German TT - Kirchheim

[rekoboy]

Again, as a reaction to the lost photos and to Dava's comment thereon, here are three recent-ish panorama pictures of the layout. They were taken a while before more work took place on Konradsweiler and its station or halt.

[Hobby]

You've probably said, but to save me going through the whole thread, how big is it?

[rekoboy]

Not as big as it looks! Just about 2m wide and on the left with the additional board for the reverse loop about 1,20m deep, on the right about 85cm deep. 

[Hobby]

Just shows what can be fitted in compared with 00/H0.

[rekoboy]

Correction! I have just checked the dimensions of the layout - as I wrote, the width is 2m, the depth on the right 85cm, but on the left the depth is 1.60m.

[rekoboy]

I posted this article already on the TT 1:120 section - if you do not follow that area, here is the text and the photos.

I thought I would share with you some more of my kitbashed/adapted TT trucks. My problem is that I am only too easily diverted from my layout once I see, hear or imagine the magic words 'truck' or 'tram'. Just of late I have been attempting to deal with a backlog of part-finished truck projects - this weekend I managed three! Quite a while ago some Czech friends gave me some lorry kits by ES-Pecky - all 4 are based on LIAZ prototypes - LIAZ which is, sadly, now defunct was the heavy truck division of Skoda Industries, which now concentrates largely on rail technology and power generation - their car division was, of course, sold to VW years ago. I built one kit for an artic tractor unit and was not impressed with the quality of the moudings - however, the finished product looks good. In my truck bit boxes are all manner of E bloc parts, including some spectacularly unrealistic Tatra heavy haulage trucks - which, though, have very acceptable balloon tyres. I was looking at some photos of a family holiday in Slovakia in the early 1990s where I had snapped by chance (foreign spy???) a LIAZ army truck. Just what the forest enterprise on my layout needs, I thought, and once again carved up a couple of SES E German W50 chassis, added the balloon tyres from the unrealistic Tatra, the cab and air intakes etc from the original LIAZ kit and a flatbed body made from Evergreen sheet and profiles. A pity to stop now, I thought, and slightly modified  the tipper body from the LIAZ  kit to fit one of my many MK/Klose/Schirmer MAN chassis. With that truck there is still a good deal to do - the cab needs a touch of the airbrush, as does the chassis - but those MANs are great - no glue, all click joints if dismantling is needed. Finally I got round to assembling a Herpa artic trailer kit and pairing it up with an MAN tractor unit. The kit is all 'click together' - very straightforward. The only problem was that the king pin was too thin for the tractor's fifth wheel, that was easy to deal with. However, the Herpa trailer is going to be part of an experiment - a German acquaintance got me some photographic overlays for the Herpa trailers - as you can see from the photo the artic will be in the livery of a Liechtenstein haulier - chosen because my wife's cousin lives on the edge of Austria, a 20 minute bus ride from Vaduz in Liechtenstein.

[rekoboy]

Voila! The Liechtenstein truck is more or less complete - the card overlays were stuck on with a thin layer of white glue. I think the trailer will need a spray of semi-matt varnish to finish, though. And I think a new, as in more modern, tractor unit might be called for. Maybe!

 

[rekoboy]

A further favourite pastime of mine, on the fringe of real layout progress, is the production of wagon loads, largely from junk. I have three favourite vehicles for loads - the BTTB/Tillig bogie open wagon (Eaos), and the BTTB/Tillig 2-axle steel open wagon and the 2-axle low-sided flat wagon - Rungenwagen. Loads for the open wagons are either scrap or coal or minerals - it is curiously relaxing to tip out the bit box and to put together what is basically a kind of sculpture of junk, which then needs creative painting! The low-sided Rungenwagen is the versatile one - here I make a removable floor of thin poly sheet on to which the load is glued or clipped. As you can see from the photos the loads include tubes (chucked out felt pens from my granddaughter), vehicles and steel bars made from the stems of disposable micro brushes. Logs and a digger have also been used. The lorry is clipped rather than glued on - it rests between wooden chocks (balsa) and steel ropes (plastic filament).

[rekoboy]

And the finished product. The securing straps are strips of thick paper.

[rekoboy]

Here is the wagon with micro-brush tubes in service together with other home-made loads. The coal load is genuine E German coal, pinched years ago from my father-in-law's cellar, the tiny narrow-gauge loco is a souvenir from a railway museum in Lithuania, the black tubes are from my granddaughter's worn out felt pens, the truck is, as mentioned in an earlier post, a kit-bashed Czech LIAZ.

Edited December 2, 2022 by rekoboy

[rekoboy]

Some more photos for you. At present I am running a more 'modern' layout - the BR 50.40 2-10-0 is the E German Evening Star. That particular batch of lightweight 2-10-0s were the last class of steam loco to be built in the GDR and marked the end of steam design and construction at LKM (Lokomotivbau 'Karl Marx' in Potsdam-Babelsberg). The model is by Tillig. The other 1950s steam loco to be seen here is the BR 83 2-8.4 tank, also by LKM Babelsberg - which was neither attractive nor especially successful and lasted not very long in service. That model is, of course, by Piko. The green diesel shunter is partly a product of Rekoboy's loco works - I bought the body shell just in case (!) in 1982 in E Berlin, and when I was in Brandenburg a couple of weeks ago friends Günther and Hartmut presented me with a box of TT junk including a non-working chassis for that Zeuke diesel bodyshell! Once I got home the chassis was dismantled, the bits, including the motor, were given a bath in isopropyl alcohol and a good scrub with an old toothbrush. After re-assembly and lubrication she runs beautifully - if noisily, with more than a hint of the whistle of a turbo-charger when you turn up the juice!!

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by rekoboy

[TT-Pete]

1 hour ago, rekoboy said:

 a box of TT junk

 

Aah, good old Bastlerschrott, it used to be possible to pick up tons of the stuff for mere Pfennigs on eBay.de 20 years ago...

 

[rekoboy]

Speaking of Schrott (scrap metal or junk) I have just more or less completed an unintended project. Our good friend Hartmut in Brandenburg used to be the co-owner of a model shop until its lack of profitability forced him and his business partner to return to their original careers. Just before the Covid lockdown Hartmut presented me with a cardboard box and challenged me to do something with the contents. When clearing out the shop he had rediscovered the box containing a part-finished loco kit which an elderly customer had returned to him, saying that it was too complicated. The kit in question is of an 1-Do-1 E18 by Jatt, probably Germany's most impressive electric loco, which came into service just before the war, intended for premium express trains, especially on the ongoing project of the electrification between Munich and Berlin which, thanks to the war, never got further than Leipzig. The E18s were fast, powerful and elegant, and were tested on the routes around Stuttgart, between Nürnberg and Saalfeld, later Leipzig, and on the Silesian network between Breslau, Hirschberg and Görlitz. They were (are) phenomenally good machines and one of my absolute favourite locos, in spite of the fact that my layout has so far acquired no catenary! Later, later! The company that made the kit, Jatt, was taken over by Tillig getting on for 20 years ago, and some of the range was continued, including the E18, but with numerous changes, which meant that spare parts, if available might not fit. Jatt, like Triang 00 in the 1960s with the CKD series, offered its locos ready-made or kit form for the advanced modeller. I had put the kit to one side, having taken a look at the contents of the box, but recently I decided it was time to do something with the kit and impress Hartmut - who is not a railway modeller but builds large-scale radio-controlled trucks. The old gentleman who had started the kit had made quite a mess of things - he had broken the sideframes, replacements for which I was eventually able to source from a private individual who had made some resin copies to sell on German E-Bay. The main body of the chassis is a meaty casting which is surrounded  by a plastic skirt which had warped a bit, like the roof. He had made a hash of installing the motor which carries a worm gear - getting that to sit properly and the worm to mesh caused some swearing, There is a problem generally with the way that the body of the E18 clips on to the chassis skirt (or not, in this case) so at present the body is held by double-sided tape, but a German acquaintance has shown me how to attach the body with two screws - which I may tackle before long. Some of the window glazing was lost or smeared with glue - I left one driver's window open so you can see the driver at the controls. The driver is a Preiser railwayman with his legs amputated. The loco looks great and is a lovely smooth runner - but there have been quite a few hours of unintended work and a lot of swearing.

 

Edited December 12, 2022 by rekoboy

[TT-Pete]

Not at all envious, not. :^)

 

[Allegheny1600]

What a gorgeous model, you have done a great job there, bravo.

The E18 is one of my favourite locos too and I simply had to have one, being a H0 modeller, it was easy for me* as Roco do/did that exact number! But, iirc, there were only three left in East Germany?

Cheers,

John 

 

* I say it was easy, I did have to do some work to make mine run properly but at least it was an RTR model!

[rekoboy]

Thanks for the praise! 😊 You are right, nearly all of the E18s were in the West - but as in those days most TT modellers were very likely in the former GDR, Jatt catered primarily for them, although the company was based in Baden-Württemberg.

[rekoboy]

I do not know what has got into me! Projects that existed on paper or in my thoughts or had been put aside for months, if not years, are getting completed! A couple of years ago I obtained a spare chassis, motor and wheels for the Hornby-Arnold Köf and occasionally my thoughts turned to possible uses for the chassis. By chance I saw a photo of an ÖBB track maintenance crew's Motordraisine - which I then discovered as a body shell for TT on Shapeways. The dimensions of the body shell seemed to indicate a more or less perfect fit for the Köf chassis - so I ordered one. The Köf chassis has needed some minor additional building-up with poly strip and some redundant moulding had to be removed carefully from the body shell, but these matters were so far the work of half an hour. The chassis will definitely need some extra weight as the Motordraisine will be towing a trailer, made from a whitemetal kit, and the body shell will need quite a lot of work, including the addition of a single headlight at each end. I shall keep you posted!

[rekoboy]

Just for a change, an English loco! Have a lovely Christmas, folks, and a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

[rekoboy]

More progress has been made on the ÖBB-Motordraisine, the track maintenance team's vehicle. The Shapeways bodyshell fits the chassis perfectly - but it is too low, and also needs a running board and rudimentary buffer beams plus a trailer coupling. So more work is needed - but I know exactly what I have to do! The real progress has been made on the trailer. I mentioned earlier a whitemetal body kit for the trailer - this turned out to be a non-starter in terms of weight and crude detail. While my family was watching wall-to wall rubbish on the TV during the Christmas period my mind was constantly occupied with finding a solution to the trailer problem. The answer came when I looked at a Peco N-scale goods wagon chassis which I had bought for a further vehicle for my tramway maintenance train. Bingo! That was the answer. Regauge a Peco chassis and it would be the perfect size for a trailer for the Motordraisine. The chassis was carefully sawn lengthwise and then widened with approx. 4mm broad Evergreen profile which matched the thickness of the chassis moulding. On top was glued a piece of 2mm poly sheet as strengthening and as the trailer floor. The 7mm diameter wheels and the axles are for TT, of course, by Modmüller, and are a perfect fit. There is still a lot to do, but my Draisinenprojekt is well on the way.

Edited January 2, 2023 by rekoboy

[rekoboy]

Little has happened of late on the modelling front as Frau Rekoboy and I have been in Erfurt visiting her brother who is very ill. However, work has now started again on the Motordraisine. The trailer is largely finished apart from painting and now has NEM coupler pockets, adapted from PEHO parts. The Motordraisine chassis has been modified again to raise the body slightly to accommodate the coupler pockets and to enhance the overall appearance. The chassis has acquired a lead bar (laminated from some roofer's lead flashing material), which may well need to be doubled in size to ensure that there is equal load on both axles, and I have fiddled around with the pickups so that there is a slight degree of springing to the wheelsets. At present I am testing the vehicles with N scale Fleischmann Profi couplings which are a bit too rigid with the fixed pockets - so I have ordered some Dapol couplings to try out. The Draisine and trailer run very well.

[rekoboy]

My order of N scale Dapol knuckle couplings has arrived - and I am impressed. Not only do they look better - somewhat less obtrusive than the Profi-Kupplungen - but they also work perfectly and do not disengage in action. I carried out some speedy test runs around the layout and over pointwork with the Motordraisine and trailer - and they stayed together.

[rekoboy]

It is difficult to find an exact match for the DR's orange livery for on-track plant and transport. I think this Vallejo acrylic paint gives a reasonable faded version of the colour! Still lots to do!

Edited February 1, 2023 by rekoboy

[rekoboy]

Although the Motordraisine remains unfinished I have started (and almost completed!) a further project! About 20 years ago (!) while in the Czech Republic I bought, among other TT items, a kit for a Czech bogie flat wagon which turned to be of lamentable quality and ended up at the back of a drawer - where I found it recently - and decided to finish it. The parts had a huge amount of flash which took some removing, and the side frames were slightly distorted. In the end I strengthened the structure of the kit by adding an extra internal piece of 2mm poly sheet and a real wood deck from a posh cigar box divider. The brake wheels are left-overs from a previous project. The wagon is fitted with beautifully free running Modmüller wheels and axles. The tram trailer came to me as part of a job lot and is more or less surplus to present requirements. It is not permanently fixed to the wagon - the wheels rest firmly between chocks made from a coffee stirrer - and the 'steel ropes' are made from multi-filament florist's wire. The deck and the chocks still need some painting and weathering.

[Ian Morgan]

Some not very good photos of old Munich trams being moved out from the old museum/works at Giesing in 2005. The camera on my phone was not very hi-tech back then and I did not have my 'proper' camera with me.

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Ian Morgan

[rekoboy]

Now finished with a wash of dirty colour over the deck...