I, Claus Ellef, have built model railways since early childhood in Denmark. As a son of an railway employee and living next to a main railway line it is to no surprise. So far I have started – but never fully constructed – four model railway layouts. The last one was rather substantial but ended up been abandoned for around 20 years. My spare time was instead spent with a heritage railway. In 2014 it was finally dismantled. I put the buildings and rolling stock in storage. The tracks were donated to a local railway club.

The reason for the above decision was a move to Australia with my Aussie wife. Being a train and tram enthusiast the journey from Denmark to Melbourne went by rail trough Russia, Mongolia, China and South-East Asia. The only flight was from Singapore to Darwin. The whole journey is recorded on http://www.payne-ellef.dk

Before leaving Denmark I had already considered getting back in to modelling. This time it had to be a portable lay-out, not occupying to much space and related to our new home town, Melbourne. So the obvious choice was a lay-out with a trams. The result is 'Wombat Creek Tramways'.

Wombat Creek is a H0 (1:87) scale model of a fictional town situated somewhere in the Victorian Goldfields, Australia.

The time is 1963. Geelong wins the VFL Championship against Hawthorn (109– 60). John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. ValentinaTeresjkova is the first woman in Space. The men behind The Great Train Robbery get £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London.

The town consists of several buildings. The “Wombat Creek Bank and Gold Exchange” is a prominent building in the town centre. You will also find several other commercial buildings; among them the daily newspaper“W.C. Chronicle”(colloquial known as the "Toilet Paper") and “Wombat Creek Brewing Company” (Famous for the “Wombat Bitter”). “The Big Nugget Gold Mine” is situated at the Western outskirts of town near the small Chinatown. The War Memorial is in a small park along East Street.

The town’s mayor Alfred Campbell together with his son David Campbell owns several businesses, including the bank, the pub and the newspaper. AC/DC basically run the town and make most decisions on behalf of the rest of Wombat Creek’s residents, who, on the other hand, are too busy with their own businesses.

The mayor’s latest initiative is Wombat Creek Tramways. Wombat Creek doesn’t really need a tram system, but AC reckons tramways will improve the town’s reputation. Partly because of limited funds the tramways' construction and rolling stock depend heavily on second-hand requirements from other Australian and overseas tramways.

After two years of modelling, phase one out of three is coming along. The tracks are down and most of the buildings (kits and scratch builds) are in place. The kit buildings stem for some part from my old Danish lay-outs and the scratch builds are inspired by real buildings in Victoria Victoria. Due to the fact the trams mainly run in direction I have chosen to build an analogue lay-out. Only shunting into the depot requires the power supply to be reversed.

'Wombat Creek Tramways' have their own web-site, wct.payne-ellef.dk. On the website I show the latest progress in writing and photos. I also – with great in-frequency – put out issues of the 'W.C. Chronicle' with news-stories from Wombat Creek. The last article was about the Seekers' concert at the 'Mug Punter Hotel'.

____________________

Cheers,

Claus