Train Portraits: The Banana Transport

Whatever is happening on my layout does not necessarily bear resemblance to reality. The fact alone that I run trains from two different continents should make clear that this is not an attempt at modelling a specific place at a specific time. The key motto is: If it's fun, it'll run. My railway, my rules.

But that doesn't mean there's complete chaos. The trains overall such may be from different eras and countries, but I try to have trains that are, by themselves, at least plausible in their composition of locomotive and rolling stock. At the very least they should match, and fit into their respective era. 

Depending on train type, there may be some allowances that need to be made. This train is a good example. Prototypical Australian freight trains are beyond my budget and space, as they normally consist of multiple locomotives and several dozen cars. So there's a need to put together a shortened version, and that leaves room for some creative license.

This train is built around the NLBX wagons, a class of New South Wales Louvre van specifically used for transporting bananas from the New South Wales North Coast, in the service of the Banana Growers Federation.

Locomotive

The motive power for this train is the New South Wales 81 Class diesel locomotive, a type built for the State Rail Authority between 1982 and 1991. This is the most powerful diesel locomotive built for an Australian state operator, and operated a wide variety of passenger and freight trains across four states (New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia).

The model was produced by SDS Models and is sporting the 'Candy' livery of the State Rail Authority, which was prevalent on locomotives and rolling stock from 1982 to around 1992 when the SRA was restructured. The model is of a lovely quality, nicely detailed and comes with impressive sound.

Rolling Stock

From 1987, some 60-odd regular louvre vans were converted for the transport of fruit, and placed in service with the Banana Grower's Federation, where they were used to transport bananas from the New South Wales North Coast to the target markets. The conversion included interior lining as well as exterior decorations. They were classed as NLBF and NLBX, based on what class of wagon they were converted from. While there is relatively little source material to be found on the web, the official wording is that these vans travelled between the North Coast and Sydney. However, credible word of mouth has it that these were seen as far south as Victoria, and as far north as South East Queensland.

The banana vans had a fairly short service life and were fully withdrawn by 1992.  they were remarkable enough for On Track Models to produce several sets to date. Their range covers both NLBF and NLBX types in various colours and decorations. Most remarkable is their second run of blue weathered NLBX vans, where every single one looks a bit different. The below gallery shows two full sets, with different patterns of the yellow lines (which on some vans is even different on each side), as well as varying decorations.

In this year's third run, On Track Models produced one set each of NLBF vans in red and grey, as well as one set of NLBX vans in red. While these all look the same aside from the numbers, they provide sufficient variety to add to the train.

Plausibility

The NLBX/NLBF vans would not have run as a single train, but integrated into manifest freight trains among other freight. Little source material exists on how these trains were composed, Those trains were generally longer than 8-9 vans as well. In that respect, this train is certainly on the low end of the plausibility scale, but that's where the fun aspect comes in - I really like the optics of these vans.

The 81 Class in Candy livery falls squarely into the service period of these vans, and given its range of operations, it's very likely that a train containing NLBX vans was hauled by one or more 81s.

And here's what it looks like:

More train portraits coming soon. Stay tuned!