“BEYOND DOVER”

[Compound2632]

An artefact of scanning - note the discontinuity in the rails, just below the lines.

 

I can't see the national colours on the locomotive's chimney, Lego style. I thought that was de rigueur?

[Mikkel]

10 hours ago, kitpw said:

I'm puzzled by the pair of parallel lines running nearly horizontally across the photo - it's probably obvious, but I can't fathom out what they are! 

 

Scanning errors notwithstanding, on this photo from a little further back the lines do seem to be attached to a pole, so presumably very taut wires: https://www.taxafinn.dk/frb-station-ca1910.jpg

 

10 hours ago, Northroader said:

You would think telegraph lines, except there’s no sag in them. Something on the negative/ glass plate? The train formation looks most interesting, the brake van not next to the loco, coaches(?) in front, is the white vehicle a beer van? Mixed train? Lose all the sidings and it would make a nice layout. Thanks, Mikkel.

edit, then in the sidings there’s a few wagons with very high sheeted loads. Fodder for all the nags in Copenhagen?

 

There's a better version of that photo here, showing more of the goods yard: https://kbhbilleder.dk/kbh-museum/65498/thumbnail/2000/bottom-right

 

I can't properly make out the consist of the train. Many of the goods wagons in the yard are probably small/early diagram Qs (and predecessors, possibly also some early meat vans). There's an overview with sketches of Danish goods wagon standard types here.

 

Hoping it works, there should be a Google translation of a Danish webpage about the Qs here.

 

Until 1937, this goods yard was the railhead for the original Carlsberg brewery. So some of that fodder was probably going there:

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Mikkel
Mixed up Carlsberg history, now corrected.

[Northroader]

DANISH GOODS WAGONS links (see above)

 

Thanks again, Mikkel, really informative. The article on the Q-wagons is a masterpiece for all the gen on an item of rolling stock. The larger photograph is good for showing how the station tracks are aligned, and I thought the level crossing in the foreground was good, with the cabin with operating pulleys for the barriers, and the little warning bell. There’s a large headlamp in front of the loco chimney, Stephen, and I fancy this is obscuring the band with the national colours. I gather one of the Danish kings was a railway enthusiast, and it was drilled into the footplatemen to keep the band spotless?

Edited October 21, 2022 by Northroader

[Northroader]

A Grand Day Out today, coming round once a year, but last year Covid messed everything up, and previous year my daughter and her brood picked the day to visit. So, jump in the car, and a very pleasant drive about fifty miles on quiet cross country roads over the downlands, with all the trees turning their autumn colours.

The Winchester section of the Gauge 0 Guild have for many years organised an “American and Continental” show, so it’s quite a small specialised effort, but very enjoyable:

http://www.winchesterogaugemeet.co.uk

On arrival, start a tour round the hall, and met up with Devonbelle of this parish, exhibiting his layout:

 

 

You'll see its sited in the fragmented bits of old Yugoslavia, using modern diesels, and quite small and simple, but attractive to look at, and capturing the “feel” of the countryside with the buildings and the cypresses. Paul was kind enough to explain his building methods, and I enjoyed watching the operating. Later on I noticed a young visitor was trying out some shunting on the controller, and obviously really enjoying himself.

Watching this layout, and the adjacent one, a simple Dutch goods sidings line, it struck me that you could manage quite well with a very limited quantity of rolling stock and power, and a very simple track scheme, and have a useful and convincing layout. Perhaps if it was done in HO/OO it would just become too basic, but the larger scale enables you to carry it off? The other thing was using hand coupling of links is quite a practical way of going on with the larger scale. All “Zen and the art of O gauge continental modelling” stuff, but it convinced me I was on the right track with my modelling.

A tour of the rest of the show, and watch whatever was circulating on the large test track the club provide, a staggering variety. Look round the trade stands and the “breakfast” lunch, another show speciality. I came out with some purchases, three second hand POLA vehicles, and driving home, I had these two imps on my shoulders, one was saying “You should have bought some more while you could get them”, and the other was going “How are you going to fit them in with everything else, you’ve got enough for now”

 

 

addition: the pictures originally posted here in October 21 were sunk with all hands, and in replacing them in August 22, things have moved on a bit. The purchases been rebuilt with new wheels and bearings from Slaters, as the Pola ones are total crap, and then the goods vehicles have had stanchions, ventilators and doors mucked about with, so they can lose their KPEV look. The coach has a totally new body, the old one being a KPEV clerestory, which I do like, but didn’t fit in. So yes, nice purchases.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

On 23/10/2021 at 21:40, Northroader said:

Watching this layout, and the adjacent one, a simple Dutch goods sidings line, it struck me that you could manage quite well with a very limited quantity of rolling stock and power, and a very simple track scheme, and have a useful and convincing layout. 

 

Indeed. For me "operational interest" is a broad concept. It can include ingenious track plans and complex moves, but it doesn't have to. E.g. I can see how hand coupling - while cursed by some - could in itself form part of the operational interest because it involves physical hands-on interaction with the layout. For similar reasons, these days I get a kick out of the physical act of pushing a short traverser back and forth!

 

For home-based layouts, if an operator enjoys operating a layout over an extended period of time, then for me that would be a proof of "operational interest", whatever drives it. For exhibition layouts it may be different, I wouldn't know. 

 

[Northroader]

Thank you, Mikkel, your “Farthing” setups show this philosophy very well.  I have to admit I really admire the “hands off” shunting you do, but am coming round to thinking manual coupling is more preferable for me in the larger scale. Whisper it, but watching Sherton Abbas last weekend, which uses Sprat and Winkle type, didn’t always go 100% trouble free. Exhibition conditions are always going to be problematic, though.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Northroader

[Northroader]

AUSTRIAN BEER WAGONS.

 

Fired up after my Winchester trip, I started some test running on St. Lukes this week. Using one of the French goods sets, out of the cassette, over the point, into the runround road, and back again, the worst stretch for uneven joints and curves. I did have a vague idea of using automatic couplers, but after two recent trips to shows (must be like coming out of jail, isn’t it?) I’ve decided this stretch would be a bit too much for any such goings on, and I’m sticking to my long single links. There is the chance of buffer locking on the curve, so I need a coupler which keeps the buffers apart all the time. The vehicles have an oversize drawhook with the slot filed out to face forward and rearwards, so the link can pull and push. The link has a small crosspiece to stop overrides when pushing. So, backwards and forwards, turn the cassette, and more movements, watching how the couplers perform.

 

Funnily enough, two of the vehicles I bought at Winchester have a similar idea. The three of them are having some TLC, it started off with the goods vehicles getting stanchion and vent changes, but then I spotted the open has a bent axle, so wheelsets changed for some Slaters, and Pola had a way of running wagons with steel rod axles running in holes in plastic axleguards, a very slummocky way of going on, so brass tophat bearings added. The van had been done by the previous owner, but the coach had lumpy great coarsescale wheels and no bearings, so this was done as well. Then I decided it needed a new body, which has been donated from the Spanish train which is being recycled.

 

 In between times I’ve started making up an old Austrian goods train, mainly from former ETS Czech tinplate items, and starting with a beer van. ETS make their rolling stock as enamelled tinplate pressings, joined with small machine screws, so they’re quite easy to strip down. The wheelsets get a 8ba washer behind the wheeldisc on one side to improve the back to back. I’ve reused the roof and the underframe, and made a new body up from .060 plastikard, with an overlay of Evergreen veegroove plastic sheet. Like the Belgian beer van, the sides are different, for two breweries of old Vienna. I hope it doesn’t look too scruffy, I take the view that sending out white painted vans in a goods train is asking for trouble.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Northroader

[Mikkel]

Lovely beer wagons. Both brands still in production, I see. 

 

Your post made me wonder where in Europe one might historically have seen the greatest variety of beer wagons from different countries. But that's a long discussion with no clear answer and will just derail the thread, so I'll keep the thought to myself.

[Northroader]

I fancy beer was preferred as a local speciality right across Europe, traditionally “none of that nasty foreign muck”, although these days you see football supporters downing Peroni and San Miguel like there’s no tomorrow, so back then I fancy beer wagons wouldn’t stray outside their own country, and places like Germany probably wouldn’t see Bavarian breweries in the Rhineland and so on.

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Northroader

[pete_mcfarlane]

I like to think of loads of German beer wagons descending on Munich in late September in preparation for the Octoberfest. 

[bgman]

Did someone mention beer ?

 

Here's one I made earlier, much much earlier....

 

 

 

Hic ! 

 

G

[Compound2632]

32 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

I like to think of loads of German beer wagons descending on Munich in late September in preparation for the Octoberfest. 

 

I was given to understand that the Loewenbraeu brewery in Munich was the largest in Bavaria - that was the story given when I attended an atomic physics conference banquet there in 1992. At the same conference, we had an outing to Garmish Partenkirchen by Sonderzug (excursion train) including a beer carriage. The beer ran out on the return journey; there was a suggestion that those who had remained in Garmish rather than taking the excursions* had tampered with what were asserted to be the beer hoses between the carriages...

 

We also had a tour of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, with beer promised at the end. Lab after lab full of the latest equipment, with experiments explained by German post-docs and PhD students with impeccable English - all designed to intimidate and overwhelm English physicists used to working with string and sealing-wax. Our group finally cracked and made a run for the beer when one PhD student with slightly less perfect English said "You vill** ask kvestions now" - only to find that the head of our research group had been in the canteen all along.

 

Dear me, there was a lot of beer at that conference. And I haven't even mentioned the beer garden at the Chinese Tower in the English Garden...

 

*Mad King Ludwig's Linderhof palace with its Venusberg grotto, taking in Oberammergau on the way back; cable car up the Zugspitze, or an agricultural museum... No prizes for guessing which was the least popular. I did the Venusberg trip myself.

 

**Wollen: wish - he meant, would you like to ask any questions? - but we'd all been brought up on too many war movies.

[Ian Morgan]

On 01/11/2021 at 10:22, pete_mcfarlane said:

I like to think of loads of German beer wagons descending on Munich in late September in preparation for the Octoberfest. 

 

Unfortunately, the Munich Oktoberfest only sells beer from the six big Munich breweries (Paulaner, Hacker, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Augustina and Spaten). You need to visit the local Stadtfests around Munich to sample beer from the smaller (arguably better) breweries around the Munich area. I never found any beer from the other regions of Germany in Munich. You can find Guiness though.

 

Each german region has its own type of beer (and its own shape and size of glass to consume it from), e.g. Kölsch from the Köln region, Weisse from Berlin. I don't think any of them travelled very far.

 

As an aside, something like 90% of the annual production of the six big Minuch breweries is consumed at the Oktoberfest.

Over 6.3 million visitors drink 7.3 million litres of beer over the two weeks. Only 600 cases of alcohol poisoning in 2019.

They also consumed 124 'oxen', half a million chickens and a quarter of a million sausages.

It is hard to imagine how big it is if you have not been there. Try to imagine a big tent ... one that can fit 10,000 people ... all sat at tables ... plus a band, kitchens etc.

There are 14 of these big tents, plus several smaller ones.

 

There is a traditional parade of the beer being delivered at the opening, but it is actually supplied by pipeline from large tanks nowadays.

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by Ian Morgan
Image reposted

[Compound2632]

29 minutes ago, Ian Morgan said:

Over 6.3 million visitors drink 7.3 million litres of beer over the two weeks.

 

That's only 8.3 cl per visitor per day. I hadn't realised it was such a sober affair. 

[Simond]

no, no, you misinterpret.  that's each.

[Northroader]

I do like that account of the Oktoberfest, Ian, I have had a stein of Weiss in Munich, but just between trains. I suppose this one got renamed in 1914. The abbreviation is for “Englischer”:

 

Edited May 22, 2022 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

12 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The abbreviation is for “Englischer”:

 

English Gardens were fashionable in the 18th century German states - the Munich one, laid out by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (he who established the equivalence of mechanical work and heat through his experiments on boring canon) being the largest, possibly the first. The garden (park, really) is English in its Capability Brown-style informality of layout. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Compound2632

[Compound2632]

I find I'm really torn between these German bierwagen and the French wine-tun transporters. English ale transport at the time was so much more prosaic, usually involving casks loaded in a Midland D299 open...

[Northroader]

Thing is, I feel I should ration wine foudres and bierwagen to just one at a time on the layout, I can’t see a concentration of either happening at a small country station away from a brewery siding or wine producing area. Probably why I do them double sided. Now, any small British station, you can have a siding full of interesting different private owner coal wagons, without questions being asked.

[swampy]

18 hours ago, Northroader said:

Brings back fond memories

 

 

In Wein die Wahrheit.

In Wasser die Klarheit.

Aber es liegt die Kraft 

in Goesser Saft 

 

is a little rhyme/slogan I was told when I lived in Klagenfurt as a student. Apologies if it's not quite right, but it was nearly 50 years ago. ( Truth in wine, clarity in water, but strength lies in Gosser juice ).

 

Pfiat di Gott

 

Pete  

[Compound2632]

49 minutes ago, Northroader said:

without questions being asked.

 

You think?

[Andy Hayter]

I agree with the sentiments that beer remained (even today remains*)  very local.

 

Important to remember that Bismarck set up something that we would recognise today as a federal system.  Bavaria (Bayern)  was one of three Free States (Freistaat) within the German Empire so bringing in beers from outside would have been akin to the French importing Bass beer in the 1890s. 

 

*  Bottled beers are widely distributed across Germany today as indeed are some keg beers but you won't get a glass of Koelsch in Duesseldorf, nor a glass of Alt (Duesseldorf's beer) in Cologne.  The towns are about 18 minutes apart by train IIRC.   

[Mikkel]

Very interesting discussion (as expected ). Although a little disappointing: I had visions of some central European goods station where all manner of beer wagons could be seen from different countries.

 

Whilst on the subject, I recently found this rather nice film showing the 1937 inauguration of Carlsberg's "beer train", which ferries beer from one end of the country to another:

 

https://filmcentralen.dk/museum/danmark-paa-film/film/det-forste-oltog-forlader-carlsbergs-godsstation

 

And here is the modern version:

 

 

 

 

 

[Northroader]

That’s a lot of Carlsberg chasing round the country, you must be a thirsty lot. I liked the prewar film, with the bulled up 0-6-0T, guard and brakemen climbing up on to their perches on the wagons, after knocking back a bottle each. How innocent we were back then (it’s “we” because I was around, if only two months old) even “good luck” swastikas on the brewery wagons!

[sncf231e]

Wine, beer or water - Make your choice from the 0 gauge bar train (in my garden):

 

 

Regards

Fred