No Dan
,there is no kit available for the much needed BME, BEX But this may change soon as I need a lot of these also.

Hi Bolivia,

As you were hinting perhaps, there is now a kit for the BME available. I bought two of them over the weekend at the Ipswich Railway Workshops Museum model train show. The manufacturer is Peter Boorman, who does N scale predominantly, but this venture into HO appears to be well worth his effort. I am still to build the kits, but they look promising.

$55 each so not cheap, but they appear to be well detailed. This URL is most likely in our links, but to save you the search http://peterboormansworkshop.com.au/

Best regards,
John

PS.  I bought mine from Al Cutmore on the AR Kits stand before I realized Peter Boorman was also at the show.  So if you can't get the kits from PBW, you can try AR Kits.

Hi Bolivia,

As you were hinting perhaps, there is now a kit for the BME available. I bought two of them over the weekend at the Ipswich Railway Workshops Museum model train show. The manufacturer is Peter Boorman, who does N scale predominantly, but this venture into HO appears to be well worth his effort. I am still to build the kits, but they look promising.

$55 each so not cheap, but they appear to be well detailed. This URL is most likely in our links, but to save you the search http://peterboormansworkshop.com.au/

Best regards,
John

PS. I bought mine from Al Cutmore on the AR Kits stand before I realized Peter Boorman was also at the show. So if you can't get the kits from PBW, you can try AR Kits.

To add to this, I have recently purchased two kits. I have just (on Sunday) started assembly. They seem to be a nice kit and fairly simple. Mine also came from AR Kits.

The only issues I've had was with the deck. The deck is a separate casting to the rest of the wagon. Both decks had an annoying bend in them. The polyurethane must be a different formulation to what I'm usually used to because I had to use REALLY hot water to straighten them out. Now the castings are straight. I think it will quite nice when done.

There are some very nice brass etchings included in the kit. Another interesting change to most kit manufacturers is that the kit supplies bogies AND couplers! Nice touch.

Cheers

Dan

Hi Pawanoror,

Thanks for the information. Very interesting. So to be clear, the movements were from Victoria Docks to Bandiord (where's that?) or Bandiana or Dysart?

What are the VR records that you refer to? Are they an on-line source or are they a book that you hold?

From the Army records that I've seen on-line, the first delivery of two tanks was to Melbourne, then a larger delivery to Sydney. From your information, it would seem that subsequent deliveries arrived in Australia in Melbourne and/or Sydney. There was about 150 Centurions all up of different variants, so multiple movements from the docks to barracks!

Regards,

Dan

Dan,

Bandiord was another part of the sprawling Bandiana complex, believed to be short for Bandiana Ordnance.

Trips were made from Victoria Dock to Dysart, Bandiana and Bandiord, from Bandiana or Bandiord to Dysart, and from Dysart to Bandiana and Bandiord suggesting deliveries were being made via both Melbourne and Sydney, and there were other transfers going on. There were also trips to other locations (Warrnambool comes to mind) and some trips were made by the FBT wagons during the period with other Army equipment.

The records are located in the Public Record Office Victoria, among VPRS 421, Victorian Railways Secretary's Files.

pawanoro