WIDGEREE

By Stuart Hopkins

Widgeree is based on a small country town in the goldfields region of Central Victoria.   It is located on the Castlemaine to Maryborough line not far from Castlemaine.

The layout itself  is set around a small country railway station  in the early 1980’s, just around the time the Victorian railways (VicRail) changed in to the State Transport Authority (V/Line).  Because of this you can see a mixture of paint schemes such as the classic blue and gold and the new tangerine and grey.

The township of Widgeree is located along the Thomas River and was once the scene of a major gold rush. A few old mines can be seen around town and it’s not uncommon to see people panning for gold along the river. Once a busy town, Widgeree has settled down to a slower lifestyle now and only the railway is busy with many trains each day.  Some trains using this line are detoured off the Main Western line during peak times. 

Many of the trains you will see running through Widgeree are made up of the older four wheel goods trucks and a mixture of interstate wagons heading back west to their home rails.

The model 4100cm long by 1200 m wide and is made by using hollow core doors glued together to from two half’s for easy transport. The track work is all Peco Code 80 with hand controlled points. Most of the buildings have been made Australian by kit bashing and adding awnings as well as a few homemade buildings built by myself.

Rolling stock and locos are mostly Aust-N-Rail, Sprite Design kits and a few home models in the mix, You may also see some N-Trains kits running.  All locos have been fitted with Digitrax DCC Decoders (DZ125, DN163A0 and DN163K1C).  The loco fleet includes X class, G class, B class, T class, and BL class units.

The layout is DCC and is operated with a Digitrax DCS50 Zephyr Controller/Booster with a number of UT4 hand throttles that can be used at a number of points around the layout.

Rolling stock is mostly Victorian and South Australian railways with an occasional few New South Wales and Western Australian wagons mixed in.

We hope you enjoyed your trip to Widgeree and come back soon.

Click here to see photos of Widgeree.