“BEYOND DOVER”

[Northroader]

Correct, Eric, having a weeks holiday, first in three years, thanks to Covid. I thought a flag at half mast would be appropriate. Today should be the day the railway runs, but strangely enough their loco Elizabeth has been withdrawn needing repairs, so no more trains this season.

[Northroader]

ITALIAN RAILWAYS - STELLA DI INVERSIONE

 

One feature of Italian railways which is, AFAIK, unique to them, is a track layout used for turning locomotives, known as a reversing star. Presumably the thinking was that turntable girders would be quite expensive, a triangle would take up too much space if you were trying to find a large flat area in mountainous regions, so the star would need less space. Even then, they were quite rare. It would form a most unusual feature, the link shows a working model, but don’t ask me how they were wired up.

 

https://www.eurogunzel.com/2020/09/turning-a-locomotive-on-a-reversing-star/

 

https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_di_inversione

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Northroader

[ThomasW]

On German Wikipedia I have read that a reversing star was chosen as cheaper to maintan and easier to keep operational during harsh winter conditions. 

Would make a great feature on a layout!

[Compound2632]

25 minutes ago, ThomasW said:

easier to keep operational during harsh winter conditions. 

 

Aha. No turntable pit to fill with snow, thaw, then freeze solid...

[5944]

On 23/09/2022 at 08:44, Compound2632 said:

 

Aha. No turntable pit to fill with snow, thaw, then freeze solid...

Indeed, hence why three of them were in the North of the country. Though a pair were built in Sardinia which does see snow in the winter, but not to the extent of Tyrol. No idea why turntables weren't used, they were elsewhere on the island.

[Northroader]

PARIS- ORLEANS. TWO OUTSTANDING SCENIC LAYOUTS.

 

Occasionally I like to put a link to what I regard as good continental modelling practice, and here’s two layouts using a similar theme, lifted from the Forum e-train site. They’re both done in HO, and one is set in the 1930s, and the other in the 1960s, so really shouldn’t qualify to go in a thread dealing with O scale around 1900. My excuse is in the way they use buildings and scenery to give a real feel for the setting, down in the Auvergne region of France. The western side of this area was served by the Paris- Orleans Railway, which by the 1930s had carried out a SECR style merger with the MIDI.

The first is a multi level, and is very good at showing the various railway bits needed to complete the scene as well as the setting:

https://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=54657

The other is smaller, but to me is a marvellous scenic work:

https://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=89256

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by Northroader

[ian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

but to me is a marvellous scenic work:

 

You weren't kidding!

 

Magnifique!

[Vecchio]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

The other is smaller, but to me is a marvellous scenic work:

I can only agree! What a layout! Buildings, landscape, rolling stock, just perfect...

[Mikkel]

Wonderful layouts.

 

There is a certain "look" of the scenic work here that reminds me of British layouts - as opposed to continental North European/German layouts. By this I don't mean the actual subject matter, but the colours and texture. I wonder if it's possible to trace different scenic styles in the hobby and how they hve spread historically.

 

Or perhaps it's all just a question of whether it's DIY or bought ready-made. 

[Northroader]

There is great variation in the “look” of layouts across the board, whichever country you go to, in Europe, Britain, or America. For many years there has been an improvement in the knowledge of what can be achieved, with a matching availability of scenic materials. I would say it’s down to the awareness of individuals, whatever their nationality.

[ian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

There is great variation in the “look” of layouts across the board, whichever country you go to, in Europe, Britain, or America. For many years there has been an improvement in the knowledge of what can be achieved, with a matching availability of scenic materials. I would say it’s down to the awareness of individuals, whatever their nationality.

Each area has its own 'standard; items, techniques and designs that can be found on layouts far and wide - think buildings by Metcalfe in the UK, Faller in Europe and Walthers in the US - which influence the plonk-and-players and those on the lower slopes of the ascent to scale perfection. This does tend to give a certain formulaic quality to layouts in or depicting that area.

 

When layout buikders move to the more rarified heights then things start to look more like the real thing - even if it is an imaginary location - and with that you can get a commonality with the upgraded techniques - the picture I chose could equally well portray Scotland or parts of the US.

 

It is an interesting line of thought.

[Northroader]

ST.LUKES GETS NEW TRACK LAYOUT.

 

Well, I’ve got a confession to make, in that I’ve changed the track layout. The cause of this was the “Boer”, doing track testing it had a rooted objection to the point I had made. I must admit the point had been troublesome, and I had extended the check rail on the curved side to help, but in the end I decided it had to go. Thinking it through, previous running had been with the “Crapaud” and the “Bicyclette”, both four coupled engines, the longer rigid wheelbase of the 0-6-0 tank had showed it up. Fortunately I had a Peco streamline medium radius point lying idle, and this was pressed into service. The one thing I didn’t like about it is the electrics, the point blades and crossing are wired as one unit, and they are energised by a face to face contact of one or the other blade against the stock rail, then back through an iffy join in the point blade where it hinges. So the wiring between the blades and the crossing was removed, and the blades bonded to their relevant stock rails. Some brass whiskers were soldered across the blade hinge, and the point laid. A slider switch was put alongside, this fed a lead to the crossing from one or the other stock rails, and also moved the point tiebar through a bell crank linkage.

I just happened to have a spare base board left from the Spanish adventure, and this was used, being screwed down to the frame. Then cork tiles down, track down, and rough out the ground cover. As luck would have it, I had to change from a LH point to a RH point, and to make the best use of space I changed the fiddle yard from the LH end to the RH end. The main line through road went to the front of the board. Top track designers tell you not to have the lines parallel with the front edge, but dealing with a 12” wide board, there isn’t much you can do about that. The point fed a siding placed in front of the station, then I had another siding directly entered from the fiddle yard. With a longer board it could be possible to have this as a kickback, but with a 3’6” board it’s not workable. The run round loop has disappeared, so it’s no longer possible to have two trains together in the station, and I intend to have an arriving train cutoff the loco, which goes into a short cassette yard at the LH end, then a replacement loco appear from the RH fiddle yard, to do shunting, and the return journey. The big gain is that there is more room for a proper station building, the old layout site had a narrower, tapered space, now I’ve got a nice rectangular area.

I’ve tried to make a space between the mainline and the front siding for a narrow platform, this could be a bit wider, and I intend to have only one vehicle parked at the far end normally. The rest of this siding space will be useful when doing shunts like getting a fourgon from one end to the other. The level in the LH back corner has been built up with some layers of greyboard, and these merged in with polyfilla mix, then “zip textured” with polyfilla powder and painted. I’ve used 0 scale limestone ballast, I never did find any smaller stuff. More work to be done on the ground cover, and siding stopblocks needed. For now there’s a strip of ply across the dead end to catch overshoots until the LH pocket is made. Here’s what it looks like when loco and rolling stock is added, in an Austrian mode: (The ETS loco does pass through a Peco point)

Hopefully the whole shebang has a nice continental look to it, and with a change of trains, building, and scenic back will be able to carry off any number of the places we’ve been looking at on here. Here’s a prototype photo, from the Czech republic, of such a place. (thought to be somewhere in the country end of the ONWB. Their Vienna terminus has appeared on here before.) One particular item of interest for me is the row of trees behind the train, I’m thinking such a feature would do very well in the RH rear of the layout?

 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Northroader

[TT-Pete]

I think the trees would set it off very nicely.

[Northroader]

BOHEMIAN/AUSTRIAN COUNTRY STATION, ROZSOCHY.

 

Following on from the bottom picture of my last post, I tried to have a look at some more Czech stations, (“nadrazi ceske” on the search engine), and came across a pleasant little station out in the Bohemian countryside, Rozsochy. There’s a nice sequence of modern pictures, in which the Czech equivalent of the dreaded 142 “pacers” appear. Pushing the clock back, I think it was on the old Osterreiche Nord West Bahn (ONWB) system, and the models would be ETS in backdated ONWB/ kkStB markings.

https://zdarsky.denik.cz/galerie/nejkrasnejsi-nadrazi-v-ceske-republice-maji-v-rozsochach.html?back=3214585205-1839-41&photo=1

The pictures are really easy on the eye, and my particular interest is in how several appear to be taken using a drone, so that you get a view very close to how a model would appear, most helpful in settling how a backscene should look, perspective, how high the horizon is set and so on. Not on this sequence, but the town church is a fantastic building.

Talking of buildings, Austria and Germany tended to have a standard line of station designs, class I to class IV, used according to the size of population and commercial activity. Rozsochy looks like a class IV design.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Northroader

[Northroader]

SÃO LUCAS - something stirs.

 

Here we are again, October 28th, the feast day of St. Jude, patron saint of hope and impossible causes:

Edited November 20, 2022 by Northroader

[Northroader]

Good news! I’ve now gone back over this thread and replaced all the pictures, although there are places where things have moved on and I couldn’t retake them. It’s been a bit longwinded because normally I don’t keep copies on my pad memory after I have posted them, so I couldn’t just click on each old post. I’ve just taken the last replacement which I knew I needed, but damned if I can find where it goes now!

Whilst  I was at it, I’ve taken the liberty of editing some posts and slipping extra bits in, and I’ve been adding bold print headers where there’s a useful link. In addition there’s now an index every ten pages, as I’m hoping this will encourage folks needing to find a reference.

Theres been some outstanding pictures gone on here from contributors collections, and I hope they feel confident to replace them too, please.

[Northroader]

MICROMODEL DISPATCH.

 

You may have thought that my new layout is on the small side, which is due to several factors:

 a) I want to keep the space it takes up to a minimum, time to build, materials, and so on.

 b) the models are based on prototypes which in the main need to be scratch built, especially in 0 scale, so the fewer of   them there are, the better.

 c) the operational requirement of having a train parked on a running line, and exchanging a couple of wagons in and out of a siding or two, will occupy an odd half hour ‘playtime’, which is sufficient for me.

d) keep it simple, stupid.

i get some inspiration from a source which you may have come across, if not, it’s worth a plug::

https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Northroader

[Northroader]

 NORD ROLLING STOCK - 1858

 

Just looking through French threads in an idle moment, and I came across quite a surprising album of photographs, from 1858, no less, covering what looks like pretty well all the carriage and wagon stock for the NORD railway! First glance each image looks very faint, but they do enlarge into very fine detail, and have text description for each item, dimensions and so on. Rather unusually, they even give a scale rule below each photo. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these lasted for most of the nineteenth century. Is there an equivalent album for any of the British lines of this era?

 

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8442888w.r=album+voitures+et+wagons.langFR

 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by Northroader

[Compound2632]

There is something really quite medieval about that 6-wheel ballast wagon!

[Northroader]

K.BAY.ST.B. - A TRIP TO BAVARIA.

 

We haven't had a trip out with a whiff of steam for a while, so I fancy a trip to Bavaria tonight.  The Northern part of the country is referred to as Franconia, and there’s a preserved line called the Dampfbahn Fränkische Schweiz. ( “Fränkische” is the pronoun for Franconia, not France) Back in the nineteenth century any place with exposed rock outcrops could be regarded as “looking like Switzerland”, never mind the shortage of 6000’ peaks. Here there’s a hilly well wooded area with exposed limestone outcrops, sehr romantische, which is a popular resort area for Germans. It’s centres around the River Wiesent, and the railway curves up the valley, through very pleasant scenery, starting from Ebermannstadt. (Railcar service from Forchheim in the lower valley)

 

The first video is one of those speeded up “London to Brighton in 5 minutes” jobs, the second is a more leisurely run with a stubby 0-8-0T, beer and sausages on demand:

 

https://www.dampfbahn.net/strecke/

 

I’ve put a useful link on here before on matters in oldtime Bavaria, here it is again:

 

http://www.laenderbahn-forum.de

 

You can even even find a paper cutout kit for a country station, (projekte, rapid prototyping, Untersteimach), a typical plain cube shape with a low pitch roof with overhanging eaves. It has the the unusual German way of hanging the slates on a slanting pitch, rather than the usual to us horizontal courses. For a more elaborate station building, there’s one featured on this thread, which is also useful for good links into other Bavarian sites.

 

https://bahnhof.nf-b.de

 

By and large I would say vintage Bavarian modelling is about the best served for any continental location, in H0 thanks to folks like Märklin and Trix, 0 gauge not so well cheaply, but ETS do some KBayStB jobs, such as the Glaskasten 0-4-0T

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Northroader

[DenysW]

18 hours ago, Northroader said:

By and large I would say vintage Bavarian modelling is about the best served for any continental location,

I fully agree, having used an infamous public auction site to accumulate no less than 7 unique types of HO tank and two HO tender engines of Bavarian origins, only one in later DRB livery (the Gt 2x4/4). What I can't understand is relative the lack of interest in the Prussian rolling stock. It appears only marginally more common than the Württemberg types, and less than Austrian. Have we not forgiven the Prussians for the Austro-Prussian War of 1868?

[Northroader]

Well, they did save our bacon at the battle of Waterloo, but since then, viewed from the mindset of “Two World Wars and One World Cup”??

I have got some Pola wagons of Prussian parentage, but now rebuilt for one of the other landerbahnen, not bigotry, you understand, just I fancied that line more. The one loco I bought with a reichsadler on it did get a repaint pretty fast, though.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Northroader

[DenysW]

I should have been clearer. I think that Trix (proudly Bavarian - see their annual special offerings) and Marklin (Baden-Württemberg) may not have forgiven them. I think I've seen almost as many Pfaltz livery locomotives for sale as pre-unification Prussian.

[Andy Hayter]

I am surprised by the Pfalz comment.  I can count 4 locomotives in 3 classes.  However do remember that The Pfalz was Bavarian Siberia - where dissidents got sent when Ludwig and Max felt aggrieved.

 

 Which is why the Pfalzbahn become incorporated into Bavarian state railways in the 1910s.

[Northroader]

  LUCIEN MAURICE VILAIN.

 

 I thought younger members of the congregation might not have come across this person and his books, so I’d give them a mention here, as they’re worth looking out for. He was a locomotive engineer on the PLM and the SNCF, and he published a series of books covering the locomotive histories of the big French companies, in the 1960s and 70s. You can find them on offer secondhand still, although they’re done as paperbacks, so possibly getting a bit dog eared. Most of them cover the locos. and the passenger carrying coaching stock, except for the NORD, which just does the locos, and they take the story from the earliest days up to nationalisation. The PLM book also looks at the 141P and 241P as well. They have a foreword from the great Andre Chapelon, so could be regarded as being as good as it gets. There’s description of each class, builder, leading dimensions, number, and service history, drawings ranging from meagre outline sketch to detailed elevations, and usually a photograph or more. Electrification is covered where applicable, and also non native classes, such as WW1 builds and reparations. Here’s are sample pages:

 

 

 

The books ran to a second edition in some cases, and I’m listing them in order of appearance:

1. Un  siecle (1840-1938) de materiel et traction sur le reseau d’Orleans.

2. L’evolution du materiel moteur et roulant de la compagnie des Chemin de Fer du Midi.

3A. L’evolution du materiel moteur et roulant des chemins de fer de l’Etat.

      ( Note: the first edition primarily covers the locos built solely for the Etat, and the locos absorbed off the Ouest are covered, but not as thoroughly. It’s worth going for a later edition with a slightly different title, which does give the Ouest much better coverage:)

3B: Le materiel moteur et roulant des chemins de fer de l’Etat du Paris St. German 1838 au rachat de l’Ouest et la SNCF.

4.L’evolution du materiel moteur et roulant de la compagnie Paris - Lyon - Marseilles.

5. Dix decencies de locos sur le reseau du Nord (1845 - 1948) (This runs over into nationalisation to cover their 4-6-4s)

6. L’evolution des locomotives a vapeur de la compagnie des chemins de fer de l’Est (1853-1938) (This does include coaches as well)

Edited November 21, 2022 by Northroader