Overseas railways worth modelling

[Craigw]

I will put this up for something a little different from what has been mentioned. Port Waratah loco depot in NSW was one of two depots active at the very end of steam workings in New South Wales (Australia). This photo (from my collection) shows 5069 - a Beyer Peacock build of 1903 running tender first out of the yard on a "non air" working . The coal stage is in the background. Photo was taken in 1971-1972. The final working was hauled by 5069 on 22nd December 1972. Surely this is inspirational?

 

regards,

 

Craig W

[whart57]

Another suggestion.

 

The Belgian local railway network SNCV (NMVB in Flemish) is reasonably well known to Overseas railway enthusiasts through the Belgian coast line (Knokke - Oostende - De Panne) and the clunky 0-6-0T tram engines of the steam days. What is not so well known is that parts of the network (other than the coast line) survived into the 1960s and possibly 70s in backwaters of the Ardennes. One line is still preserved and the website (unfortunately only in French and Dutch) gives the flavour:

 

http://www.tta.be

 

What makes these lines interesting in their later days is that the motive power was diesel powered tramcars, with seats for passengers, without seats but a few hefty concrete blocks to increase traction for goods. Goods traffic, mainly logs from the Ardennes forestry industry, was what kept lines open long after the motor bus (also operated by the SNCV) had taken the passengers. These diesel tractors would be relatively easy to build using something like a Halling motor bogie (in HOm) and a Plastikard body.

 

With the Ardennes providing a hilly and forested terrain and short trains, a layout need not take much space

[Neil]

Excellent suggestion Wharf57. There are oodles of images of the Vicinal on the internet, this page is a good starting point but the really interesting older photos start around page 4. Here's just one of my favourite images; you'll see as you browse the photos that many/most lines were still electrified right up until the end.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Neil

[whart57]

Some of the more interesting pictures are of electric and diesel powered trams side by side. Some nice ones of diesel tractors hauling a four wheel trailer dating back to steam tram days and still in the old livery.

 

A picture of some disused tracks reminds me of an incident on a family holiday some fifty years ago. We had been camping in France and Luxembourg and were heading to meet up with family in Amsterdam when we stopped for a leg stretcher somewhere in Belgium. When we got out we saw the family Ford Cortina Mk1 was parked on some tram rails. My brother and I were puzzled that there was no sign of any overhead wiring, not even poles at the side of the tracks. Didn't know then that not all trams were electric.

[Hobby]

What are they?

 

760mm narrow gauge lines in the Czech Republic or Slovakia

 

 

Where can I find information?

 

http://jhmd.cz/introduction

http://www.chz.sk/en_index.htm

http://www.osoblazsko.com/en/

 

 

Why would I want to?

 

Lovely scenery... Think Welshpool without the hedges! Large variety of stock form all over Central Europe all in different colours, even the steamers can be found in green and blue!

 

 

Why wouldn't I want to?

 

Will involve scratchbuilding and kit buildings, there's not a lot of suitable RTR...

 

Has it been done before?

 

Errr, yes, I've done the Czech lines, though not Cierney Balog, in TTe and HOe...

Edited September 27, 2017 by Hobby

[Northroader]

Mention of the Belgian Vicinal makes me suggest a look over the border in the Netherlands, where they did "stoomtrams" very well. I did a post in another thread a year back which is worth dusting off, as it shows a very neat model, done in a tableau format, with links to a Dutch artist who provided the inspiration.http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/113785-steam-tramways-rural-great-britain-ireland/page-2&do=findComment&comment=2398258

Here's a shot of a preservation museum, and I feel it would provide a good inspiration for a micro / cameo layout:

[whart57]

A number of decent models have been made of these Dutch local railways, generally set in their heydays. However as with the Belgian SNCV lines, some lingered on as goods lines even into the 1980s. As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the Class 200 "Siks" and Class 600 "Hippels" (aka BR class 08) are available, as is the 2400 class Bo-Bo typically used on the mainline connection.

[St Enodoc]

 

What are they?

 

760mm narrow gauge lines in the Czech Republic or Slovakia

 

 

Where can I find information?

 

http://jhmd.cz/introduction

http://www.chz.sk/en_index.htm

http://www.osoblazsko.com/en/

 

 

Why would I want to?

 

Lovely scenery... Think Welshpool without the hedges! Large variety of stock form all over Central Europe all in different colours, even the steamers can be found in green and blue!

 

 

Why wouldn't I want to?

 

Will involve scratchbuilding and kit buildings, there's not a lot of suitable RTR...

 

Has it been done before?

 

Errr, yes, I've done the Czech lines, though not Cierney Balog, in TTe and HOe...

 

The similar NG lines on the south side of Lake Balaton in Hungary would be good too.

[whart57]

Another overseas prototype that sparked my interest for a while - probably because we were having a lot of family holidays in gites - was the secondary network of the SNCF. Back in the 1980s and 90s there was still freight traffic over these lines and the passenger services were run using railcars of a distinctly Gallic flavour. There have been a number of layouts in the mags or on the circuit based on this prototype but attached are a couple of photos I took deep in rural France. Taking these pics did often require two trips to the station, the first to read the timetable to see when the rare train might appear. No internet back then

 

 

 

[whart57]

I have (re)discovered some of the photos I took c1992 of the tourist tramway in the Ardennes, which is the preserved instance of the once extensive Belgian NMBS/SNCV network. In Flanders and the other western provinces the lines were almost exclusively roadside tramways trundling through villages but in Liege province and the Ardennes they were much more like light railways following their own routes

 

 

Goods traffic was also important to the end. This photo is actually of a typical museum railway's "waiting room" of stock awaiting restoration, but it does show what would have been a typical log train in the Ardennes in the final years of operations

 

 

 

[MGR Hooper!]

What are they?

 

Indian Railways NG, MG and BG

 

 

Where can I find information?

 

Google is the best bet followed by the numerous facebook groups also. Information and images are easy to get.

 

 

Why would I want to?

 

It's a different and vast railway network spread over 4 gauges, the Indian Railways uses a lot of methods and practices based on the British Railways, therefore accessories like signals, OHE etc can be reused. Lovely place to base dioramas and what not. Don't forget other things like the Calcutta Tramways maybe even the old Bombay and Madras ones also. The Indian Railways has a diesel fleet based mainly on ALCo and EMD locos which have huge fan followings around the world. Older electrics which were used on the DC network were from the UK and so were a lot of the steam locos. Lots of scope for kit bashing and 3D printed kits are coming soon.

 

 

Why wouldn't I want to?

 

Kit building and scratch building may put you off! There's always the issue of gauge accuracy. Whilst some may not be bothered by the gauge, other forum members seem quite persistent on gauge accuracy and try enforcing it upon others. Lack of suitable vehicles and figures to detail it. 

 

 

Has it been done before?

 

It has to a minor extent, however as one of the two people involved in designing Indian Railway kits, we can say that the market is on the rise and we know a few people getting quite serious about stuff as we've been doing all the CAD work for their models.

Edited August 18, 2018 by MGR Hooper!

[whart57]

Would you use British or global scales? I.e. HO or OO?

 

The Darjeeling railway was quite popular once, or at least Darjeeling locos kept turning up on OO9 layouts. I know very little about Indian metre gauge though

[Northroader]

The best model I’ve seen, using this theme, is “Indian Hill Railway”, large oval, built to 16mm scale, 32mm gauge, and run with live steam models. The sheer cheerful exuberance of the model is hard to beat.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=trJdEs2TpNI

[sir douglas]

the narrow gauge railways of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, many varied gauges , short 2' or 2'6" nitrate mining lines or cross country metre gauge, big locos, little locos and the windswept barren mountains of the Andes

 

FCAB, Ferrocarril antofagasta bolivia, The antofagasta and bolivia railway, metre gauge

 

starting the chilean port of Antofagasta going north east into bolivia through Uyuni (now the famous graveyard of FCAB locos) up to La Paz

 

surviving hunslet

Hawthorn Leslie

Kitson Meyer at Uyuni

 

FCCT, Ferrocarril chile transandino, The chilaen transadine railway, Metre gauge

 

starting from a branch on the chilean mainline at Los Andes North of Santiago over the Andes to Mendoza in Argentina, a branch of the Argentine railways, Kitson Meyers, Garratts, a shay, climbing the ABT rack & pinion through vast open valleys up to the summit at 13000ft

 

Kitson Meyer

part of the line on the Argentine side

map

line near Juncal on the chilean side

 

the Junin railway fromt he Port of Alto de Junin way in the north of Chile near Iquique, a 2'6" nitrate carrier, Avonside 0-6-2 side tank, double Fairlie and the pioneer 2-6-2 diesel "Junin" by Hudswell Clarke, has a seamingly endless snaking out of the port up into the planes

 

map

 

Hudswell junin on test before shipping out

 

the Taltal railway, 3'6" nitrate with Kitson Meyers

Edited August 18, 2018 by sir douglas

[MGR Hooper!]

Would you use British or global scales? I.e. HO or OO?

 

The Darjeeling railway was quite popular once, or at least Darjeeling locos kept turning up on OO9 layouts. I know very little about Indian metre gauge though

Personally I'd choose HO for a variety of reasons (I'll list them if you want).

 

99% of my customers choose HO.

 

However I have had a few, who've done Indian stuff in OO scale (the serious ones use 22mm gauge track)

 

Indian MG post steam is fairly easy to understand. During the steam days things were obviously a little more complicated and scattered. But I'll be happy to tell you more in a PM

[whart57]

But I'll be happy to tell you more in a PM

 

But then only I can see it. The purpose of this topic is to share that esoteric knowledge

[DavidB-AU]

FCAB, Ferrocarril antofagasta bolivia, The antofagasta and bolivia railway, metre gauge

Worth noting that FCAB has bought a fair number of Cape gauge locomotives second hand from Australia and regauged them, including the Queensland Railways 2100 class which is available RTR in HOn3½.

 

Cheers

David

[whart57]

I opened this thread with a description of the steam tramways of Gelderland in the Eastern Netherlands. While looking for something else on a well-known model railway vendor's site I came across the Minitrains 0-8-0T "Brigadelok" in HOe. This would make an excellent starting point for a representation of the Orenstein and Koppel 0-8-0Ts of the Gelderland Stoom Tram

[MGR Hooper!]

But I'll be happy to tell you more in a PM

 

But then only I can see it. The purpose of this topic is to share that esoteric knowledge

If others are interested, will be happy to share details publicly. Edited January 19, 2019 by MGR Hooper!

[Andy Hayter]

Of course we are interested.

 

Knowledge is for sharing - otherwise it dies with the owner.

[MGR Hooper!]

Of course we are interested.

 

Knowledge is for sharing - otherwise it dies with the owner.

Good to know. Will part out a nice and informative post in due course.

[MGR Hooper!]

Would you use British or global scales? I.e. HO or OO?

 

The Darjeeling railway was quite popular once, or at least Darjeeling locos kept turning up on OO9 layouts. I know very little about Indian metre gauge though

Okay hopefully this post is useful to many....

 

Okay so to give people a short intro, my better half and I design model kits for all the lesser known railways in the world. We also do bespoke designing for those on a budget, i.e. we offer budget CAD services.

 

We've started off with the Indian Railways, we'll work our way through and then move onto the Railways in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and so on.

 

We've been designing kits for a close friend and customer of 3 years, he's personally chosen OO scale to replicate his Indian Railway themed layout. So whatever models I've designed for him have been 1:76 scale.

 

• For our personal range we've chosen HO scale i.e. 1:87 scale. We've done this for a variety of reasons the most notable one being the popularity of HO scale and the availability of spares and donor chassis. We've started off with a range of Indian NG locos and rolling stock. These use Tomytec chassis and Peco bogies. We're almost done with our range of NG locos and rolling stock.
• Once we're done with Indian NG we'll move onto Indian MG which is quite a small range. When you consider Indian MG there's very few we'll known locos and rolling stock. Basically 2 diesels, 1 AC electric, 1 DC electric, one range of coaches and a few wagons that were widespread or popular. Steam locos will be looked into in the future.
• Once MG is done we'll then move on to the Indian BG range. We plan to partner up with KW Trams to supply motorized bogies for our MG and BG models. There's an insane amount of things to cover in the Indian BG segment so that will take 2-3 years to release the BG stuff.
• To make things easy we plan on using the following gauges to replicate NG, MG and BG. 9mm for NG, 12mm for MG and 16.5mm for BG. For those interested in more accurate gauges, P4 can be used to replicate India's BG.

 

That concludes the segment on our introduction and our plans for the future.....

 

Reasons why we would choose HO scale:-

• It's popularity
• Ease of obtaining spares
• Lots of suppliers to choose track from
• India uses ALCo, GE and EMD locos and therefore a good connection to the US market
• The scale is more appropriate than say OO because then we'd have the issues with track gauges.

 

More on Indian MG (post steam) in another post.

Edited January 20, 2019 by MGR Hooper!

[Andy Hayter]

Thanks for that.  Knowing what you are planning I am tempted by yet anoter project that my lifespan is unlikely to support, but BG Indian railways...........................Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

I will resist, I will resist, I will (well I might) resist.

[whart57]

Do you do steam outline or just electric?

[MGR Hooper!]

Do you do steam outline or just electric?

As of now we've got a large range of diesel and electric loco kits planned.

 

Steam will come at a time when we can find suitable chassis which are cheap and widely available.

 

We're looking out for some suitable HO scale 4-6-2 chassis to make a few Indian BG steam locos. A suitable 2-4-2 one would also be useful.

 

We're aiming for easy-to-build kits, which is what we we've achieved so far with the ones already available. So we'd like to continue that trend.

Thanks for that. Knowing what you are planning I am tempted by yet anoter project that my lifespan is unlikely to support, but BG Indian railways...........................Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

I will resist, I will resist, I will (well I might) resist.

Dioramas are always a cheaper alternative! Which is what we plan on doing too.