Jump to content
 

Overseas railways worth modelling


whart57
 Share

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Allegheny1600 said:

pored over the Michelin maps of Morocco but they only showed the still extant standard gauge lines

I might be wrong, but from what I remember there was some sort of agreement not to build any standard gauge aside from the first main line, so the french military built vast amounts of 600mm to get troops and equipment around and open up the country. By the mid 30s all those lines were either gone or essentially were replaced by standard gauge on slightly better alignments. Much of the current standard gauge network was originally 600mm.

 

The locos/stock were mostly scrapped where they were, I suppose in the 30s 600mm lines were closing all over france and the sugar beet lines had plenty of spare ex ww1 motive power. One of the 37 0660 mallets got back to france at pithiviers, where it was given side tanks and made into an ugly 0660t, which didnt get used much and was scrapped just before preservation.

8 of the mallets went to dahomey and lasted til 1948.

I'm not aware of the 10 kitson meyers going anywhere, or the many 060t, 062t and 460t they had. Which seems a bit daft considering that there were expanding 600mm lines in africa which might have used them - the cf du mayumbe in belgian Congo bought 23 small garratts from st leonard during the 20s/30s, and the 700 mile long vicicongo railway was built during this time (extended in ww2 with massive bagnall 282t as a potential alternative supply line to egypt).

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Check out this amazing video by Kaustav Chatterjee... He's done amazing job on this HO scale diorama that we had commissioned him to build for us to display our model trains....

 

Talent and skill like this isn't easy to find in our neck of the woods...show him some love. Please do LIKE, SHARE and SUBSCRIBE to his channel and check out his amazing work.

 

 

  • Like 6
Link to post
Share on other sites

If you like the med, and narrow gauge, the Malta Railway is a definite must-build. It was metre gauge, so it could be built in H0m (OOn3), 5.5mm scale (16.5mm gauge) or G scale.

The railway ran from the capital, Malta to the former capital of Mdina. The railway operated from 1883 up until 1931, when it lost passengers in competition to the buses, which had just started to appear on the islands.

The line featured 10 engines, 0-6-0Ts, Adriatic and Prairie Tanks built by Manning Wardle, Beyer Peacock and Black Hawthorn

 

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • RMweb Gold
On 12/07/2020 at 09:10, Hando said:

If you like the med, and narrow gauge, the Malta Railway is a definite must-build. It was metre gauge, so it could be built in H0m (OOn3), 5.5mm scale (16.5mm gauge) or G scale.

The railway ran from the capital, Malta to the former capital of Mdina. The railway operated from 1883 up until 1931, when it lost passengers in competition to the buses, which had just started to appear on the islands.

The line featured 10 engines, 0-6-0Ts, Adriatic and Prairie Tanks built by Manning Wardle, Beyer Peacock and Black Hawthorn

 

 

 

Does anyone know why the train in the picture has been quite obviously cut and pasted? It appears to be a narrow gauge train (chopper coupling) on Standard gauge track and you can see the "join" especially around the chimney and the man's legs.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm not sure it has, if you look at other photos of the Malta railway it just looks that way. I think because of the sleeper spacing and light rail. Look at the top photo in this thread, does that look like 3ft?!

 

 

Edited by Hobby
Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, simonmcp said:

It appears to be a narrow gauge train (chopper coupling) on Standard gauge track and you can see the "join" especially around the chimney and the man's legs.

 

Agreed that it's a cut'n'paste job. Just look at the train and the conductor and then look at the garden bench just behind the front of the loco - or else it's a huge seat!! I think it's a poorly done job just to 'make something' for the cover.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

Link to post
Share on other sites

If anyone is interested in modelling the lesser known railways...one good place to start is Sri Lankan. Scenery is beautiful, especially in the hills, the have a variety of stock and shorter trains means you don't have to spend much on long rakes and so on.

 

We've been working on our first Sri Lankan Railway kit in HO scale, more details here: 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

For SriLanka, have a look at my designs, done because someone asked specifically. Finding good scale drawings is difficult, and I was more interested in older stock.

http://www.rue-d-etropal.com/3D-printing/3d_printed_broad-gauge-trains1.htm

 

As track gauge is 5ft 6in I would prefer to see it modelled in 3mm/ft, as that is spot on for 16.5mm gauge, and there is a large range of accessories in that scale thanks to 15mm wargamers. I would make modelling the narrow gauge more difficult but z gauge would be closest.

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, rue_d_etropal said:

For SriLanka, have a look at my designs, done because someone asked specifically. Finding good scale drawings is difficult, and I was more interested in older stock.

http://www.rue-d-etropal.com/3D-printing/3d_printed_broad-gauge-trains1.htm

 

As track gauge is 5ft 6in I would prefer to see it modelled in 3mm/ft, as that is spot on for 16.5mm gauge, and there is a large range of accessories in that scale thanks to 15mm wargamers. I would make modelling the narrow gauge more difficult but z gauge would be closest.


We had about 2-3 gentlemen who work for SLR contacted us after they saw our IR kits and were taken up by the level of detail and accuracy. They sent us with quite a lot of scale drawings and have asked us to make more kits. So lets see how it goes.

As for scale and gauge, as we've already explained in our other thread we went for HO scale as it is the most popular scale globally. Countries like India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore etc all tend to have a large diesel loco population with them having narrow body designs (like the BR Class 20, Class 58 etc.). So the moment you do in in a smaller scale, mechanisms are harder to get and also fit in. And the same countries I mentioned have extensive MG and NG networks. Once you drop down to 3mm scale, your NG anf MG stock all go into a new league of custom built stuff which is far beyond their purchasing power. Rivet counters are almost unheard of from these places. From India we've only had two people bring up the topic about the gauge - one of them has absolutely no interest in model trains but had an interest in mathematics. The other was hell bent on P4 gauge from day one, after he saw the difference with his own eyes he moved back to regular HO scale track.

HO scale is by far the easiest and cheapest to do with availability of spares and so on being easy. For those who wish to model BG more accurately, all our kits are P4 friendly which is much closer to Indian BG. But there again over the 5 years of research we conducted most people aren't bothered about the gauge being about 2mm narrower.

  • Like 3
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about scale and gauge in the hobby, and I have had to explain to people at exhibitions and heard others explain things as many visitors do not know differences in scales and gauges and have even heard people say they think N gauge is same as OO9!

Now HO might be most popular scale used , but by using same track gauge in smaller scale you use exactly the same track , and mechanisms , although you  do have less space for motors etc. Luckily motors are smaller these days. It might make sence for a manufacturer tof kits and r2r to stick to popular scale, but for 3D printing, it only takes a resize instruction to change scale of a model, which can be produced to demand.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think there is a simple answer to this. I model Thai railways to 3mm scale on 9mm gauge track. The scale-gauge combination is a little out but not actually much worse than HOm (HO scale on 12mm gauge) is as that is closer to Cape gauge. What runs on the rails is only part of the issue, and when it comes to what is beside the track then HO scale is much better provided for than 3mm scale. Whether that commercial stuff is suitable for Sri Lanka is another matter of course. I find that there is very little suited to Thailand and bizarrely quite a bit of the bits that are may say HO on the box but are in fact closer to 1:100 scale.

  • Agree 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

I didn't know about these. I've had a look at their website and most are too German for my use, but I'll bear them in mind. Industrial plant and things like fencing and steelwork are pretty international so I might make use of some of that.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Not sure exactly what style of buildings Thai or Sri Lankan theme would require, but there are qute a few laser cut kits for Far Eastern models eg Saroissa https://sarissa-precision.com/collections/far-east-15mm

and African ones https://sarissa-precision.com/collections/north-africa-colonial-15mm

 

some colonial style(southern Europe origin) buildings can be found. Just search 15mm buildings on ebay. I have some bought some buildings which I think are Vietnam themed in resin, and just now found some Portugese buildings which would not look out of place .

 

The wargaming hobby is making big advances. There are a lot of people doing buildings, some laser cut some resin. Even road vehicles are getting easier to find, especially ones with a military origin wich could easily be adapted.

 

It is also worth while looking for older HO building kits as many were actually nearer to 3mm/ft. Door size is a give away.

What you do have to be careful about is models being descibed incorrectly. Sometimes this is down to marketing, sometimes just down to ignorance.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I am scratchbuilding most structures as my aim is to model real buildings. I am able to do so because on my regular trips to the far East I was able to find time to tramp the streets of Bangkok looking for and photographing suitable prototypes. With Google satellite view and knowing where the location is I can estimate size and from that produce a workable drawing and thus model. That's OK for houses and shops, but when it comes to silos, gantries and other industrial clobber I prefer to use kits

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I started this thread with a mention of the narrow gauge railways in the Netherlands province of Gelderland. I have just found a YouTube video of what looks like an amateur's visit to Gelderland in 1956, the penultimate year of operation. The attraction was that the tramway company revived the passenger service for a few weeks that summer and again in 1957 as a tourist attraction. However the video also shows some of the goods trains that were still using the line for real business.

 

 

  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Can I suggest the Natal Railway, from pre-Union South Africa? This was UK standard gauge, later regauged to Cape gauge after nationalisation. They had three 4’ 8 1/2” gauge locos, all very interesting and completely different in appearance.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natal_Railway_Company

 

As far as I know, the only modern South African standard gauge railway is the Gautrain system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautrain

 

Continuing the ‘early railways in colonial settings that were subsequently replaced by Cape gauge’ theme, there’s the 5’ 3” gauge Canterbury Provincial Railways in New Zealand: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Provincial_Railways

 

 

Edited by 009 micro modeller
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I don’t think anyone has mentioned the phosphate mine railways in Nauru yet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Nauru

 

These were Nauru’s only railways. The early photos with the incline and electrified line are particularly intriguing, and there’s some more interesting photos here: https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/search?datefrom=&dateto=&keywords=Nauru&order=desc&orderby=relevance&ntids=WyIxIiwiMiIsIjMiLCI0IiwiNSIsIjYiLCI3IiwiOCIsIjkiLCIxMiIsIjEzIiwiMTQiLCIxNiIsIjI3IiwiMjgiLCIyOSIsIjMwIiwiMzEiLCIzMiIsIjMzIiwiMzgiLCIzOSIsIjQwIiwiNDEiLCI0MiIsIjQ2IiwiNDciLCI0OSIsIjUwIiwiNTEiLCI1MyJd&page=1&viewtype=grid&type=all&in=0&digital=0

 

Frustratingly, I haven’t been able to find any specific information about where the early 2ft gauge railways ran, though it looks as though a lot of available 009 stock could be used to model these. It seems to have been replaced by 3ft gauge in the 1920s and the simpler modern system shown on the Wikipedia map (4km long, possibly double track and fed by mine lorries running on a rough road at the inland end) seems to have run until about 10 years ago. This is possibly less operationally interesting than the earlier line and harder to model, but it would provide the opportunity to model a mine-to-coast mineral operation on a smaller scale than those seen in Africa and Northern Australia. The 3ft gauge line is in this video at about 5-6 minutes in:

 

 

  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...