1:120 TT ferrywagon

[Taigatrommel]

What's this?  British outline 1:120 TT products from Hornby?

 

Well, not entirely, but the prototypes ran to Britain, which makes this surprise wagon announcement from Arnold quite interesting.

https://www.elriwa.de/blog/detail/sCategory/4539/blogArticle/1085

 

I'm afraid I don't know the prototype, so I'll let Google Translate butcher the brief history from the leaflet.

"For traffic to Great Britain, freight wagons were procured in the early thirties that corresponded to the smaller British clearance profile. They also had vacuum brakes, which was common in Great Britain.

From 1935 onwards, the DRG procured 50 refrigerated wagons in two lots after covered wagons and stake wagons. The Gfkhs Saarbrücken type wagons had ice containers that could be filled through the doors above. The wagons were later given the type designation Tbnhs Berlin.

Many of them were still around after World War II. Around 20 wagons came to the DB, some of them to the DR. The Deutsche Bundesbahn rented around half of the Tbnhs to the Transthermos company, the remaining wagons were used by the DB as Tbnhs 30.

After 1964, the new designation Icfrs 400 was planned for 19 cars. However, the imminent retirement was already foreseeable, and so it is not entirely certain how many cars were retired as Icfrs 400s in 1969."

[jonhall]

An interesting choice, but not exactly mainstream.

 

Jon

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

As the drawings are in the Hornby empire we could maybe distantly hope for a 4mm model?, although 3.5mm is less unlikely.

 

Mike.

[FelixM]

Hi folks,

 

Sketches of the three DRG wagon types for ferry traffic here:

https://epoche2.modellbahnfrokler.de/fg/e2f_gwfb.html

The Hornby text reminds me of typical German advertisements of similar models (there are H0 and N gauge models out there) as they do not mention how long they have been in cross channel traffic. This is probably due to most buyers of these models not modelling the UK. I think they did not cross the channel very often as export from the UK was low and import was mainly from southern Europe. They could have been seen in continental traffic however.

 

Nevertheless a 4mm model would be very welcome.

[jonhall]

30 minutes ago, FelixM said:

I think they did not cross the channel very often as export from the UK was low and import was mainly from southern Europe. They could have been seen in continental traffic however.

 

 

 

I suspect that in part is due to Germany and Britain (for the most part) having pretty similar climate and growing season, therefore the sort of produce that each country might want from each other is pretty similar, and 'in season' at fairly similar times, fruit and vegetable traffic from the South of Europe would have been more common to the UK (and to Germany) because of the better climate offering a longer/earlier season, and different varieties like Citrus fruit, that couldn't be grown economically further North. 

 

The rail transit time between Germany and Britain would still have been 3-4 days, even with prompt handling from farmer field-to-consumer might have taken a week?

 

I've certainly got photos of these vans coming off the train ferry in the UK, and of course there were reasonable numbers o SNCB/Interfrigo/STEF/MAV insulated and refrigerated vans, all capable of cross channel working, so there was a fairly frequent traffic in perishables across.

 

Jon

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

There's the small issue of a couple of minor skirmishes probably affecting traffic as well?

 

Mike.

[Nick_Burman]

3 hours ago, jonhall said:

 

I suspect that in part is due to Germany and Britain (for the most part) having pretty similar climate and growing season, therefore the sort of produce that each country might want from each other is pretty similar, and 'in season' at fairly similar times, fruit and vegetable traffic from the South of Europe would have been more common to the UK (and to Germany) because of the better climate offering a longer/earlier season, and different varieties like Citrus fruit, that couldn't be grown economically further North. 

 

The rail transit time between Germany and Britain would still have been 3-4 days, even with prompt handling from farmer field-to-consumer might have taken a week?

 

I've certainly got photos of these vans coming off the train ferry in the UK, and of course there were reasonable numbers o SNCB/Interfrigo/STEF/MAV insulated and refrigerated vans, all capable of cross channel working, so there was a fairly frequent traffic in perishables across.

 

Jon

 

Hmmm, what about fish? More specifically, freshwater fish. After all, there was the story of the MAV live fish wagon which was trapped in the UK when WWII broke, this was used to carry live sturgeon from Hungary to London for the Jewish community.

 

Cheers NB