jmh67

Have an ice lolly, and when you've finished it, use the stick. Works for Zeuke, BTTB, and Tillig couplers, and from the look of things, it should work for those of the Hornby models as well.

I guess that's the point - it has to look acceptable. There is more of a relative difference between 2.5 mm scale and 2 mm scale, than there is between 4 mm scale and 3.5 mm scale, the ratios being 1.25 and 1.14, respectively. Of course, there is much variation in 1:1 as well, so you might just get away with mixing scales if the mismatch is not made obvious by some features. Most noticeable might be differences in door sizes. If you turn the door(s) away from the viewers, the clay sheds may even look all right. Otherwise you may want to fit larger doors (a six foot man would be a little over 15 mm tall in TT, a typical house door about 17 mm). Martin

Definitely! Even with smaller windows, some semblance of an interior does a lot for an "active" appearance. Curtains help, too, although with some greying, lopsided ones you can also create the impression of an empty apartment. Usually, it is meant for the chimney sweep who won't have to balance on / slide along the roof ridge, or climb back into the attic otherwise. Actually, there should be small windows (exit hatches) near the chimneys, too. You can see one here: Haltepunkt Möhrenbach (Wikimedia Commons) Martin

Rekoboy, may I borrow some of your ideas for when I get around to add some more models of buildings to my layout? It's great that you haven't used rectangular floor plans for all buildings. That adds considerably to the small-town charm. However, I believe the post flag is a bit too much. AFAIR most small post offices only had the sign on the wall. Besides, it seems to hang too low - judging from the position of the mail box and the door, it may be just right for someone's head to bump into. ;-)

Note, however, that the track geometry may be different, in particular the angles and (scaled) radii of the turnouts, so that you may not achieve a true-to-scale reduction in size.

Not sure about low relief, although this could be useful for modular or diorama-type layouts. But the idea of rescaling existing kits sounds good, at least for a start. Furthermore, some models of generic (inasmuch as this is possible) British outline railway structures would come in handy, such as waiting shelters, signal boxes, footbridges, platforms or platform edges, fences, platform roofs ... and yes, I know that there are regional differences, in particular in earlier epochs. I also second natterjack's proposal for "landscape furniture", and would like to add things like ticket machines, station signage, or street lights.

You can narrow it down a bit, depending on the rolling stock used. Diesel locomotives turned up on DB tracks in sizeable numbers only from the mid-1950s on, DR followed about five years later. The DB emblem ("Keks" = "cookie") came into use in 1956. In the same year, the old first and second class carriages became the new first class, and old third became second class. So, if you run a diesel locomotive and rebuilt carriages, you're likely to model in Epoch IIIb - which is still about 15 years. But with the V 100 coming into use from about 1961 on, that narrows it down further to the 1960s. Furthermore, DB locomotives got their computer numbers in 1968, hence it is only a timespan of about seven years to worry about. Martin

It not only looks like it. What with the RIV and OPW agreements, goods vans circulated quite freely all over the continent. They still do, perhaps even more so now.

Sitting back, looking at the map, and thinking a bit about the "big picture", I would not expect the network to look too different to what we have now. Population centres still are where they were in the first half of the 1800s. We'd still need lines between Manchester and Glasgow, between London and Leeds, between Cardiff and Birmingham. Duplication of routes has resolved itself after a fashion, anyway. Lines would still radiate from London just because it is the capital. Maybe the London termini could have been concentrated - e.g. a big "London North" station instead of Euston, St Pancras, and King's Cross, and "London South" combining Victoria, Charing Cross, Waterloo, and Cannon Street - , and we'd already have some more cross-London main line tunnels. Perhaps a few more cross-country lines should have remained in service (also for freight and relief purposes), such as the "Varsity Line" and the "Woodhead Line", likewise some branches such as the one to Ilfracombe, and the Grand Central line might have remained in service. Perhaps a direct Harwich - Holyhead line via Cambridge and Birmingham could have been built, and the railways up the Welsh valleys would (still) all connect to an Abergavenny-Swansea line. Some more local networks could have been electrified after the fashion of the South-Eastern or the continental S-Bahn systems (3rd rail or overhead, whichever fits the bill), such as in the Manchester-Liverpool area, in the West Midlands, and in West and South Yorkshire. Anything else would come down to local details, such as whether to run the London-Leicester trains via Stevenage or Luton, whether to serve Tadcaster, Cleobury, or Kelso by a railway, whether the Settle & Carlisle should be double-tracked and electrified ... A more generous loading gauge has already been mentioned and would definitely make sense, perhaps also an earlier centralisation to avoid wasteful duplication, but otherwise? No idea beyond the above, and the wish to avoid the general road mania of the second half of the 20th century which, with hindsight, appears to be one of the roots of today's problems.

So that was the tram! Having spent some time in Bristol, I always wondered. I thought it might have been carriage sidings, but it didn't seem to fit in, what with the grooved rails. Thanks for the photos!

Of course they did, and given what Zeuke started with, they did a very decent job (and continued Zeuke's tradition in that respect, e.g. with the models of classes 56 and 86). But why did Zeuke start with a model of class 81 instead of, say, the much more numerous T 13? That's what I could not find out. I guess the 81 just looks kind of cute. This ties in with my thoughts about this comment: Not sure about the autotank, that era was too long ago for me. But what else would one use as a shunter in the diesel era? 08s were everywhere, fit everywhere, were used for many years. Likewise the Austerity classes - from what I have read, they could be seen in many places. I believe it is very difficult to find a niche that is popular - I even think this may be a contradiction in itself. As multifaceted as the history of railways is, both in the UK and in Germany, there is always something that you stumble over almost everywhere, and that will also be what Jill and Joe Average will look for first, I expect. Be that the Black Five or the P 8, the Pacer or the railbus. Something that fits on most layouts will be the money maker. I should hope the industry won't restrict itself too much to one region. Interests vary. It's difficult to model a Yorkshire outline if all you can get is rolling stock from the Southwest, and kits of models of buildings in the Home Counties. Just like (not too long ago) it was difficult to model a place in the northern lowlands of Germany if you weren't great shakes at DIY, and the industry mostly offered kits following outlines from the low mountains. But the situation has improved over time.

On the risk of getting off-topic: The V36 has a different (shorter, although similar) chassis, and the model of the 92.65, aside from being even more exotic than the 81, is a compromise - the class 81 wheels are strictly speaking too small for it. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 ...

Just in case anybody is interested: http://geo-en.hlipp.de/photo/67518 - one of the last trains in Trebsen. Most passenger trains from the 1970s to the 1990s consisted of railbuses and matching trailers, sometimes up to six vehicles in one train. At busy times, class 110/112 diesels ran with a rake of Bghw carriages.

"Pocket rocket" - I like that expression! But if it runs smoothly, why not. It's just that it is rather loud, what with the fast spinning cogwheels. Look for PMT chassis. They are said to run very well, and come in various sizes (but they don't come exactly cheap). Could be useful for model trams, DMUs, shunters and the like.

I've dabbled in Continental TT since I was a schoolkid in the 1970s, am still playing 1960s/1970s DR mostly with BTTB rolling stock, and only know the UK railways in the 1998 - 2012 era. Hence I may be heavily biased, but for what it's worth: As nice as the classic and semi-classic rolling stock is, I'd rather see models of more modern eras from, say, the 1980s on. In particular: Pacers, Sprinters, Networkers on the passenger side. High-speed trains of any kind are too long for most layouts, so no real need for these. Perhaps some single carriages. Locomotives: the long-lived classes 31 and 37 would make sense, class 08 also because it's been the shunter. I'd rather use a class 20, however - it's got a longer wheelbase. Also classes 56, 66, and maybe 67 if some suitable passenger stock is available. Electric locomotives and catenary are too fiddly for me. Freight: if I only knew the designations! But some of the usual 4-axle steel-bodied open wagons surely won't be amiss, likewise some tankers. I am not too sure about others (covered vans?) as there wasn't much local freight in the time I could observe. Nuclear flask trains (dare I say it) sure are interesting, but a bit of a niche. On a general note, if this idea gets off the ground, I hope that they take a sensible approach, no matter what era(s) they concentrate on first. "Bread-and-butter" rolling stock first! No use starting with exotic stuff just because it looks "nice" (think of DRG class 81, only 10 of which were built). Martin

I don't mind the new fonts or colours, but I am not happy with the new format for another reason, namely the "activity streams". While they may be all right for a slow forum with a handful of contributions every day, it is not suitable for a busy place like this, where you can have dozens of contributions per hour. It makes catching up after a few days' absence rather difficult, as there may be some interesting threads that were started in the meantime, but of which I do not know the titles yet (obviously). The old page by page format was easier to handle. Also, it seems that a restriction has crept in as to the number of back contributions or the time one can go back. So, if you can, please bring back the page by page view of the latest contributions, even if it is only as an option.

Not having seen the model in question, it's difficult to make recommendations, but I'd be tempted to put the locomotive and tender bodies in the dishwasher, and give the frames and the mechanism a bath in alcohol.

Indeed, the middle track in the original plan looks a little squeezed. If you keep the general track plan as you proposed, I'd recommend that you provide more room between the loop and the industrial track, so that you can fit a road in between, with place to transfer goods between rail and road vehicles. The Merklingen and Bröckingen plans above look better in terms of operational potential. Or you add a track to the Gussenstadt plan, but opposite to track 2. The links on http://www.dorfbahnhof.de/fka.html may serve as inspiration, even though I haven't found any track plans there.

I like this idea! When I worked in Uxbridge for almost two years in 1998-2000, I always wondered how the area might look if the railway was still in operation, maybe with an extra halt serving Brunel University. A pity that there was so little left of it. So, good luck with your project!

There were a few stations called "So-and-so High Street". Uxbridge comes to mind, although that's in the London area, and the High Street station has long gone. Watford High Street is still a busy place. Then there was Rickmansworth Church Street which is long gone, too. Not on High Street, of course, but on a major street anyway. What they have in common is this: they are or were located at an outer end of the major street they are or were named after, at the edge of the town centre. That seems to be a place where smallish, independent, family-run businesses may conceivably have kept their place, while the more expensive plots further down the road towards the centre have been snapped up by the big chains. Such smaller shops may keep their signage almost unchanged over many years, and most of the change observed over time would probably down to the road vehicles. You may want to have a few car and lorry models matching the eras of the rail vehicles.

That was the Zittau - Reichenau line, leading to what is now Bogatynia, also a 750 mm gauge line which was later extended to Hermsdorf (now Heřmanice u Frýdlantu in the Czech Republic) where it joined the line to Friedland (Frýdlant v Čechách) which was a bit of an oddity in itself - it was also built to 750 mm gauge while most other narrow gauge lines in former Austria-Hungary had 760 mm. Reichenau/Bogatynia's later railway history is rather interesting, too, and even a bit confusing. The Zittau-Reichenau line was interrupted when the new border was drawn in 1945, and Bogatynia then got a railway connection to Turoszów (the former Türchau) via a 750 mm gauge industrial line serving the open cast lignite mines there. In the late 1950s that was replaced by a standard gauge line from Trzciniec (Rohnau) on the Zittau-Görlitz line. This passes through Polish territory twice, and has also a junction with the line from Mikułowa (formerly Nikolausdorf). In 2000 the Mikułowa-Bogatynia line lost its passenger traffic, and Bogatynia's station has been closed since. Large parts of the old narrow gauge line were lost to mining activities, but the odd bit of track can reportedly still be seen in the places the line once served. -jmh

That's the one. I still regret that I didn't take any photos back in '99. Here's a rather extreme case of the short German passenger trains mentioned above, a "Ludmilla" with a single carriage: https://geo-en.hlipp.de/photo/55523 (however, this line is still in operation). -jmh

Something struck me as odd in the video. Then I noticed that your lorry driver must be a recent immigrant from the UK or Japan ;-). While French trains (mostly) drive on the left, road vehicles drive on the right in continental Europe. Other than that, I can only agree with those who called your layouts "very evocative" or gave them similar compliments. Looking at the pictures, I can almost "smell the smoke on the Saint Denis wind" or whichever industrial city comes to mind. -jmh

Passenger-wise, on the Bedford-Bletchley line ran a train consisting of two old four-axle carriages between two Fragonset Class 31s. IIRC that happened in 1999. There were also plenty of very short passenger trains (one locomotive, one carriage) in Germany in the 1990s, too, usually on lines that were scheduled for closure in the near future. -jmh

I discovered this discussion only recently. Good job so far! There is one thing that I would do differently: I would increase the platform length. While a short platform is fine for a line that carries mainly freight, one could imagine passenger coaches coming to your station as "Kurswagen", having been detached in the imaginary junction from a long-distance train and being attached to the local train. Such procedures were once popular in places with tourist destinations.