Sir Madog

The sandstone you will find in Germany is mainly grey-ish (eastern Germany) or red (Hessia, Palatinate, Bavaria). A yellow colour can be found mainly in unpaved country lanes for agricultural use (Feldweg).. In any case, sandpaper is not the right method as it is way too smooth.

I live in Germany for 64 years now and I have yet to see a yellowy paved road.

IMHO, OO9 is a kind of generic gauge, which summarizes British NG from 11´ 11 1/2`` up to 2` 3`` (Talyllyn) railway. All available RTR models run on 9mm track and use the same type of coupler at just about the same hight. Technically, there is no reason you could not operate Peco stock with a Bachmann or Heljan engine. Looking at the prototype, that´s a different story. FR bug boxes from Peco behing a converted Douglas from Bachmann may look odd to the trained eye.

Unfortunately it does not work this way, as the screens are horizontally oriented. Instead of trying to capture it in one shot, why don´t you simply move the camera, starting at the upper part of the layout, and then moving down? I find it extre,ely awkward to watch "vertical videos" and usually skip them.

ThomasG - a nice little layout! Just one question - do your eyes sit one above the other, or why did you film your layout in portrait-mode? Look here:

I beg to differ! A station in Germany is classified as a place, where trains can either start or end, requiring a passing loop as a run-around or at least a stub track. Whenever a station had a passing loop, it was uncommon to block it with a goods van parked at the goods shed. Of course, there are exemptions to that rule, which you could find in Bavaria and Wuerttemberg, but, hey, that´s not all of Germany.

I assume you are wrong there - I doubt if the communist east German government would have imported a toy train set from Japan, depicting a train from the "enemy" West Germany.

It´s simply illegal and will most likely put you in jail if you model the insignia of the "Third Reich". That´s why you won´t find it on any kind of a model, be it railways, planes, ships or any other model specific to that era.

Why was a name chosen, which is obviously a literal translation of "Fernhead", but so explicitly not German at all?

Well, it´s not a rarity tthat fetches a fortune when you sell it. I´d say you will have a hard time selling it. As for 12mm gauge wheels, you can contact Bemo directly via their home page.

How true - railway modellers are a very patient and forgiving bunch !

Apparently, the set is not yet out in the market. Could have been a pre-production sample shown at the Intermodellbau show?

The Prussian Railway had a bespoke set of standard brick buildings, which gave the line a familiar look. One of the notable features was the rather flat roof as seen in the Auhagen building. What makes Reichelsheim the "wrong" kind of building is the roofline and -angle, plus some decoration you will not find on the austere Prussian buildings.

I don´t want to rain on your parade, but the "Reichelsheim" station building, although a brick building is not really suitable for a Prussion themed layout. The KPEV had standardized small town station buildings, which gave the stations a rather uniform look. A typical building would be Auhagen # 14467 "Krakow".

I am so utterly jealous!

Yes, the points with the moulded-on ballast are also non-latching.

The Mosel line is one of my favourite lines! I have fond memories of a trip from Koblenz to Trier when the line was still worked by steam in the very early 1970s. The demise of steam actually effected a change in the wine quality from the grapes of the vineyards along the tracks. Unfortunately, all the pictures I took back then were lost in a house move, Rainer Tielke made a very nice Z scale diorama, which was on display at the Intermodellbau 2019!

Yup, that´s the one! Here is a picture of a pre-production sample. The price for the set will be in the same range as the Zeitgeist rack train set.

Interesting to see that the price of the DCC/Sound version has gone up by €40! By the time, the Zeitgeist set hits the market, Lemke/Hobbytrain will also release their version of the non-rack Zugspitzbahn loco.

I can second that! It´s a highly contagious disease. Years back, I built a small, roughly 3´by 5´ layout, based on motifs along the route of the Glacier Express. Just a couple of pics:

Modelling Swiss NG can be not only quite, but very much expensive, if you go above and beyond the range of products the Bemo people offer. There is Ferro-Suisse, occasionally Fulgurex, FriHo and others, but at prices you would not want to tell your wife. Nice models, though! As others have already said, there are not many termini to be found on the RhB. Arosa, Tirano, St.Moritz and, last but not least, the "other side" of Chur station, where the trains for Arosa depart. Mind you, none of these are really small places that would fit on a board of the size you mentioned. If you still want to follow this route, freelancing is the name of the game. Just food for thought - Rene´ Wolf of The Netherlands has made a small layout called Renez, which was featured in Carl Arendt´s famous Small Layout Scrapbook! http://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-84-april-2009/ Scroll down until you hit the layout description.

The first being something like "pee-koh", the latter more like "pick-oh?

An excellent representation of today´s derailed thoughts about art. I like the model, but I strongly dislike the "prototype"!

The era of locomotive pulled trains seems to rapidly coming to an end in Switzerland, as the classic electric locomotives are coming of age now. Mind you even the Ge 4/4 III is up 26 years in service now! The Ge 4/4 II started 46 years ago! With SLM being long gone, there is no source for small batches of narrow gauge locomotives available any longer.

Here is a link to the UIC coach classification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIC_classification_of_railway_coaches