SeanNeedham

Recently, I've been getting hammer about building something for the local arts fair in November, seeing as I'd been entered; however, my 'saving grace' was the fact that my board was a foot over the allotted size, and the other thing is, my idea was not locally representative... Last week, I'd got an 'urgent' to do in Barcelona, so my idea was in and out and then go over to the sheds in Martorell for an hour, and then have a wander across Montserrat to the rack railway museum, just to get some ideas for a long term probable, which I though would need all the stock scratch-building for. However, in my jaunts, I popped in to the model shop off Plaça Catalunya, to see if they'd got any 'modern-ish' freight haulers in, with the intention of ordering a 60/66 if not, just to have some heavy drag capability on the UK outline I'm slowly working through. And nearly walked out with a Kato EMD66 series. But with the moment of paying for the locomotive, I cast my eyes to the display case for the secondhand gubbins and then everything changed. In the case there was a pair of Fleischmann 0-6-0 overhead collection electric locos, and one had already been modified to represent the locomotives that run the engineering trains on the Vall de Nuria and Monsterrat rack railways (sure, it's not 100% accurate, and still needs things like the cab roof overhangs, warning bells removing, and the chassis/drive wheels painting the right colours), but it was 'there'. I mentioned this to the chap that was serving me in the shop, and he smiled and started bringing out some photos of his things, and also some of the prototype photos that were in the shop. My main excuse of not knocking anything local up was quickly disappearing, as I was justifying it to all that there wasn't any RTR models, however I was about to be proved wrong with a Fleischmann starter set, a photo which I actually took (and had on my iPod) and the photos of that were being shown to me. It turned out that all the locomotives that ran on the metre/standard gauge lines of Catalonia (as opposed to the 5' 6" Iberian lines) were mainly of Germanic/Swiss/Austrian construction or family lines, and... With a few hours in the 'workshop', a respray and renumbering, there are a lot of them in the Fleischmann catalogue; and the most 'common' one to run on the local rails is a very close build of the budget starter set locomotive, but with the lack of cabside windows, warning bells, air tanks on the roof of the cab and a different paint job. Then the rest are all represented in the Fleischmann and Arnold ranges, with just a bit of workshop time needed. In turn, from what started out as a jaunt for a freight machine, ended up with me saying to myself "ahh, nuts to it" and opening up on two fronts at once to build a small layout representative of the local area. In the research for some local materials, I've found some really interesting prototypical operations in the region (the tracks were up the main road for the most part, stations when scaled to N-gauge are no bigger than two ciggy packets footprint including goods shed, mixed passenger/freight, very strange coal loading stations, and a petrol mine...), and also with looking for some historical background, that has brought up some interesting things as well... The one that got me most excited is that there is a shed I walk past most weeks, a nondescript engineering unit of the type that can be found on most industrial estates up and down Europe, and... Inside are a stored Garratt 2-6-0+0-6-2, a local tank locomotive, some other bits of stock, and the thing is, very, very few people know what this shed contains (so much so, to ask if you can go have a look, you've got to write to the FGC 'assets' manager in Barcelona to arrange a visit). So now where does it leave me? Buy more UK outline hardware, or start building a local based layout? And the answer, I'm off in to town now to buy another board, some blue insulation foam and another jar of Nescafe, as whilst there's the mess of layout building in the workshop, it kind of makes sense to dig in and build something else at the same time... Kind of.

I'm watching this thread develop, Ron, and every time you post some more pictures, I'm more in awe of the whole project. Just looking at them cross-braced trusses above, and how much work that goes in to one of them, I don't know if I'd have the patience, let alone the dexterity to be able to complete something like that! Keep up the good work on this, as to be honest, I'm kind of addicted to this thread and have to keep having a check on it to see what will pop up next!

Hi Missy, thanks for the tip. I think if I'm going to do the 2mm FS it's going to be an all or nothing thing, mainly for the geographical location I'm in and not being able to get the parts or nip to a show easily; but I'm thinking about the Model Rail Live event in July, at Barrow Hill (a cheap flight, stay at my mother's down the road, leave SWMBO here, and go out for a few nights with my mates!) As I mused in the next post along, I think my rose tinted specs are on the blink, now with looking at the 80 I used to use and 'never seeing a problem', now it looks so bloody big compared to what it should do, so this is still floating round the head, but I'm also tempted by the local (and what the locals class as narrow gauge, which is UK Standard) lines. Suppose I could mash up both at once!

The more the temptation is taking hold to do something based on the old railway through the valley. After being out on a job yesterday, and taking a couple of shots of the old track area that ran through the middle of the farm I was working on, and out across a bridge, I'm staring at the local history pages and mumbling to myself (not a good sign, as when mumbles happen, so do crazy projects). And when the photos come off the camera like the one attached below, it doesn't sway the mind against in the slightest... Add in to the mix, the explosive combination of some of the things that used to run up here being available in RTR and kit, then I'm seriously trying not to tempt myself with it... Though, on to other things first. I've got a load of track down, and doodles on the board for scenic areas on the current one, and I really must crack in to that now I've a free weekend (unless something bad kicks off, and my Nikon is required 'out there'), and the other half breathing down my neck asking "why isn't it finished yet?" The answer to why it hasn't progressed much in a few days, well, that's down to a pair of 1980's Poole-era Farish, and both of them having a full strip and rebuild, which was a waste of time in my eyes, because they don't run or sound any better. Are my rose tinted glasses not working as they used to, or were they really that poor in running capabilities and with the noise they kick out? Enough of the mumbles, grumbles and generally boring prattle (sorry!), and time to go and buy a new printer as the accounts department decided in it's infinite wisdom cheap cartridges were the way forward...

Chris, in answer to what class it is on the blog, that's a 04. The 03 had a larger fuel tank and a bulge at the back of the bonnet by the cab. Nice looking work, again! I'm really enjoying looking at your layouts for inspiration and personal enjoyment!

Thanks for the further information, Ian, I will definitely be looking in to them for the next layout I'm going to build (only got one point on the current, and wire in tube works fine for it, as it's just a skills refresh more than anything). I've a big box full of servos in the basement, so that's where the initial thoughts came from, so one of the set up boxes would put me ahead of the curve on cost to start as well. Once again, thanks for the info and I'm going to try and put it in to operation sometime in the near future!

Thanks for this, Ian, I was going to pop the question on the board about using servos in place of point motors, etc, as point motors around here are silly beans and servos can be got for about 12€ and I was thinking about seeing if they were interchangeable in their roles.

If you are getting the local cowboys in to do the conversion, make sure you do your homework properly as there are some really dodgy building firms in country, and what some of them say and what they actually deliver at the end of the day is so wide of each other, you could park a whole fleet of buses between them (personal experience here!) Also, keep an eye on 'foreigner tax', as some of the 'services' will try and charge you more because you are not of iberian blood... I had this when I went to try and buy a few things recently, one was the baseboard for the project that's on the bench now, and another what they tried on was a replacement of a bulb in the emergency lighting system in the apartment building; bulb cost 7.30€, they tried charging 98,30€ for travel, 'specialist labour' and other undisclosed bits...