modelrail.otenko

5Dec/141

Vaio Duo 11 – 1TB SDD Upgrade

So, the latest in my Sony collection is a Vaio Duo 11. This 'convertible' tablet is a charm... I really love the form factor, resolution and horsepower. I had bought it with the intent to upgrade the 256gb SSD to a 1TB Samsung EVO 840 for for AUD$500.

Step 1: Duplicate your current disk to the new disk

The goal from this entire upgrade is to have more space, not change the OS or existing data. The first step is therefore to clone the source drive (existing 256gb internal SSD) to the newly acquired Samsung 1TB SSD. To do this, you'll need to have them both plugged in at once. The Vaio Duo 11 only has one internal slot for the SSD, so an external enclosure was required.

Do be careful with the enclosure purchased. It turns out that there are warnings across the web indicating that SSD are liable to overheat inside these tiny airtight boxes. This is exacerbated when doing a full drive clone as you're trying to read/write as quickly as you can.

As for the cloning, there's quite a few methods available, all with their own quirks. My goal was to do an exact 1:1 copy to ensure that the recovery and boot partitions was all intact. The first thought was something like gparted. Instead I stumbled across Samsung's own 'Data Migration Tool' which promised to do exactly what I wanted. This was a 4-click process and the copying started. After it completed, I checked out the disk in drive management and all was not as it should have been. The partitions didn't look 1:1... but I still then tried a reboot with the USB as the boot disk. Windows still booted and so I went with this.

Step 2: Get the new disk into the new hardware

Sony are usually pretty tricky when it comes to internal product design. They're not as 'closed' as Apple when it comes to making products as un-openable as possible, but they're not far off. There was nothing short of 20 overly-difficult screws in the bottom of this unit to remove!

NOTE: The speaker grills need to be taken off. These consist of a mesh grill with a layer of sticky gunk that's also of grill-design. You cannot remove these without ruining them. Note that you also have to take off all of the rubber feet and the 'locking areas' for the extra battery. I'm still trying to find double-sided tape to put all these back in. I might just use glue.

In the second and last pics above you can see the slot where the SSD sits. I happened to take the photo of the unit after I'd spent about an hour trying to remove the SSD. All other sites say to remove the screws nearest the SSD and then simply pop it out. Turns out it's not this simple... that blue patch you see is a chunk of sticky spongy rubber that acts as a support for the SSD. The stickiness actually makes it VERY difficult to remove. As I'd had this unit for all of 1 day, I had no intention of breaking it and so was very gentle when tinkering with the internals. Either way, after a little more prying I realised that I had to lift the SSD off the support and then it came out. To anyone trying this at home: be careful, don't apply too much force and, if possible, find a thin utensil to slide under the SSD and release it from the gunk!

After this the new SSD slotted in very easily and all screws went back in place quite easily. As stated, I'll update again when I find a tidy solution for putting the feet and grills back.

Step 3: Booting up the copied disk...

Well, it booted straight into windows and looked good. I then went into the disk management studio and realised that I was in trouble. There were partitions directly after my main partition which meant that there was no clean way to expand it! I therefore considered and attempted to 'restore' windows. Doing this inside windows should have been easy until it told me that it couldn't find the recovery partition! I then rebooted with the assist key and it also said the recovery partition was missing! Thanks to the Samsung Data Migration Tool, all of my partitions were out of whack.

Step 4: The Samsung Data Migration Tool sucks...

I had no intention of removing the SSD again... so I decided to do this copy in reverse. The old disk was in the external enclosure and then new one internal. I downloaded clonezilla and attempted a copy but it failed miserably telling me that it couldn't determine the partition table type... meh... probably to do with UEFI?

So the next step was to go all low-level. 'dd' is the tool and it will byte-by-byte copying _everything_ from the given source to the given destination. I'd known my device names thanks to the menu options in the clonezilla attempt, so I entered the following command:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sda

It started going... I went to make a coffee, got back and found it had prematurely stopped. I checked that the USB was still mounted, all good. Then I went to pick up the USB and nearly burnt a hole in my palm! The thing was red hot. It turns out that this Toshiba drive does not bode well in this external enclosure. It's all over the web... should've checked.

Anyway, I left it to cool for a few hours then came back with a plan.

My jug'o'water heatsink-cooler worked perfectly and the copy completed... I even had the running progress meter:

dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1024M | pv | dd of=/dev/sda bs=1024M

After a reboot, all partitions looked good and recovery started, but I didn't run through with it. I'd google'd a little in the meantime and realised that windows creates a recovery partition every bloody time you upgrade significantly. In this case it was from Windows 8.0 to 8.1. If I then removed a partition I'd kill my ability to recover.

Instead I just created a new partition in the space at the end of the drive and called it D:

Step 5: Actually getting that disk space back...

So, a little more googling indicated that there was indeed a way around the recovery partitions. The purchase of an 32gb (MUST BE THIS BIG) thumb drive allowed me to copy the recovery partition onto it and then remove them from the disk. I could then expand my main drive without too much screwing around.

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21Nov/140

France: TGV La Poste

It's off to Europe for christmas and I intend on hunting down the odd train. The first on the research list is reminiscent of Dr Yellow from Japan: TGV La Poste. This service is an express freight EMU (not unlike the M250 of Sagawa Transport) for the French Postal Service based on the TGV series.

Source: RailPictures.net: Special TGV La Poste "Operation Pieces jaunes" Blois - Tarbes. [Author: LM]

I'm going to use this page as a thinking-out-loud scratchpad to record the information I'm able to obtain. The goal is to grab a shot of it in action down the line and then one (at least) in the depot near Gare De Lyon in Paris.

NOTE: It seems this effort will be futile... the sun won't rise until around 8am and the train is due to run only during the dark-hours. this link has the timings for 2015.

Web References

Forum LR PRESSE : TGV La Poste
Photos-de-Trains.net : Horaires TGV postal départ de Cavaillon
Trains en Voyage : Gares et horaires du TGV La Poste?
Benelux Spoor : TGV fotoplekken en dienstregeling TGV La Poste
Railfan Europe : TGV La Poste
virtualglobetrotting : Half-consist stored at Villeneuve-St George
La Poste to streamline courier products and invest in rail transport
Bad news... will the service still be running in January 2015?
French HS (6): TGV-LaPoste, Postal TGVs
More information in English on the service.
The TGV railway La Poste will cease operation in 2015
Could be a bad translation... but looks like the service will run until at least mid-2015.
Railpictures : SNCF TGV SE 952 La Poste at Crisenoy - Daniel Minaca
Someones entire sightings for 2008
Trains Francais : Calendrier TGV La Poste
Hints on what times are during daylight
Simtrain-FR : info TGV poste.
e-train forum: Latest timings

YouTube - Croisement entre un TGV La Poste et un TGV Duplex
TGV La Poste passes a TGV Duplex near Penne-sur-Huveaune, between Marseille and Nice
YouTube - Postal TGV at high speed (Unknown Location)

Timetables

From all of the above data, I've managed to scrape together the following timetable of the services. From the links, you can tell that this data is old... really old. I am under the impression that the service will be wound-down in 2015, but hope that one or two of the services below will be running in January.

There's a double-up on times around Macon for most of the services. It seems that the train arrives at Macon-Loché, heads in to Macon-ville and then back out on it's way via Macon-Loché once more.

TGV La Poste	6990	6991	6992	6993	6994	6995	6995	6996	6997	6998
T = Tuesday	M-F	M-F	T-S	M-F	T-F	T-S	T-S	T-S	M-F	SAT
Paris-gare-de-Lyon (parc postal)	0137	2006	0748	2242	1806	0330	0518	0758	1932	0604
Bifur-de-Créteil		2016			1756			0748
Yerres (bifur de Massy)		2017			1754			0746
Bifur-de-Chevry-Cossigny (pointe Ouest du triangle de Coubert)		2024			1748			0740
Bifur-de-Solers (pointe sud du triangle de Coubert)		2025			1747			0739
Moisenay/Crisenoy	0103	2028	0719	2301	1744		0535	0736	1951	0526
Montereau	0045									0504
Sens	0029	2044			1728			0720		0446
Laroche Migennes	0012									0439
PRS Pasilly	2354	2102	0638	2338	1710		0616	0702	2028
P.R.S n° 18 de Toutry (viaduc A 6)		2106			1705			0657
Le-Creusot-Montceau-Montchanin	2328	2127	0554	0010	1645		0648	0637	2057
P.R.S n° 24 de Cluny		2138			1635			0627
Col-de-Bois-clair					1634			0626
Viaduc-de-la-Roche					1633			0625
Dijon-ville						0554 0556				0320 0322
Chagny										0251
Macon-Loché-T.G.V					1628 << 1622 Merges with 6624 @ 1600 from Lion-Part-Dieu		0711	0620	2111
Macon (parc postal)	2307	2149	0527	0032	1550 1624			0556 0616		0214
Macon-Loché-T.G.V		2144			1528 1536			0545 0552		0146 0207
TGV Lyon St Exupéry (TGV)					1514		0739		2128
Valence TGV					1446		0800		2202
Bif Lapalud							0820		2135
Pierrelatte					1416		0821		2224
Avignon Fontcouverte					1352		0846		2244
Cavaillon					1325	0901	0907	0324	2253

Plotting the path

This wasn't easy... I have no idea if the map to the left is the correct path... it seems that the train travels on the highspeed direct line in some places and then diverts to the local SNCF lines in others?

From what I can tell, the train travels further south than Cavaillon. But all timetables only reference it to there.

From the YouTube link at the start of this article, you can tell that the service seems to travel all the way to Nice? Or at least past Cavaillon?

If anyone can help, I'd love to get this map correct for anyone else wanting the information.

The plan...

Based on the timings above, it's going to be really hard to see this thing in daylight, moving, whilst being based in Paris. My best bet will probably be to head down to the RER stations 'Maisons-Alfort Alfortville' or 'Le Vert de Maisons' early in the morning and hope for the best. It'll be mid-winter, so lighting will be low.

I'll post again once executed.
Update: Paris, January 2015.

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19Nov/140

Melbourne August/September 2014

Only two months behind... here's the highlights from South Yarra over August/September this year.

Metro's Inspection Train

Metro have converted an old passenger car into an inspection vehicle. It's known as IEV102 has equipment for monitoring the lines it is dragged over. You'll always see it top-and-tailed by T classes.

BG Steel with Green G

A green Pacific National G spent a weekend on the steel train.

Steamrail to Eltham

Not quite South Yarra, but venturing out to see a steamer very early was rewarded by a surprise sighting of the other Metro inspection vehicle: IEV100.

Railside in Cremorne

There is a pretty cool spot just before the Yarra river in Cremorne to take morning photos.

Batman St Overpass: Cremorne

And then there's the Batman St overpass, but it's a little too under-the-level.

Carpark ramp at end of Palmer Parade

If you keep wandering down Batman St and take a right on Palmer Pde, you'll find a carpark (that looks abandoned.) It has a ramp that gives you an elevated view towards South Yarra Station. Of course, you're then stuck in the wires and the shot Northbound gets a lens full of sunlight in the morning.

Y class to Long Island

But then, something cool happened... BL Steel with a Y Class loco transfer! This supposedly happens once a year.. the loco gets swapped out for routine maintenance back in Dynon.

Between Hawksburn and South Yarra

Turns out that you can get some pretty clean shots facing towards Hawksburn... although you really have very little time to get ready. Zero visibility doesn't give you too much warning.

And the final steel for the month...

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17Aug/140

Hawksburn Station

Boredom made me hold the finger on the trigger....

Who would've thought animated GIFs would ever be cool again?

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10Aug/1420

r5u870 for v4l2 (Linux Kernel > 3.8?)

Update: 3pei has updated the driver to work on the latest linux releases. View his github repo here or download here.
Big thanks!

The Ricoh U5870 is a USB2.0-Video Interface Controller compliant with USB2.0 Video Class. The built-in series regulators allow power supply from 3.3V power to the R5U870 and the CMOS Sensor Module. In addition, coming in CSP package, the R5U870 is the best solution for a compact USB Camera Module.
The R5U870 comes with audio interface; MIC connection by using Audio Codec connections is possible.
This driver seems to have been left for dead... it's no longer needed as the r5u87x has replaced it for all UVM cameras. Unfortunately, the older WDM drivers still need this one and it hadn't been updated for the newest kernels or video-for-linux 2.

There have been many attempts to keep this driver alive here, here, here, here, here and here.

I have a Sony Vaio UX490N. It has a Ricoh Co., Ltd - Sony Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC3 [R5U870] and it is WDM. It cannot use the r5u87x driver. The r5u870 exists around the web... but I couldn't find one that would work out-of-the-box on Linux Mint 17. PCNetSpec over at the peppermintos.com forums posted information and an updated driver. Unfortunately, this driver threw an error on initialisation:

[  440.587372] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[  440.620480] usbcam: registering driver r5u870 0.11.3
[  440.620532] r5u870-0: Detected Sony VGP-VCC3
[  440.620920] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[  440.620939] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 2467 at /build/buildd/linux-3.13.0/drivers/media/v4l2-core/v4l2-dev.c:779 __video_register_device+0x4ff/0x540 [videodev]()
[  440.620943] Modules linked in: r5u870(OF+) usbcam(OF) videobuf_dma_sg videobuf_core videodev ctr ccm hid_generic snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_page_alloc dm_multipath coretemp scsi_dh snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event snd_rawmidi kvm joydev arc4 snd_seq pcmcia iwl3945 serio_raw iwlegacy snd_seq_device tifm_7xx1 mac80211 snd_timer usbhid yenta_socket tifm_core pcmcia_rsrc snd btusb hid lpc_ich cfg80211 pcmcia_core soundcore bnep rfcomm bluetooth sony_laptop binfmt_misc mac_hid parport_pc ppdev lp parport dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log i915 i2c_algo_bit drm_kms_helper firewire_ohci psmouse(OF) firewire_core crc_itu_t drm sky2 video [last unloaded: videobuf_core]
[  440.621020] CPU: 0 PID: 2467 Comm: modprobe Tainted: GF       W  O 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu
[  440.621023] Hardware name: Sony Corporation VGN-UX490N/VAIO                            , BIOS R0112N2 12/05/2007
[  440.621027]  00000000 00000000 e9fe5be4 c164b8c3 00000000 e9fe5c14 c10567ee c1826ffc
[  440.621036]  00000000 000009a3 f8f5a598 0000030b f8f4b54f f8f4b54f f2a7a800 ffffffff
[  440.621044]  00000000 e9fe5c24 c10568b2 00000009 00000000 e9fe5c50 f8f4b54f 00000002
[  440.621052] Call Trace:
[  440.621063]  [c164b8c3] dump_stack+0x41/0x52
[  440.621072]  [c10567ee] warn_slowpath_common+0x7e/0xa0
[  440.621084]  [f8f4b54f] ? __video_register_device+0x4ff/0x540 [videodev]
[  440.621094]  [f8f4b54f] ? __video_register_device+0x4ff/0x540 [videodev]
[  440.621100]  [c10568b2] warn_slowpath_null+0x22/0x30
[  440.621111]  [f8f4b54f] __video_register_device+0x4ff/0x540 [videodev]
[  440.621120]  [f8abd7f4] usbcam_usb_probe+0x334/0x590 [usbcam]
[  440.621128]  [c14a98b3] usb_probe_interface+0x193/0x2b0
[  440.621136]  [c140730a] ? driver_sysfs_add+0x5a/0x80
[  440.621141]  [c1407975] driver_probe_device+0x105/0x380
[  440.621147]  [c14a9089] ? usb_match_id+0x49/0x60
[  440.621153]  [c14a9166] ? usb_device_match+0x46/0x80
[  440.621158]  [c1407ca1] __driver_attach+0x71/0x80
[  440.621164]  [c1407c30] ? __device_attach+0x40/0x40
[  440.621169]  [c1405dd7] bus_for_each_dev+0x47/0x80
[  440.621175]  [c14073de] driver_attach+0x1e/0x20
[  440.621180]  [c1407c30] ? __device_attach+0x40/0x40
[  440.621186]  [c1407037] bus_add_driver+0x157/0x230
[  440.621192]  [c1408269] driver_register+0x59/0xe0
[  440.621197]  [c14a8317] usb_register_driver+0x67/0x140
[  440.621205]  [f8abcc42] ? usbcam_register_mod+0x62/0x210 [usbcam]
[  440.621213]  [f8abcd92] usbcam_register_mod+0x1b2/0x210 [usbcam]
[  440.621221]  [f8421000] ? 0xf8420fff
[  440.621228]  [f842105a] usbcam_minidrv_init+0x5a/0x1000 [r5u870]
[  440.621235]  [c1002122] do_one_initcall+0xd2/0x190
[  440.621241]  [f8421000] ? 0xf8420fff
[  440.621248]  [c104c87f] ? set_memory_nx+0x5f/0x70
[  440.621256]  [c164769a] ? set_section_ro_nx+0x54/0x59
[  440.621263]  [c10c3e9a] load_module+0x111a/0x18e0
[  440.621274]  [c10c47c5] SyS_finit_module+0x75/0xc0
[  440.621281]  [c11396db] ? vm_mmap_pgoff+0x7b/0xa0
[  440.621294]  [c1659bcd] sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28
[  440.621298] ---[ end trace bab7f9cdd3a1dbaa ]---
[  440.621301] r5u870-0: usbcam_usb_probe: video_register_device failed
[  440.621317] r5u870: probe of 1-6:1.0 failed with error -22
[  440.623343] usbcore: registered new interface driver r5u870

The WARN indicates that there were assertions on entering the function. Inspecting the function shows that there are two WARNs to check for valid input data:

795         /* the release callback MUST be present */
796         if (WARN_ON(!vdev->release))
797                 return -EINVAL;
798         /* the v4l2_dev pointer MUST be present */
799         if (WARN_ON(!vdev->v4l2_dev))
800                 return -EINVAL;

So... guesswork.. which of these is null? Am guessing it's the v4l2_dev. We've done nothing to initialise it. Further investigation of other, more updated drivers showed that we had to call v4l2_device_register prior to video_register_device.

        #include <media/v4l2-device.h>
        ...
        struct v4l2_device v4l2_dev_tmp;
        ...
        res = v4l2_device_register(&intf->dev, &v4l2_dev_tmp);
        if (res < 0) {
                usbcam_err(udp, "Could not register v4l2 device\n");
                goto out;
        }
        udp->ud_vdev.v4l2_dev = &v4l2_dev_tmp;

The results were quite startling at 0100 hours.

Download the driver here: R5U870 0.11.7.
To install all the required libraries to build: apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`.

Check that hideous screenshot... the best part? That number on the Cheese window was a count-down timer... I pressed the 'Capture' hardware button and Cheese responded by starting a 3-second count-down timer, resulting in taking a photo.

20 Comments

9Aug/142

Linux Mint 17 on the Sony Vaio UX490N UMPC

Right, this thing is powerful... Windows Vista came installed as default and there was no other choice than to replace with a Linux Distro. I scoured Distrowatch for a valid distribution, but had already had Linux Mint in mind.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint is fork of Ubuntu which is a distribution based on Debian.

Installation

Due to the age of the hardware, 32-bit was chosen and the ISO was downloaded. I then acquired a tool named Rufus which allows you to easily smush an ISO onto a USB stick. This stick is then bootable and we can install our distro.

The actual installation of Mint is painless... of course, you need to know how to partition and or WIPE all of your data, but that's something that I already expect you to know. One nice point is that if you choose "side-by-side" then the installer will resize your primary partition. I should check that the base Vista installation still works!

SSH

Sure, the UX is damn handy... but the thumb-typing can be really tiresome... even if our new shells have auto-complete. Due to this, you may want to remote in from your desktop via SSH. By default, SSH isn't installed. Run the following to install it. Yes, note that we install 'ssh'... I initially expected to install sshd, but the ssh package includes this.

sudo apt-get install ssh

Press 'yes' when prompted to download the additional packages. apt-get just warns you if there are dependencies over the single package you asked for.
You can now log in to your machine on port 22. Use the account you created when you installed Mint.

Ethernet?

dmesg gets spammed with eth0 link-up, link-down messages. I imagine the device is in the unit and the dock provides the physical port?
Either way, disable it permanently:

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

Add the following line:

sudo ifconfig eth0 down

Just before 'exit 0'. File should then look like:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

sudo ifconfig eth0 down

exit 0

Touchscreen

The Vaio UX comes with a Gunze touchscreen. This works out of the box, but isn't correct calibrated by default. Once you have Mint installed, run the following in a shell:

sudo apt-get install xinput-calibrator

Once this is installed, we can now run it to get our touchscreen aligned.
Note the underscore in the executable, whereas the package had a hyphen!

xinput_calibrator

Follow the on-screen prompts. Touch the points with the stylus when asked.
You'll then be provided a configuration to store against X11:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "calibration"
        MatchProduct    "GUNZE USB Touch Panel"
        Option  "Calibration"   "34 992 34 970"
        Option  "SwapAxes"      "0"
EndSection

There'll be a whole lot of output... it'll even tell you where to store the configuration. Unfortunately the location they specify is incorrect. Mint wants the file in a different area. Copy the section that matches the chunk above (chances are it's exactly the same) into the clipboard and then run the following:

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf

Paste the configuration you copied and save your file.
Reboot your device just for fun... your touchscreen should now behave as expected when you touch the furthest corners!

ALPS Trackpoint

This wasn't fun... Under windows, you can disable the 'tapping'. This, just like a touchpad (of which the trackpoint is not) is the action of hitting the device with a single, focused prod. The expectation is then a 'left mouse button' click. As stated, you can easily disable this in windows, but you don't get that option out of the box on Mint.

I started hacking apart the xf86-input-evdev, but realised that disabling mouse buttons on the trackpoint meant the left-hand physical buttons were also switched off.

Fortunately, our friend Lawrence Wu on github has hacked the psmouse kernel driver for us. He's lowered the sensitivity so that our taps need to be serious in order to be registered.

The driver is managed by dkms which allows a substitute driver to be loaded in replacement of the built-in kernel driver. Below are the instructions for doing so. (Note that these have been copied and annotated from Lawrence's page. All credit to him! We thank you a lot!)

cd /usr/src/
sudo wget https://github.com/antonizoon/psmouse-ux/archive/master.zip
sudo unzip master.zip
sudo rm master.zip
sudo mv psmouse-ux-master psmouse-ux
sudo dkms add -m psmouse -v ux
sudo dkms build -m psmouse -v ux
sudo dkms install -m psmouse -v ux

At this point, as long as there have been no errors, DKMS will have hold of a tasty new psmouse driver for your trackpoint. To use this new driver, we need to unload the current psmouse driver:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse

You'll note from here that your mouse doesn't work... we've removed the link from the hardware to the windowing system. Mouse events are no longer making it through the pipes. Let's now reload what seems to be the same driver.

sudo modprobe psmouse

No output... no messages... just a mouse cursor! Try your hardest to make that little rodent 'tap'!...

Camera

There hasn't been an up-to-date driver for this camera for a long time. Due to this, I modified the driver from PCNetSpec's post to work with the UX. See more information on how this happened here. To install my driver, the instructions are as follows:

(Please disregard the warnings... I'll fix these at a later date.)

wget http://www.otenko.com/ux/r5u870-0.11.7.zip
unzip r5u870
cd r5u870/
sudo make install
sudo modprobe r5u870

Note: This is still a work in progress... Once it's working here, I'll post the final instructions.

2 Comments

7Aug/140

Project 6029 – Canberra

My old stomping ground... I'd spent a few late nights at the museum as a volunteer back in the day... great group of people (minimal infighting) and a great atmosphere of work getting done. We were restoring carriage roofs at the time (didn't know that you could use tar to weather-seal a carriage) and had heard murmurings of an effort to restore 'the biggest steam engine in the southern hemisphere'.

I had also heard that they were to shut the Cooma branch of the railway, as there was no funding... how were they going to possibly going to get funds to restore something a lot costlier?

Well... 8 years later, they did... they have... it works... Their blog is here. The latest photo album is here.
All photos credit to Howard Moffatt.

Update as at 13/08/2014... It turns out they're already running the loco through to the main line. Credit to Trent Nicholson for this photo:

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4Aug/140

Introducing my new Sony Vaio UX490N

Have wanted one of these things for ages... finally bought one on eBay.
There used to be tons of them in Sofmap in Denden Town, Osaka.... but they were too dear for what was offered.

See my other posts under the 'Vaio UX' Category for instructions, hints, etc...

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11Jul/140

QR Rail Grinder at Ararat

The day trip was simple... take the Overland (for the first time) from Southern Cross to Ararat, spend the afternoon in town and then return on the evening V/Locity.

The afternoon freight was smack on time. But then this happened.

This is the RG331 QR Rail Grinder. ARTC contracts it to freshen the rails around their network. I had heard something grinding away and headed for the rails... but had missed it. Fortunately it reversed and re-grinded the same location. Of note, it has quite a strange horn.

Was a pleasant surprise... have only ever previously seen it staged in sidings. Here are some shots from Yass Junction, way back in 2009.

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15May/140

South Yarra and Hawksburn

South Yarra is a suburb of Melbourne located to the south-east of the city grid. It is a junction for the Sandringham line which splits from the Cranbourne/Pakenham and Frankston lines. Being two stops from Flinders Street Station (which may as well be known as 'Central' for suburban services) it sees a lot of traffic.

The next stop down the main line is Hawksburn and there's some fairly scenic spots along the line between these two stations. There's also a lot of traffic to be seen during daylight hours.

Most of this traffic is Metro Trains Melbourne's standard suburban stock of either the Siemens EMUs or the refurbed Comeng EMUs. Every now and then a V/Line V/Locity or N-Class hauled long-distance passenger service will come through.

Every so often, you'll see a freight train. There's currently four services that frequent the area:

Long Island Steel Train
The first off the list has a scheduled path daily around 11:30am. It doesn't often hit this mark, usually much closer to 10:30am on weekdays and then midday on weekends.
Apex Gravel Train
I've sighted the gravel train infrequently. It usually appears at around 8pm on weekdays and I've not successfully captured it during any daylight hours.
Morwell Paper Train
The paper train has made an appearance in the steel train timeslots once or twice. I don't know it's exact schedule and that makes it even harder to spot.
Kensington Grain
This train reverses via Caulfield or Pakenham every so often.

South Yarra Station

Everything south-bound comes through here. Heading north, you get 8 tracks towards Richmond. These tracks all cross the Yarra River at the same time on a very plain concrete bridge. Not very picturesque from afar, but there is a nice pedestrian bridge parallel to it on the east side. This bridge puts you within 2 feet of the bogies of anything southbound on the Pakenham/Dandenong line.

The platforms also provide a vantage point in either direction due to their length. There's a signal box and gantries that can provide good framing. The condos that are going up around the station also help.

Hawksburn Station

This seems to be another one of Victorian Railways cookie-cutter station templates. 2 bi-directional lines pass through Hawksburn Station, one servicing Frankston and the other Cranbourne/Pakenham. The station was opened on the 7th of May 1879. You'll find that it is very similar to all other stations towards Caulfield.

Locations

See the map above for some great locations around the area. I've just realised I've left the bridge north of South Yarra Station off. Not too hard to find though.

Location A: My new favourite spot

Turns out there's a really nice S-Bend between South Yarra and Hawksburn which provides some great locations for capturing these services. The approach towards Hawksburn just before the Cromwell Road overpass provides a great angle to capture traffic from South Yarra with a good amount of scenery for framing. It's also very accessible, legal and, when it's not raining, has heaps of natural light.

Wide shots allow great framing...

Whereas the 200mm zoom on my NEX-5R nearly lets me get a good frame on the Jam Factory tunnel...

Portrait shots work too...

And if you're feeling game... you can also shoot backwards...

Location B: Another spot on the way back to South Yarra

And, just in case you've been hanging for a service that hasn't arrived... you can follow the line back to South Yarra and, hopefully, not miss out on any shots. There's a little lane-way named Palfreyman Street. You'll want to be at the northern-most end of it. Once there, you're on the right-hand curve heading out of the Jam Factory tunnel. Depending on the time of day, the lighting can work here too.

Location C: View from above

The Jam Factory carpark provides quite a good point for photos. You get to choose the elevation. Lighting is an issue though, especially at this time of year. As you are effectively looking east-west the sun will always be shining at you. Fortunately the condo in front of you can block the light (especially around freight-train-o-clock) and help with exposure.

I happened to catch the steel train here on the 17th of May 2014.

Location D: No photos yet.

There's a few park benches on this grassy knoll; perfect for reading a book or a railway magazine and watching all 4 railway lines heading out of the city. You'll hear all the trains coming from the east as they approach the Jam Factory tunnel and slow down for the curve. You'll also hear anything in the other direction as they alert passengers via South Yarra Station.

I've not actually taken any shots from this location and have nothing to report. I'll do so at some point in the future and update this post.

Location E: Half-way between Hawksburn and Toorak Station

There's a pedestrian bridge half-way back between Toorak and Hawksburn Stations... The stairs on the north-side provide a good view of the rails coming from Hawksburn.