rekoboy

So, the powered goods van (Geisterwagen) is more or less finished. It has been painted, may need a couple more details adding in due course, though. As you can see, it has already been included in the PW team's train!

I am afraid to say that my emphasis is moving more and more to the world of TTm trams and interurban electric railways! You may remember that I mentioned that I am an enthusiastic customer of Plaza Japan - prices are brilliant, and so far the service has been absolutely first-rate, with deliveries within two weeks. My next project for the VEB Straßen- und Überlandbahn Kirchheim-Annaberg (the trams) was another centre-cab electric loco for which I bought a bodyshell from Shapeways. The chassis used on the first loco is no longer available, and so I turned my attention to available chassis at Plaza Japan and bought a Tomytec TM-TR02 (see photo) - the dimensions seemed right, although some chopping would be needed, I thought. In the end, I decided the chassis was not right and put it away in the drawer. Last week I had a Peco 9ft N gauge goods wagon chassis on my desk - and then the penny dropped. I could modify the Tomytec chassis to fit the goods wagon chassis and so build a powered goods van which could be used with a non-motorized loco! There was a good deal of surgery needed on the Tomytec chassis which needed to be shortened, and in order to make the ends symmetrical I had to remove one of the motor mountings which I replaced with a bronze strap. The original weights were replaced with thin strips of lead from a sheet cadged from a roofer! The Peco chassis and the modified Tomytec do not quite possess the same wheelbase - but from a normal viewing distance the discrepancy is not noticeable! The motorized chassis had the goods wagon chassis cemented around it and then an additional frame made of Evergreen profile to carry the very simple van body which is made up of planked poly sheet and profiles. The curved roof was made in usual style with a piece of black poly sheet firmly taped to a mug full of boiling water! The motorized van runs beautifully - and it is powerful, more so than the pocket crocodile which looks the part but lacks oomph! Paint job next!

I thought this was a perfectly accurate description of the situation in GB!

I use a re-gauged Tomix N scale track cleaning vehicle on my German TT layout (see my postings on the German railways section of this website). Apart from an on-board motor with circuit board for the vacuum cleaner and polishing discs the body is packed with cast metal weights to keep the cleaner firmly on the track. For an N scale piece of rolling stock it is remarkably heavy and almost defeats one of my Berliner Bahnen or Piko diesel locos with drive to all 4 or 6 axles on even slight gradients. A Tomix cleaner would need at least double-headed power with weighted locos on 009 - and a perfectly level track, I think. However, that said, the vacuum cleaner function is absolutely brilliant - I would not want to be without it! The original N version picks up power from both bogies, which are not driven, but when I re-gauged the Tomix to TT with Roco bogies (see photo) I altered the power supply from direct pick-up to jumper leads from the loco which pulls or pushes the cleaner. I have equipped two locos with power sockets on the front skirts made from 2mm brass tube for use with the cleaner.

You will remember from an earlier post that the chassis rebuild for the Karsei tram left me with two left-over shunter's platforms complete with couplings from the Kato chassis. It would be such a pity to waste them, I thought, and when passing my local model shop I bought myself a couple of Peco N scale freight chassis - I have a bagful still of E German TT W50 lorry bodies, which, as I mentioned earlier, are a perfect fit for the Peco 10ft goods wagon chassis. This time I went for the 15ft chassis with the intention of being a bit more exotic! The job was done in half an hour. The N scale chassis was cut at each end at the point where the spring hanger joins the solebar. The W50 body was filed and cut flat underneath, and together with some strengthening poly sheet and microstrip the wagon was assembled with a shunter's platform at each end. In a bag of bits I found a couple of handbrake wheels - and that was it. A paint job and a load of some sort are needed - but weight-wise I have to be careful as the 'pocket crocodile' is at its limits with three wagons, although they are all three fitted with Bachmann metal wheelsets. The final Peco chassis will be used for an overhead-line maintenance wagon with some kind of wooden or steel tower. I have a couple of tempting photos! My works on the tram route are getting dangerous for the continuing development of the TT main line, I fear! I am so pleased with the appearance and running of the trams, the 'pocket crocodile' and the engineers' wagons that I have started to consider building a small TTm tram layout to show them off.

Plaza Japan is great. I can thoroughly recommend their mail order service. www.plazajapan.com

Wow, TT Pete, what an evocative set of photos! Brilliant. The average TT modeller in GDR times would probably have sold his soul - if a good, atheistic GDR citizen had one - to get his or her hands on those locos! My own BR 50 was an officially produced version on a lengthened BR 56 /86 chassis - in the GDR it was only available in limited numbers to the members of the official national model railway society DMV (Deutscher Modelleisenbahnverband der DDR). As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, the BR 50 was sold in the UK in standard BTTB packaging by, among others, Mays Models in South London.

It would look best with 4 or 6 wheel compartment coaches of Prussian origin or with 4 wheel goods wagons. See Minitrix, Fleischmann or Arnold on E-Bay, for example!

It is a very elderly Minitrix Prussian tank loco - DR/DB Class /Baureihe 89, I think. I am not sure about dismantling but the wheels and pick-ups could be cleaned and the axles lightly lubricated. This loco was produced in large numbers - I used the chassis at one point for 009 locos.

Here are some panorama pictures of the layout as it stands. Progress has been made , but there is still some way to go! But is a layout ever finished?? The 'town centre' of Konradsweiler is provisionally in place, mostly to test the lighting. When I start the installation of the overhead lines for the tram (soon??) the town centre module will just be unhooked from the power supply and lifted out. It will then have more details and road surfaces added before it returns to the layout.

More exciting progress on the VEB Straßen- und Überlandbahn Kirchheim-Annaberg - on the tram route in other words! I have finally achieved success with the little B-B electric locomotive, the 'pocket crocodile'. As you might have read in earlier posts, the original Japanese body kit proved impossible to glue together, so it was junked, except for the buffer beams and the bogie sideframes. You will remember that I sourced a very nice bodyshell from Shapeways, for which I had to build a new chassis while retaining the two Japanese power bogies. So far so good. But then the almost complete loco turned out to be a very poor runner, indeed - mostly, I discovered, because the two traction motors were not synchronized. I put the electric loco aside for quite a while and pondered a good deal, before I plucked up courage, seized the soldering iron and rejigged the wiring of the loco. I was very concerned that damage could result from my activities but the use of a fine-tipped USB soldering iron (which does get pretty hot) and low-melt solder enabled me to wire the two motors in parallel and improve the power pick-up on all eight wheels. My plan worked!! The 'pocket croc' runs beautifully, the pulling power is not fantastic, although I have put little lead blocks on board, but the croc will only need to pull or push a couple of track maintenance wagons - see photo. She has been painted with Revell acrylic colours. The pantograph is one of my collection of elderly TT? N scale? ones from my friend Hartmut in Brandenburg. The loco is nearly finished - she still needs couplings, lamp jewels, hand rails, brake hoses and a crew. Now I have started on a production line for TTm wagons having discovered that the SES W50 truck body (of which I have a bag full) is a perfect fit for the Peco N gauge goods wagon chassis. You can see the prototype as the rear wagon in the photo - I have disguised its origins a bit with brake wheels and steps! Both of the goods wagons are fitted with Bachmann N scale metal wheelsets with pinpoint bearings - they are astonishingly free-running!

My wife is from Köthen, Sybille one of her school friends. From 1979 onwards I have been a frequent visitor to Köthen! The station is great - until last year it was one of the last bigger German stations with mechanical signalling.

We received a parcel from Germany the other day via DHL-Deutsche Post and Royal Mail - it took just three days, no problem, no taxes required, although the contents value was clearly over €100. A further parcel sent from Germany via Hermes, however, took 4 weeks and was delivered, curiously, by Parcelforce. Again, no sign of any examination, no extra payment needed. Yesterday we received a package from our friend Sybille in Köthen which took only a couple of days - but the parcel was utterly plastered with strange coded stickers from DHL, Royal Mail etc. Then we get to shipments the other way. Oh dear. In early December we sent Sybille two calendars, one for her, one for her Ma. The total value was under £10 which was clearly stated on the Royal Mail customs sticker. The package took nearly 5 weeks to get to Köthen, and then Sybille was obliged to collect it from her local Postagentur and pay €8.20 tax! Aaargh! The final straw came on Sunday when I attempted to complete on-line the docs for MyHermes for a parcel to Frau Rekoboy's best friend in Zörbig. The parcel contains goodies from Betty's Cafe (if you know York or Harrogate or Ilkley you will know Betty!!) In the MyHermes documentation you are obliged to add a customs code for EACH item in the package - and MyHermes kindly supplies you with the necessary directory of codes. I searched for ages - but there are no codes, as far as I can tell, for sweets and biscuits and cake. I gave up - and did a lot of swearing. We shall try again with the Royal Mail.

Normally, my contributions on my TT layout are in the pages for the modellers of German railways, but after I read through the contributions in this section I thought I would show off what stunning rtr German steam locos in TT are available from Hornby-Arnold, Piko, Kuehn and Co. The very latest loco in my collection is the class 83.10 by Piko which boasts working inspection lighting for the motion and the finest detailing you can imagine - but the Hornby-Arnold class 58 and the Kuehn class 94 are not far behind!

I have now directed my efforts to getting the tram route running. I have simplified the track layout at the depot - photos will follow - and at last I have got trams that run adequately. For a long time the only powered vehicle that would run properly on the tram route was the remotored Köf which has turned out to be a fantastic test machine. Quite a while ago I bought second-hand a Gotha tram with trailer cars by the Thuringian firm of Karsei. It looks the part - but was a dreadful runner. I invested then in a couple of Kato N chassis from Plaza Japan (www.plazajapan.com) which turned out to be useless , too, because their high gearing made them unsuitable. I have still not got the little electric loco to run properly, either, although it will be worked on soon. Just as I was planning to make the tram route and depot a static feature a German acquaintance who models trams in TTm told me that Kato had re-designed the 4-wheel N chassis with a flywheel and coreless motor. I ordered two in November directly from Plaza Japan, and they were here remarkably quickly at a very decent price. What a pleasant surprise they turned out to be! The running characteristics are absolutely first-rate - and with the flywheel they will coast over dead frogs with no problem. I wish some of my mainline TT locos would run as well! The first rebuild has been the Karsei tram. To get the Japanese mechanism to fit it had to be shortened (no problem with a sharp knife or razor saw) and then altered in shape using poly sheet and profiles to match the existing chassis. The photos explain this. The second Kato chassis has gone into a tram body which I bought from Shapeways. It is a model of one of the trams which ran on the Lockwitztalbahn in the suburbs of Dresden which was abandoned in 1977. This tram survived, though, and is still in occasional use on the Kirnitzschtalbahn in Bad Schandau. http://www.tram-und-bahnbilder.de/details.php?image_id=153&mode=search The quality of the bodyshell is not brilliant and a lot of strengthening has been needed where the pantograph by Sommerfeld is screwed on, but the chassis fitted perfectly into the bodyshell with very little alteration apart from the removal of the end hand-rails and the coupler boxes. Painting and glazing will follow soon!

Probably the least well-known of the DR new build steam locos was the 2-8-4 tank loco of BR 83.10, mostly because it was produced in relatively low numbers and was not especially successful. It had a short working life of under 20 years, and not a single one was preserved. The 83.10, which is not really the most elegant of the DR new build locos, was developed during 1955-56 and just 27 were built by VEB Lokomotivbau 'Karl Marx' in Potsdam-Babelsberg. The first locos in the production run were extensively tested by the Rail Technical Centre in Halle/Saale and quite a few modifications were made before the remaining locos of the batch were produced. Virtually simultaneously the sister locos of class 65.10 were in production - that loco has been available for a while in TT by Gützold. The 83.10 spent its working life largely in Saxony and Thuringia, but locos were stationed at one point in BW Jerichow, near Magdeburg. So why I am writing suddenly about the BR83.10? Simply because it is the latest TT loco to be produced by Piko for which I have been waiting in eager anticipation for quite a while. She arrived yesterday after a very drawn-out journey from Hans-Gerd's model shop in Ziesar. It was, we discovered, the fault of the parcel company and not Brexit that the journey took so long. But, oh boy, the long wait was worth it. To say that the technicians at Piko have excelled themselves does not do justice to the perfection of the BR 83.10 which even possesses inspection lights for the valve gear and a realistic firebox glow. She runs beautifully at scale speeds, even on my old Piko control gear. The only thing missing is a loco crew - that issue will be attended to shortly! More photos will follow eventually. The prototype photo is by courtesy of Johannes Schmidt.

Try to find one among the many Kato and Tomix chassis on the excellent Plaza Japan website. The chassis on offer are all quoted with dimensions. www.plazajapan.com I shall shortly be writing more about my use of Japanese chassis in my TTm trams.

Here is a photo of the actual 670 which is the prototype of the Kres model. With thanks to Sven Manias on railfaneurope.net

In Summer 2019 our friends in Zörbig (Sachsen-Anhalt), who are very accommodating to their railfan pal, suggested a day out in Wörlitz (Wörlitzer Park, stately home and gardens near Dessau) with a trip on the Dessau-Wörlitzer Eisenbahn, thus diplomatically satisfying the cultural urges of Frau Rekoboy and my enthusiasms in one fell swoop. The Dessau-Wörlitzer is a standard gauge single track branch from Dessau Hbf to Oranienbaum and Wörlitz which was a private company until nationalization by the GDR authorities in 1947, had only a Summer service for quite a while, and was about to be abandoned entirely after German reunification until it ended up in the hands of the Dessauer Stadtwerke, operators of the trams, the power and water supplies in Dessau who saw the branch as a useful touristic adjunct to their main businesses. The Stadtwerke operate the line effectively with one vehicle - a railbus of class 670, named 'Fürstin Louise'. Following the collapse of the GDR regime in 1989 the nationally-owned rail vehicle building businesses of the GDR were privatized under the name of Deutsche Waggonbau AG, and fairly soon after bought up by Bombardier and Alstom. During the brief period of independence DWA produced a number of innovative developments in the hope of building up new export business. One such innovation was the lightweight double-deck railbus BR 670 of which 7 were built. Customers such as the DB AG were not really interested and no further railbuses were produced. Of the 7 built, 6 are still in existence, 2 at Dessau in the hands of the Stadtwerke, but only Louise is usable, and the other 'Fürst Franz' is destined to be cannibalized for parts. Although the 670s are on 4 wheels the ride is not bad , and the view from the upper deck front seats is brilliant. When our friend Reinhilde told the driver (who also drives buses and trams for the Stadtwerke) that there was a real-life English railfan on board he told me to to join him in the second-man's seat for the journey back to Dessau. A top day out! With that experience in the background and having enthused to all and sundry about the Dessau-Wörlitzer Eisenbahn I was delighted a few days ago to receive a surprise Christmas gift from our good friends in Brandenburg - namely the BR 670 in TT by Kres. The firm of Kres is part of the Fischer group which includes Gützold. The model is absolutely fantastic - it looks great, with a detailed interior and an array of lighting, and runs beautifully. My layout is 1960s/1970s GDR - but so what. Someone must have a time machine!

I have managed to find time during the festivities to complete the last building (well, probably the last!!) for Konradsweiler. All the members of my family like to see themselves rendered immortal as the owner of a shop or business on my layout - you will remember from my previous articles that my friend Günther is the owner of the butcher's, my daughter a cafe proprietor, my son a bookseller, my sisters in law a bakery and a bed and breakfast establishment! This time it is the turn of our niece Elke who, with her husband, has a bike shop in Köthen/Anhalt. The building owes a little to Pola, a bit more to Auhagen and a lot to my well-stocked bits boxes. I find it difficult to throw anything away. The signs were produced on the PC, the blue enamel advertising sign for MIFA bikes came as a photo from a nostalgia website and was suitably reduced. Tomorrow I shall add the gutters and downpipes and a few more small details.

Happy Christmas! And a happy, peaceful and healthy New Year!

You will be relieved to learn that some work has taken place on the layout - Bahnhof Kirchheim is almost complete, although a good number of figures need to be added and more detailing and signage completed. As you can see, some of the station staff are amazed that further work has been done! The platform is lit under the canopy with LEDs from a cheap strip intended for USB power. They are hooked up 'invisibly' to the power supply with fine copper wire recovered from a VW relay! I am very pleased with the station signs which were produced with Word on my PC, employing the font 'Preussische IV 44 Ausgabe 3' which is available free on the internet if you search. See illustration. I experimented with various fonts and this clearly looked the part. The signs were printed on glossy photo paper and stuck with liquid cement on to poly sheet strips.

Sadly, I have been diverted yet again from work on the layout by the lure of road transport in 1:120! While tidying up I found a box with some broken toy cars from the GDR which had once belonged to my son. Anyone else would have taken the junk briskly to the bin. Not Rekoboy. Some time ago an acquaintance had passed on to me the attached photo of a French Willeme tractor unit with a swan's neck (goose neck?) low loader which I thought would be a good modelling project. I had a couple of crane jibs in my SES vehicle parts bag and a spare MK/Klose/Schirmer MAN tractor unit - and now I had plenty of moulded plastic wheels, metal axles and chassis parts from the broken toy cars, plus diverse bits left over from other projects. The perfect basis for a new heavy truck! The low loader is now nearly complete - a few more details and some weathering and rust are needed.

Wow, Bernard! Fascinating coincidences! After the end of the GDR Waldemar moved on from the university and set himself up as an IT advisor. He lives in Erfurt and is still working almost full-time at the age of 75! He says he cannot imagine a life without work!

The Weißeritz is a river which has its source in the mountains near Kipsdorf. The letter ß is pronounced as 'ss'. 'Tal' is the German noun for '(river) valley', and 'Bahn' is, of course, railway. So 'die Weißeritztalbahn' is the rail line in the Weißeritz Valley.