Die Ercallbahn - Fulfilling a childhood dream.

[Woody C]

2 hours ago, ian said:

You really shouldn't say things like that

That is exactly what Mrs. Woody says to me! I can sort of understand that as I normally only visit places twice. The second time is to apologise!

2 hours ago, ian said:

Which reminds me of the story of the EEC Cat Mountain...

I get the feline that sounds a purrfectly interesting tail! Should I paws to hear it or have I missed it by a whisker or will you collar me when ready to tell??

[ian]

So, I mentioned the EEC cat mountain. You have probably heard the phrase "you couldn't make it up", this is one of those tales.

 

Come back in time with me to the early eighties. I was living in Reading at the time and someone of my acquaintance had found employment as a pen pusher in the civil service. Now in those pre-digital days pen-pushers really did have to push pens and pass pieces of paper from desk to desk and information was held in filing cabinets. Strangely enough the country employed less civil servants then than it does now, albeit still more than were needed when a third of the globe was coloured red. By way of an aside: a year or so after this tale I installed a networked hard disk at a major printing company. It was to hold all their admin and finance files so that any of the office computers (Apple II) could access them. It was an expensive thing and had a huge capacity - 10MB.

 

This acquaintance, who I shall call Steve since that was his name, passed his days in an office block in Reading that was home to the British government's part of the EEC Intervention Board. The Intervention Board was a construct of EEC agricultural policy. The EEC subsidised the production of certain crops and other foodstuffs according to a set of impenetrable rules of dubious logic. The practical upshot of this was that they would pay subsidies to some producers and pay above market rates for some products which were then stockpiled before either being destroyed or sold at a loss. At this time the level of subsidies/support was not standardised across the EEC in addition each country still had its own currency and these varied (sometimes wildly) in comparision to each other.

 

Steve was employed by the Recipes Section. Their task was, in theory, to stop companies gaming the system for financial benefit. This was a sort of commercial version of the 'booze cruise' or 'butterfahrt'. Let's take a hypothetcal example: Hntley & Palmers (well, we are in Reading here) are going to export some Dundee Cake to France. The subsidy for various ingredients may well be different in France to that in the UK so either a UK or French manufacturer could have a price advantage on their ingredients due to the largese of the EEC. Steve and his colleagues would take the Dundee cake recipe, calculate the subsidies that the ingedients for the cake would receive in both the UK and France and, based on the Pound/Franc exchange rate on the invloice date calculate if H&P were in or out of pocket and demand or grant a payment accordingly.

 

In a nearby office were the people who had the job of organising the storage of things that the board had purchased to support the market. (See: wine lake, butter mountain, etc..) Their current problem was grain. A large quantity had been acquired and needed to be looked after. They had warehoused it in hangers on disused airfields which had given rise to a sudden influx of rodents. Given the free and undisturbed access to unlimited food supplies practically every rodent in the county had made its way to the hangers and was living a life of gluttony and procreation. Now whilst in all likelihood the grain was going to be destroyed in due course that was not a certainty. Around this time vast stocks of 'Intervention Butter' had found its way into supermarkets at a bargain price (strictly limited, like paracetamol today - only two packs per customer) so leaving the rodents to eat and defecate wasn't an option, neither was lacing it with rat poison. Some bright spark came up with the idea of cats as a cost-effective solution to the problem. Stray and unwanted cats were readily and freely available, they wouldn't need to be fed and nobody would be needed on site. An assortment of cats was obtained and they were unceremniously dumped at the hangers.

 

The plan had been a good one as the cats did indeed make great inroads into the rodent population however it was let down in its execution as no one had checked on the gender or reproductive viability of the press-ganged moggies. There were both males and females which had not been neutered. A check on the cats after a week or so showed no problems, as did one after around a month. It was a number of months until the next visit by which time there was a veritable mountain of feral kittens...

Edited January 7, 2023 by ian

[Woody C]

Hmmmmm! Truth or myth? If I had not lived through that era Ian I would say "myth' but having done so and with your wonderful narrative skills I am saying 'truth' . You brought back a host of memories of that time when there were EEC mountains galore - enough to keep any budding mountaineer busy for years!! As ever the law of unintended consequences applied to many so called 'solutions'!

15 hours ago, ian said:

It was an expensive thing and had a huge capacity - 10MB.

Amazing what we had and now have. My first desktop back in the mid 90s with a hard drive rather than floppies had a 3.2 gig disk.I can still recall the sales guy saying 'Its just been uprated to 3.2 gig - you'll never need anything bigger!' Just like layout size then.........

[ian]

Plant a tree in 23! Well, 22 of them actually and it looks like I'll need the same again to go right round the bend.

 

Captain OCD has dragged a 3-axle Umbauwagen out of the sales stock and added it to the branch passenger rake. The uncouplers on the Schönblick carriage siding will need to be moved to accomodate the extra coach but at least there are now an even number. It's a rough area and they always go around in pairs!

 

The outlook at Billshaven has brightened up cpnsiderably as there is now a second strip of LEDs illuminating things. The new ones are over the harbour area and are a big improvement. Work has started on the retaining wall alongs with a daddy of a Wills Varigirder to bridge the harbour tracks.

[ian]

For reasons that may become clear later I have been trying to fit the Ercallverse into some version of reality. With some minor adjustments to northern Germany the cartographers have produced this first draft.

 

The rest of the railway system has been omitted for simplicity and I apologise to anyone who finds themselves homeless or otherwise inconvenienced. Königsoog is a rigidly defined area of doubt and uncertainty in terms of size, shape and course of the railway but as its sole purpose is to be a destination for the train ferry I can live with that.

 

In terms of the railway administration the Ercallbahn falls just at the edge of Hamburg's control and is on the (re-routed) main line from Hamburg to Bremen.

[Woody C]

8 hours ago, ian said:

With some minor adjustments to northern Germany the cartographers have produced this first draf

Hello Ian, would Google Earth assist in my understanding of this newly defined landscape???? 

[ian]

If you can't see the join then don't worry about it! Go with the flow.

 

Meanwhile, don't try this with lesser brands:

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by ian

[ian]

17 hours ago, Woody C said:

Hello Ian, would Google Earth assist in my understanding of this newly defined landscape???? 

@Woody C - sorry, I wasn't expecting a serious question! Hopefully this should give an idea of the liberties I have taken with reality.

 

I have added a few km West to East amd North to South. As for those sea level rises...

Edited January 17, 2023 by ian

[Woody C]

4 hours ago, ian said:

sorry, I wasn't expecting a serious question

I'm not sure how to feel. Never before has a question from me actually been taken seriously - even when I proposed to Mrs. W!

21 hours ago, ian said:

Meanwhile, don't try this with lesser brands

Talking of being serious I wish I had taken your advice before establishing that indeed lesser brands should not be used......

However I am pleased to report that my man cave is now flying insect free!

[Keith Addenbrooke]

1 hour ago, Woody C said:

I'm not sure how to feel. Never before has a question from me actually been taken seriously - even when I proposed to Mrs. W!

Talking of being serious I wish I had taken your advice before establishing that indeed lesser brands should not be used......

However I am pleased to report that my man cave is now flying insect free!

Our proposal story actually involved a trip on German railways - we took a train from Boppard where we were staying, up to Koblenz, then went down to the Deutsches Eck where the Mosel meets the Rhine and I proposed there.  There are other reasons I follow this thread, but that’s a nice one.  
 

Sorry for the thread drift but no, I don’t throw my trains around!  Keith.

[Woody C]

11 minutes ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Our proposal story actually involved a trip on German railways - we took a train from Boppard where we were staying, up to Koblenz, then went down to the Deutsches Eck where the Mosel meets the Rhine and I proposed there.  There are other reasons I follow this thread, but that’s a nice one.  
 

I do like that Keith and Mrs. W would be most envious. Shows that railway modellers can be romantic too and I maybe Ian can incorporate the scene somewhere on his layout?

[ian]

On 17/01/2023 at 20:35, Woody C said:

I do like that Keith and Mrs. W would be most envious. Shows that railway modellers can be romantic too and I maybe Ian can incorporate the scene somewhere on his layout?

Or the future Mrs. W not taking Mr. W seriously? I'm not sure that there are many romantic locations on the layout. The only water is Billshaven's train ferry slip which is a little less scenic than Deutsches Eck.

 

Sometimes you just can't settle on one of your jobs in progress, so the only thing to do is start another one. Since I now know where the tracks and supports will go for Maifeld town centre I can revisit the town-planning process.

 

After checking the measurments the buildings on the bottom left need to go - it would be over the station throat. Still, the rest makes a pleasing composition.

 

You won't be able to see this view when it is all in place on the layout, more's the pity.

 

Hmm, it is a bit cold and dark outside so I can't fire up the circular saw. Now, I wonder what else can I find in the procrastination pile?

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by ian

[ian]

So what else was in the procrastination pile?

 

Regular readers will know that at various locations on the Ercallbahn I am including the buildings that were on my original railway. The house (yes, all one of them) on the layout was a Kibri model. I located and acquired a tired example a couple of years ago and buried it in the strategic stockpile.

 

It always had a weeping willow in what, in imagination, was its front garden. Two Gaugemaster weeping willows came up at a suitably small price on eBay but when they arrived were a great disappointment as they were holly green rather than lime green. My wife offered to try and titivate them so whilst they were being artified I glued all the loose bits back on the house. Except the gate which disappeared before I got it. Adding the XJ6 which normally graced the (imaginary) drive and a titivated tree looked good.

As the Ercallbahn is allegedly on the East Frisian coast I had also aquired two unbuilt kits, B-282 Frisian Mansion and B-279 Frisian Cottage. Thanks to serendipity they seemed a good match for the Kibri house so they had to be built as well.

Faller instructions changed around the time these kits were made - the older style was hampered by the fact that the part numbers didn't actually appear on the sprues or parts!

The artist in residence drew attention to the differing colours of thatch and suggested that 'something should be done' about them. So it was off to the interweb to research Frisian/East Frisian architecture. (View from South-South-East)

 

It seems that traditionally the houses were built on an east/west axis to present the minimum frontage to the prevailing wind that blows down from the Urals, across the North European plain and eventually hits the tower blocks in Dudley. If the building had a barn it would be on the west or north side whilst the main entrance would be on the southern, sunny side.

 

New thatch

 

Old thatch

 

View from the West-North-West. Obviously the B-282 mansion has recently been rethatched. THe B-279 cottage has survived unaltered over the years and the Kibri house has been extensively extended and remodelled over the years.

Edited January 25, 2023 by ian

[ian]

Here's about a quarter of an hour of your life that you'll never get back:

 

 

[Woody C]

Hello Ian, 15 minutes of pure  entertainment! Not sure what it is about what you have developed with your layout but it does fascinate me. I still find it unbelievable that technology from 70 years ago does things so easily such as the uncoupler when today we still cannot get a reliable main stream system that can do the same. On that note I might now dig out my box of Super 4 track (which ironically had more to scale sleeper spacing then today's track) and  working uncoupling ramps  along with the working  log tippler and rolling stock where there are no separate parts to drop off ............

[Oldddudders]

I remain utterly confused. About Klinkerhofen, or, as per the cartography, Kilnkerhofen. These things matter. 

[Keith Addenbrooke]

Very enjoyable, thank you for sharing it here.

 

I watched while listening to the audio through headphones.  Experience told me to expect the electric noises would be magnified, so my assumption is it would all sound quieter than it was for me if seen in person.  Can only echo the comment about how good the Märklin technology still is after all these years, Keith.

[Northroader]

Most excellent, the goings on at a very simple branch line terminus. Really enjoyed the video.

[ian]

17 hours ago, Woody C said:

I still find it unbelievable that technology from 70 years ago does things so easily such as the uncoupler when today we still cannot get a reliable main stream system that can do the same. On that note I might now dig out my box of Super 4 track (which ironically had more to scale sleeper spacing then today's track) and  working uncoupling ramps  along with the working  log tippler and rolling stock where there are no separate parts to drop off ............

Which is very much where I found myself when I started this layout. The stuff just works.

 

 

8 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I remain utterly confused. About Klinkerhofen, or, as per the cartography, Kilnkerhofen. These things matter. 

Indeed they do and the management have taken all the blame for employing a British cartographer. In the not too distant past they would have had him taken out and shot...

 

 

7 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Experience told me to expect the electric noises would be magnified, so my assumption is it would all sound quieter than it was for me if seen in person.

I can assure you that it is very loud in person.

 

 

7 hours ago, Northroader said:

Most excellent, the goings on at a very simple branch line terminus. Really enjoyed the video.

Indeed, with all the super-dupa models that can be purchased now many people seem to have lost sight of the simple pleasure of playing trains.

 

 

Thank you all for the comments and likes. I have this half-formed idea that, over time, I will produce similar videos for each of the locations on the layout showing the different operational character of each of them.

[ian]

Willkommen im Maifeld

 

Having marked out the cuts on the piece of ply that I had used to mock up Maifeld town centre I fired up the circular saw and then fixed supporting battens to the board and the layout. At that point I discovered that the ply had a diagonal warp. This wouldn't be a problem on a fixed baseboard as it could be firmly anchored to discourage that sort of behaviour, sadly for a removable section that was not an option so it was off to the local Wickes for some more.

 

When I had finished reeling at the price that they were asking I looked at what they had on offer I looked at what they had on offer and came to the conclusion that it was worse than the piece that I had already rejected so in desperation I ended up buying some MDF.

 

After attacking it with the circular saw, a jig saw and sundry drills and screwdrivers the three sections of the elevated base were produced along with most of the supporting structure to the point where I can start to play about with the whole thing.

 

 

This is the view over the station throat. The access well should be hidden behind a wall. On the left is the, as yet unassembled, station building and car park. Along the back wall you can see an apartment block and the Rathaus whilst on the right is the bus station with the 'back side' of a street of buildings.

 

From a slightly higher viewpoint you get a better idea of how it all works. A small building for bus enquiries and driver breaks will go in the foreground.

 

Moving along the station throat (the previous comment about the wall still applies) you start to see the other side of the street. There is another building awaiting assembly to go on the end of the red brick edifice on the right.

 

Again, from the higher viewpoint.

 

Finally a view down the street towards the Rathaus.

 

It strikes me that the should be more commercial rather than residential use, at least of the ground floors so I can see some changes being needed. All the buildings need some form of work - from securing loose parts, through adding lighting to assembly - so there will be plenty of time to consider each individually.

 

The boards will need screw holes filling and painting to seal the MDF. There are road markings, pavements, streetlights and all sorts of odds end ends to add, the buses and other vehicles all need to be looked at, the retaining walls added, people to place and a backscene to fix. But that is all for the future. At some point. Eventually.

Edited February 2, 2023 by ian

[franciswilliamwebb]

"Wickes, it's got our name on it".  The C and the S in particular, in my experience, although W-shaped comes in a close third😏

[ian]

1 hour ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

"Wickes, it's got our name on it".  The C and the S in particular, in my experience, although W-shaped comes in a close third😏

The Shrewsbury branch has, on the whole, served me well but the one near you is normally a disappointment.

 

Still, it's better than B&Q. There again, anything is better than B&Q.

[ian]

Bodgit & Scarper have been busy. One of the Herr Rudyard factory buildings has been cut back to fit its site, the glowing walls have been light-proofed and new LED lights fitted.

 

A building for the driving school in Maifeld has been errected. Long-standing followers may notice an architectural similarity with the Reformhaus in Schönblick - they came as a pair in a Faller kit: same mouldings, different colours.

This office block needed stripping down for cleaning, repairing and rebuilding. Fortunately it was very co-operative about being disassembled.

[TT-Pete]

1 hour ago, ian said:

new LED lights fitted.

 

Hi Ian,

 

What kind of LEDs are you using? Do you have a separate 12v DC circuit for them or do you run them off the 16v AC accessories circuit?

 

Peter.

[ian]

19 hours ago, TT-Pete said:

 

Hi Ian,

 

What kind of LEDs are you using? Do you have a separate 12v DC circuit for them or do you run them off the 16v AC accessories circuit?

 

Peter.

Yes.

 

The first buildings built were over-specified. A stripboard regulator converted the 16V AC to smooth 12V DC which fed a stripboard dimmer circuit based around a 555 timer IC to enable the lights to be dimmed to just the right level.

 

Then it morphed into a bridge rectifier fed from the 16V AC which then fed pairs of LEDs in series along with a current limiting resistor.

 

Then it went to a pair of LEDs and resistor straight off the 16V AC. Some of these do flicker more noticably than others.

 

So the latest schme is two LEDs in parallel but the opposite way around to each other and a bigger resistor. Each LED is only on for half the time, but as they are used as a pair hidden from direct view the resulting illumination is sufficiently constant for my purposes.