All about the GDRMCo, sortof!

This blog will chronicle the ongoing construction of my freelanced HO scale layout and also provide an insight into the history and thoughts behind the Great Dividing Range Mining Company, GDRMCo for short.

With a history stretching back 17 years now and a fictional history in it's 101st year the GDRMCo for me has been a near life long project and undoubtedly will continue on for as long as I see fit to work on it! 

The Great Dividing Range Mining Company started out as an idea I had when I was about 6 years old and was originally called the Queensland Mining Company. Whilst the name changed quite early on the premise stayed the same, it was to be a mining company digging up iron ore around Mt Isa and shipping it to a port at Townsville for export. My plan was to have it always set in the present and I'd 'run' it like it was a real RR/mining company. So far this plan has worked well other than me changing my mind on things....



The layout itself fills a roughly 7.5m by 6m space in a 3 bay garage (one bay is used) and will be a triple deck N scale representation of the mainline from the port at Townsville to the mine at Mt Isa. The Townsville Jetty Branch is included aswell as the Lolworthy Creek coal mine branch just west of Charters Towers.

4 towns are included on the layout, these being; Townsville, Charters Towers, Cloncurry and Mt Isa. 

• As has already been described Townsville hosts the iron ore port and coal dumping plant at the Jetty but also has a second yard for intermodal/TOFC sorting, a hardstand and TOFC loading point, the fuel distribution facility for GDRMCo, a sulfuric acid loading point at Incitec Pivot, a passenger station for GDRMCo services and the GDRMCo Rail Heritage Society facilities. Townsville is situated on the bottom most level of the layout.

•  Charters Towers is on the second level of the layout and is the junction point for the mainline and the Lolworthy Creek Coal Mine branch, due to traffic density the mainline from Townsville to Charters Towers is triple tracked to handle the large flow of iron ore and coal trains heading to and from the mines/port. A small yard is included here aswell as a small passenger station and ballast loading point for MoW trains. MoW service locomotives can also be fueled at the servicing pad located at the fuel distributor facility.

• The Lolworthy Creek Coal Mine branch is also on the second level but passes thru the backdrop to appear on the other side of the peninsula from Charters Towers. Sidings are provided for coal trains to arrive and wait to load, supply trains to be unloaded and MoW trains to be stored. A fueling pad is also provided alongside the fuel train unloading point. The main coal loading loop passes under the coal loader and allows trains to run continuously without having to swap locomotives from one end to the other.

•  Cloncurry is on the third level and is a loading point for containerised copper concentrate that is unloaded at the Townsville Jetty hardstand (then trucked to a unloading point at the port). A pair of sidings are here with the track embedded in concrete to allow easy loading and unloading of the containers. No fueling pad is included due to the proximity to Mt Isa.

• Finally there is Mt Isa and the iron ore mine and loading point. Mt Isa has a large yard for arriving and departing ore trains, the departure yard includes fueling points spotted to allow locomotives and DPUs to remain coupled to the consist thus speeding up turnaround times. A large servicing workshop looks after locomotives and rolling stock but also mining equipment for the nearby iron ore mine (I have a P&H 4100 series power shovel model that will be included as part of the scene), the workshop will also have a smaller facility attached for the GDRMCoRHS division to maintain it's equipment. Xstrata has a spur off the eastern end of the yard for unloading the sulfuric acid trains from Incitec Pivot, also at the eastern end is the main fuel distribution facility for the western terminus of the railroad and the iron ore mine.

Coal trains will be 50 cars long whilst ore trains will be 100 cars long and have DPUs cut in halfway along, live loads for both coal and ore will be used and this means I'll be building working coal and ore loaders and rotary dumpers (along with the rotary couplers needed to make it all work). 

A post will be going up sometime with photos of everything done so far, stay tuned!