MIne de Godbrange mini-diorama

[Dunalastair]

Still managing to keep going with the 'diorama-a-day', there is a wonderful website for those who like obscure (mainly) narrow gauge electric locomotives at rail.lu and I have built more than a dozen models based on images on the many, many pages of interesting images. It focuses on the railways of the coal and steel industries in Luxembourg and nearby parts of France, Germany and Belgium.

 

The image below claims to be the first electric mine locomotive in France, built in Belgium. The body outline is fairly conventional, but the pickup arrangement is not, with trolleys running on rigid pickup rails, apparently towed by the loco using cables.

 

https://rail.lu/lebrun.html

 

My 3D printed mini-diorama represents the electrical pickup equipment and the loco with proprietary 16.5mm gauge track. That paint job was more than a little approximate in the photograph and looking at the model today, it was subsequently repainted in grey.

 

 

This was an early experiment and mine locomotives soon moved on to using either trolley poles or pantographs on a single conductor wire with current return through the running rails, with battery locos being developed a little later.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Dunalastair