Railway Modelling Inspiration - Internal users and withdrawn locos

DB Werk Fahrzeuginstandhaltung Cottbus

Some modelling inspiration for the corner of a depot or yard scene:

Internal User Wagon (Samms) with Ludmilla roof

Withdrawn Kof III (335 157-4) and crash damaged withdrawn V90 (296 041-7).

Bavarian Layout - Picture Update

The river bed is no longer dry, and the eastern side of the river has had a river wall and railings added. Oh, and all the cars now have authentic Bavarian number plates; a tiny detail but one that makes a surprising difference up close.

Bahnland Bayern in HO

Some more progress shots, apologies for the poor lighting, these were just taken with my iPhone once modelling had finished for the day to record the days activities. The basic elements for the Bavarian scene are all pretty much there; the Schloss, complete with beer garden, the Black forest imbiss & bier chalet, and the mountains.

I've also begun to install the overhead catenary, this time I'm going for Veissmann, rather than Sommerfeldt as the masts are more accurate for the region and era I'm modelling. Many more to be fitted before I'm done.

Compare the second photo with one taken from roughly the same angle just over a year ago and the progress is quite dramatic.

Brief European layout update

A lot of work has taken place on my main European layout in the last few months, but much has not been particularly worthy of photography, such as wiring and fitting point motors and point decoders. The main work has been in what will become the station, with the through lines and two bays now laid, and the pointwork for the station throat largely complete.Further time was spent reworking the baseboards, hopefully for the last time, particularly in the station approach area, allowing more space for the 'frontscene' (as opposed to a backscene) as I am  keen to see the trains running through a town-scape on the approach to the station, rather than all the railway infrastructure in the foreground. I've also widened the station itself to allow a few carriage sidings to be laid in front of the column that will by necessity have to act as a scenic break roughly two-thirds of the way along the station. As a consequence of this compromise which results from the structural challenges of building a large layout in a cellar, I will only be modelling part of the station, the through platforms will allow a loco and up to 5-6 coaches to appear from off scene, into the station, while the rest is still in the fiddle yard. The front bay platform end in a blind tunnel to allow five coaches and a loco to be accommodated.

All pointwork on the visible part of the layout is the latest Tillig Elite code 83, which in my opinion is the finest ready to run track available, and once ballasted and weathered is close to handlaid in both look and performance. It also has the advantage of being quite flexible so can be laid with some curves to avoid the jointed look that ready-made points can suffer from.

The main lines are laid with Roco Code 83 concrete sleepered flexi-track, which has a finer sleeper profile than most other proprietary HO track, whilst the sidings are to be Tillig elite, which matches the turnouts.

The point motors are generally DCC Concepts Cobalt, which seem to be better put together these days. I had quite a lot of issues with some of the early batches I used on Widnes Road, and they were replaced by the more robust but far chunkier Tortoise motors for exhibition use, after two cobalts failed at an exhibition.

The motors are wired from the outset for full DCC operation, this being accomplished with NCE 'Switch-8's' which are a very cost-effective solution to turnout conversion.   

I've also made the most of the fine weather to start on detailing and renumbering stock, the first completed is a pair of 111's in Bavarian advertising livery. These are the recent Roco models, with full buffer beam detailing fitted and painted, and they are now awaiting some light weathering.

European Specialist Material - Part 1

Hi there, long time no blog. What with rebuilding the superstructure of the BR layout Widnes Road with the gratefully received assistance of Andy (peg-leg) and Wayne, and the a third and final re-think of the baseboards of the 'great European project' I've not found much time to get out into the real world and do much photography, nor has the progress on my three layouts been interesting enough to photograph being mainly confined to extensive gnawing of large piles of wood into lots of sawdust and smaller pieces of wood.

Having now finished the new legs and baseboard connections and tried the new arrangement out at the recent Watford show, I have been able to do other things. The first of these was a long weekend, Friday to Monday night in the Bremen and Hamburg area with some reprobates from the UK, including Peter, Tom and Colin, and joining up out there with Andy (Ginge).

Monsoon at Bremen Hbf 17th May 2013

Despite the best efforts of a monsoon on arrival to dampen the enthusiasm, a great three and a half days was had, and many updates are to follow as I work my way through the 1,350 photos that were fired off.

There was also time for a quick visit to Roland-modellbahnstudio (which was rather longer than anticipated due to the shop having moved about two miles nearer town). Note to self, check address before heading off into rain to find railway shop, don't rely on Tom having been there five years ago...sorry Tom ;) So there are some new Hobbytrain Doppelstockwagens and a digital Roco 101 to give test run to when I get home.

DBAG BR 218 339-0 on a top-and-tailed DB Regio service at Hamburg Hbf

A few sneak previews of some of what was seen and bashed follows, much more to follow on here and on my Flickr page.

SBB Cargo 421 389-8 @ Bremen Hbf 18/5/13

RBH 102 (143 069-3) & RBH 102 143 150-4 @ Bremen Hbf 18/5/13

Wiener Lokalbahnen Cargo Siemens Taurus 1216 953 @ Bremen Hbf 18/5/13

Metronom ME 146-08 @ Bremen Hbf on a Hamburg Hbf turn 18th May 2013

Dispolok Siemens ER 20-001 at Niebull Bf 19/5/13 on a NOB service to Hamburg Altona from Westerland

A quartet of new Voith Gravita 10 BB Diesels at Itzehoe Stabling point inc. 261 099-6, 261 037-6 and 261 077-2

DB Rabbits with 218 366-3 leading passing NOB Siemens Mak DE 2700-10 at Niebull Bhf

European Layout - Update

I had originally planned to spend this weekend adding DCC turnout decoders to Widnes Road, which would have meant dragging it all upstairs from the dungeon and setting up in the dining room in order to wire the boards up to test the installation.  

I tested the first decoder before committing to rewiring the whole layout, and lo and behold, a DCC 'funny' occurred. It worked OK on my old ZTC system, but the much newer ECoS would not recognise the decoder (an NCE Switch-it). 

Much head-scratching and consultation the internet later and I was not much further forward, so abandoned that idea while I waited on the font of much of this black art, Kevin from Coastal DCC to get back to me. So instead, I roped Alice, my better half, into helping (well, more accurately, do-ing) the emerging scenery on my permanent HO European layout.

It turned out that the decoder issue is a clash with Railcom on an earlier firmware installed on the ECoS, and it all works fine now, but by then it was too late to put Widnes Road up and it can wait until another weekend. As it is, really good progress has been made with the base layer of scenery; namely the river bed, and hills which form a scenic break between the layout and fiddle yard.

The grey area next to the river wall is where the large pub will go, with beer garden on both sides of the railway line. On the other side of the river will be a camp site, running up the hillside.

Back from a rail trip round Germany and Belgium

I've posted another few highlights from a week long trip round Germany and Belgium, taking in Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels and Charleroi, and there is a link to my flickr site with far more for those who are interested here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/widnes_road/

'Trainspo' - Peer Reviewed Railway Photos

In an effort to fill the void in my life (well bored tea-break shaped void anyway) that has been left by the demise of Fotopic, I've been dabbling in other photo hosting websites, including various groups on Flickr. It was through this that I came across Trainspo.com which seemed to have a far higher standard of photography that simply hundreds of similar shots dumped to an enormous folder online. Their mission statement of sorts is:
"we would like for you to only upload high quality photos. It is better to upload just a few, yet high-quality, photos than a lot of mediocre ones."

Which I think is a laudable aim. to help enforce this, upload slots are restricted to a maximum of 5, and are only renewed if photos are considered by peer review to be of a sufficient interest and quality.

I hope I've managed to upload some interesting shots, and they are located here: http://trainspo.com/Widnes.Road/gallery/ The best part was having to carefully sift through the last ten years or so of photos to pick ones I felt were interesting or of use to modellers rather than dumping 100+ images at a go online.

As for a replacement for fotopic's incredible usefulness when looking for a particular detail shot for railway modelling, it's not perfect. I'm still looking for something as infinitely searchable for such delights as different headcode / disc combos on early 80's Class 40's and other delights...

My favourite shot I've uploaded to trainspo so far is the one below, not because it is particularly well shot, the lighting on the loco front is unfortunately out, but because of the setting and memory of watching kilometre long coal trains snaking through the Australian countryside. Fantastic.

The demise of fotopic... a chance to reflect

As has been sporadically picked up on various railway blogs over the last week or two, the photo-sharing website fotopic has ceased to be. Having gone through various death throws over the last year or so it would appear to have finally expired at the start of March.

This is a pain for a number of reasons; not least of which is the sheer efffort required to move everything to another image hosting website, not to mention the loss of the ability to search millions of railway images for a particular detail shot for model railway projects.

However it does mean now that I have started a flickr site, Widnes Road Flickr Site I will be far more selective on what I upload, due to a 300Mb / month limit. This does have the advantage of making me thing rather more carefully about which images I want to put online, and not simply batch load 300 at a time, half of which are just a slightly different angle or zoom. Less is, as they say, more. Todays selection is Hungarian Railways (MAV) V43 class electric V43 1108 taken at Budapest station on 3rd August 2010.

DB ICE at London St Pancras International

In what I truly hope is a first taste of great things to come, Deutsche Bahn in a superb piece of publicity tested a pair of their ICE-3 sets through the Channel Tunnel this week, including evacuation tests to demonstrate the potential for additional services from London to Europe culminating in the display of one of the ICE-3 sets, suitably vinyled with Union Jack ICE logos and displaying ICE service No. 9970 to Frankfurt (M) Hbf via Koln and Rotterdam at London's St. Pancras International station today, the 19th October.