania. The speed limit outside my house is 100kmh, slowing to 80kmh just past me on the outskirts of Geeveston. There is no footpath so walking that 300m is something I only do in daylight.

Vehicles on the Huon Hwy near Geeveston
A truck approaching the intersection.
A ute on Scotts Road

I was actually heading home when this last truck appeared around the corner. I had time to take the last two photos and hold Cindy tightly while it passed us. Luckily there was enough room to get out of the way. You can see from the first two photos that there is not a lot of room to walk while crossing the small bridge and it is safer to walk on the side with the concrete kerb even though I normally prefer to be facing the oncoming traffic.

Vintage Wrecks at Willow Court

Another Trip to Willow Court 

During my holidays in August my friend Phillip and I went to Willow Court New Norfolk.It’s a place I love to go as it has antique shops, interesting gardens, a nice cafe and lots of old wrecked vintage cars awaiting new owners to restore them. I always feel both sad and excited to see them. Sad because they are in such a state of disrepair and excited because I love to see old vintage cars anytime. I’m really into old stuff so I just love Willow Court. For those who don’t know Willow court used to be a hospital. I’ll leave a link at the bottom of the page because it does have some very interesting history of its own. Now onto the cars. I hadn’t been here in a long while so there were a lot of different cars, trucks and buses including the AC DC tour bus I posted a few weeks ago. After visiting the two antique shops and having a nice cuppa in the cafe I walked around and got photos of most of the vehicles, mostly the ones that interested me. In some cases there was more than one of the same make. So here is my slide show of the many vehicles there that Saturday in August.

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https://www.willowcourttasmania.org/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-21/willow-court-asylum-converted-into-artist-studio/11228708

https://newnorfolkonline.com/listing/willow-court-antique-centre/

Here are a few links to check out if you are interested in Willow Court or antiques in general or maybe just check out the cars. If you do an online search you can find plenty to read about Willow Court and the old Derwent Hospital.

RDP: Scrap

Seen Better Days

Once they were someone’s pride and joy, now they sit in the scrap metal dealers yard or rusting quietly in a shed or a field.

vintage wrecked car
An old car at the scrap metal dealer near my home.
This old car has seen better days.
Old truck in a field.
Old fire engine in a shed in Geeveston.

Maybe someone will come along and love them again one day.

Car Club Show and Shine

AC DC 1973 Tour Bus

Today my friend Phillip and I decided to go to Willow Court. Those of you who visit our site regularly might remember my post featuring old cars for sale there. They are mostly very old cars and trucks largely in poor condition. I call it the car graveyard as the cars are wrecked but people buy them for parts or to fix up I guess. As there were a lot of different cars I hadn’t seen there I decided to get a few photos. Among them was a big surprise. The sign on this bus said it was the original AC DC tour bus from 1973. I was very surprised and took several photos and here they are.

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I’m not sure if Angus would find this very comfy to travel in now. It was full of junk and most of the seats had been pulled out. It really would be a long way to the shop to buy a sausage roll in this old bus. Still quite exciting to find it at Willow Court. Compared with the other cars, trucks and buses this one was in great shape. I was pleased since it was the AC DC bus. It’s part of rock and roll history. 

The Model Train Show Again

I thought that I wasn’t going to get to the Hobart Model Train Show this year. Naomi and I had planned to go on Saturday and then my real estate agent rang to see if he could show the house that day. When we have a viewing I need to be at home so that I can take Cindy for a walk while the potential buyers are there. As there are few buses on Saturdays and they were coming mid-morning my chances of going out were nil. I had arranged to have groceries delivered Sunday, a day I rarely go out, but luckily I was able to switch my delivery to Saturday afternoon and free up Sunday for the outing.

As I’ve been going to the Model Train Show every year for a long time now I have seen a lot of the displays before. However, as I only see them once a year that doesn’t really worry me. I tried to look for some new angles to photograph the trains from.

Naomi and I both like the British themed layouts because they remind us of our early childhood. We didn’t travel on trains too often but the town scenes always seem vaguely familiar to me.

Terrace houses in a British themed layout.

We both liked this layout with its rows of terrace houses and the painted backboard which gave the scene more depth.

The roundhouse at Richmond Bridge

We also enjoyed talking to some of the operators. As we love miniature things as well as trains we appreciated the detail in some of the scenes. I think that some of the people who build model railways are very creative and imaginative. They create little scenes which if you spot them may tell a story or make you laugh. One gentleman told us how he’d cut down a model figure to sit inside a car but the figure had folded arms so he didn’t look like he was driving it. People mentioned this so he made up a story about how one of the locals liked to walk his dog off-leash but the dog was badly behaved and would run on the road. The man in the car knew this so he was sitting with his arms folded patiently waiting for the dog to get off the road. It was true. I saw the dog myself.

Richmond Bridge

There were a few layouts based on places in Tasmania and South Australia. The Gawler layout that I wrote about last year was there again and we especially enjoyed seeing that because it was a place we knew quite well at one time and the Redhen railcars were part of our lives for a long time from our early teens through to our thirties when we were cleaning them at the old railcar depot. I do hope someone models that one day. I’d like to see our old workplace in miniature.

  • SAR/ANR 830 Class
  • SAR Diesels
  • SAR 500 Class & wagons
  • SAR Diesels
  • Redhens at Gawler

We stopped to say hello to Peter Fielding who as usual had brought a small but detailed display. This year he’d brought “The Poo Train” which showed trains that carried manure. Peter likes to educate and entertain the children but poo was a bit much for us so we just had a quick chat before moving on.

As usual, the Transport Museum volunteers had fired up a locomotive to give rides in the yard. We didn’t go for a ride this year because we’ve done it many times but we did stop to take some photos before we left.