rekoboy

Some more work has taken place on the tram depot, thanks to the chance acquisition of some used Minitrix turnouts at a very good price!

Hornby markets its TT, which is to European 1:120 scale, of course, through its German ? Chinese? Arnold subsidiary. So far the selection is small but of admirable quality - two steam locos, the BR 95 and the BR 58, one electric, a Reichsbahn CoCo Class E(2)51and numerous versions of the Köf shunting tractor. There are few Arnold TT dealers in the UK, but Hornby's own mail order service is great.

Here's another photo for you! Apologies if every thing looks a bit askew - the camera angle could have been better!

There has been some activity at Kirchheim of late - note the new platform roof in one of my following photos. more on that later. The big news is that Kirchheim has just received a new loco - the BR 58 (ex Prussian G 12) from Hornby-Arnold. The long wait has been worth it! The loco is fantastic - one of the smoothest and quietest runners that I have encountered, and the detail and paint scheme are of the highest standard. The only negative for me is the poor quality of the loco crew figures - but they can be changed easily, I think. See what you think!

The Prussian State Railways had various standard metre-gauge or 750mm gauge carriages - similar ones to those in the film, but it is difficult to find an exact match. You could look at Tillig - www.tillig.com, or at Bemo - www.bemo-modellbahn.de or at PMT -Technomodell - www.pmt-modelle.de. Technomodell was, by the way, almost the only private producer of model railway equipment in the former GDR. They specialized in Saxon narrow gauge. When the owner, Herr Walter, passed away the firm was bought up by Profimodell Thyrow (PMT).

Confused staff, too little guidance on different rates of VAT, a desire to err on the safe side, not bothered because of so few customers in the UK.....you name the reason!

That reply from Frank M at Märklin-Trix is virtually the same as the initial responses I had on the phone and by e-mail from VGB as to why my 40 year old subscription to the Modelleisenbahner had been cancelled. I am fairly convinced that VGB has not applied for a UK tax number and has no intention of doing so! Life is much simpler without that handful of UK customers following increased postal charges and other Brexit-linked issues.

At last! After a further exchange of annoying e-mails I finally got the 'Freischaltcode' for my digital subscription to the Modelleisenbahner today- and it works! I signed in, entered the code, and there it was. After 7 months of trying, with numerous e-mails and frustrating phone calls I have all of the missing editions as PDFs. Yeeeeah!MEB.doc

At last I can report - hopefully - success with my endeavours in 'uncancelling' my subscription to the Modelleisenbahner. I had continued to receive the same negative responses (Brexit, no longer allowed, customs problems, postal problems....) to my mails, until one of the staff at the MEB office asked me out of the blue if I had a German e-mail address or could use a German postal address. Yes, yes - progress at last! I have always had a German e-mail address and my good friends in Brandenburg are always willing to take in post for me so I conveyed those facts to the lady at the publishers who within 5 minutes agreed to send the bill to my web.de address as long as I am happy to swap to an electronic subscription. No problem!

I agree thoroughly with Cunningham Loco Works' remarks - but would add that as far the Deutsche Reichsbahn der DDR was concerned, the most ubiquitous 2-10-0, right up to the end of steam, was the BR 52, which has also survived preserved in good numbers. They were designed to be cheap, quick to build and robust and to have a limited life. They are certainly robust!

Very occasionally I buy the 'Model Railroader' from our local model shop - I have just discovered from this month's edition that our friends at Hattons have moved into the North American market - or is this old news that has passed me by?

I bought recently a second Kühn BR 94 from my favourite model shop in Ziesar (Land Brandenburg) and both I and Herr Ludwig, the model shop owner, were somewhat concerned as to what might happen. The parcel was sent via Hermes and had a tracking number - after two days the parcel vanished off the radar, so to speak, and we were told every day the same message, that the parcel was in transit in Germany. A couple of days ago I tried the tracking number again for the umpteenth time, expecting the same message, when to my amazement I was told that the parcel was at the Parcelforce (!) York depot and would be with me soon. It arrived 2 hours later. There was no evidence that the parcel had been checked nor was there a demand for any taxes. Why there had been a switch from Hermes to Parcelforce - who knows? The package had been in transit for two and a half weeks. A day later my wife received from Parcelforce a package sent from her friend in Brandenburg, originally dispatched by Deutsche Post - that package had been in transit for just three days! Again, no sign of any inspection, no taxes to pay.

The publisher in question stopped my subscription to the magazine 'Modelleisenbahner' which I had had since GDR days with the comment that it would resume when there was a full Brexit agreement! My stream of e-mails have been either unanswered or answered with meaningless platitudes.

The Japanese electric loco kit mentioned above turned out to be a disaster - apart from the two power bogies, of which more later. The plastic employed in the kit resisted all adhesives in my collection - a firm joint remained only firm for a few hours before coming apart! Grrr! Following a moment of inspiration I turned to Shapeways and found a very nice little Swiss TTm electric loco body which found its way to me very quickly - and expensively! The metal chassis from the Japanese kit was a touch too long for the Shapeways body, so I made up a new chassis from brass section and polystyrene sheet. The whole lot is held together by a long M2 screw which attaches the panto to the cab roof and then the brass chassis to the whole body. The only parts from the original kit which I have employed so far are the bogie outside frames which are Araldited on to the metal inners. There is still quite a lot to do - but the loco runs very well. The weightier chassis has done wonders! When I dismantle the loco again to rejig the power pickups and wire in the panto I shall take more photos.

I ordered spares from Kuehn-Modell in Rheinbreitbach in the middle of last week, and they were here on Tuesday. No problems, no charges. So far so good. There is a large-ish parcel of secondhand scrap locos and parts on its way from my friend Matthias in Meck-Pomm - let's see if that gets through without any problems. I have two locos - another Kuehn BR 94 and the Piko BR 83 - on order from my favourite model shop in Ziesar, but I think I shall endeavour to collect them in person whenever travel is permitted again!

The Dampflok-Archiv series (four volumes!) by the former East German VEB Transpress-Verlag is the most thorough resource you can imagine on German steam locomotives. It was accompanied by similar volumes by the same publisher on electric and diesel locomotives of both the pre-war Reichsbahn and the post-war DB and DR. The books were published simultaneously in West Germany by the Alba-Verlag in Düsseldorf with the slightly amended title of Dampflokomotiven deutscher Eisenbahnen - Dampflokarchiv. So one might try on Amazon, for example, to find the book by either publisher - they are, apart from the covers, identical. I can recommend them wholeheartedly!

I have finally bitten the bullet and at last begun to build OLE structures for the tram route. The masts are soldered up from 2.4 mm brass tube with 0.8mm brass wire for the catenary/contact wire support. Once I had made up a wooden jig for the soldering and drilling then production became quite fast - so far today I have made 7 masts. The most fiddly bit is drilling the mast twice for the contact wire support arms. They need cleaning up and painting, of course. What do you think?

The tram operators have received their first works vehicle - a drop-side truck with a very mixed parentage! In one of my many bits boxes I discovered a long-forgotten Graham Farish N scale 4-wheel carriage chassis. On close inspection I realized that its breadth matched exactly that of the dropside body of the SES W50 truck (see photo) , and since I have a massive bag of SES truck parts in the drawer I thought it was time for some creative kit-bashing. The wagon body is made up from two W50 dropside bodies, the end steps and brake wheel were left-over extras from a Czech ballast hopper kit. I am pleased with the results of my evening's labours! The works truck needs a loco, of course, and the kit for that has arrived from Plaza Japan. The electric loco in question is to Japanese N scale - 1:150 - but it is slightly overscale and will pass with not much difficulty as a TTm machine. I shall keep you posted.

I needed a decent test loco for the tram route - and what I got for a small sum as a non-runner was an outwardly perfect N scale Köf by Arnold. After a rebuild with new brass gears and a coreless motor and worm from the thoroughly recommendable Tramfabriek (www.tramfabriek.nl) the little diesel runs beautifully - and has proved that my trackwork, including the very elderly Minitrix points is OK. I have now started work in earnest on the terminus and have paved most of the street area.

Here is the tram depot provisionally in place. Still a long way to go!

Although a TT modeller I can add to the discussion in that I am thoroughly impressed by the quality and performance of both Roco and Piko products, and can recommend them wholeheartedly. I have three Roco steam locos on my layout (BR 44, BR 38, BR 80) which run beautifully and look absolutely first-rate in terms of details and finish. Similarly, I have several recent locos by Piko - their first steam loco in TT, the BR 55 is awesome. Although it is a mainstream, relatively (!) modestly-priced model the level of detail (including a working oil-pump drive, taken off the valve gear!!) is fantastic - and it runs like a dream. Piko's diesels in TT are also of an admirable quality - just look at the fine detail on the BR 106. And then there's Hornby-Arnold. Their BR 95 and the Kleinlok are also of a very good quality and look superb.

The fact that I have not added to my ramblings of late does not mean that I have not been moderately active with work on the layout. At present I am experimenting with the layout of the buildings in Konradsweiler - I do not intend to build any further houses for this area - maybe a shed or two might appear in time. The whole town centre area will remain removable - at least until everything else is complete. I am attempting to give a picture of reality as viewed from a passing train (or plane!), so there are plenty of rear views of buildings. The tram terminus will be viewed through gaps between buildings and from the end or back of the layout. Part of my thinking is to establish some realism and interesting perspectives for future photography. In terms of the trams, the depot is finally more or less finished and I am making a start on the mass-production of overhead line masts from brass-tube. A big reel of fine-ish copper wire has arrived from Uncle Wu in the PRC - so I might be having trams running before long - as you can see the Gotha-built car from the Thüringerwaldbahn is still standing idle at the depot. The depot building - apart from windows and tiled roof panels by Auhagen - is built entirely of poly sheet, with the outside skin(s) of brick pattern. The structure is laminated from between 3 and 5 layers of polystyrene sheet and is very solid. The lighting is, again, made from a three-LED section from a cheap USB-powered chain of lamps.

Andreas Nothaft (www.modellbahndecals.de) has HSB transfers in stock. I noticed them when I was looking for some DR transfers a day or two ago.

My wife Birgit whom I married in 1981 in Berlin (Ost) was permitted to keep her GDR citizenship when we moved to England, and she had a permanent entry/exit visa for the GDR. An unusual story, indeed. A long story - but the basic reason was that the state saw her as a solid citizen, but was not happy for her to be married to an Englishman with potential visits to the UK and continue to work as a teacher. That was the compromise. The problem was land-travel to and from E Germany, as she had to apply for a transit visa for the Netherlands or Belgium and was always held up at the border. The GDR embassy in London was remarkably laid back when Birgit suggested for the reasons of travel and work it would be a good idea to apply for UK citizenship. That dual-nationality was allowed under GDR law, and the embassy gave the green light. So from then on Birgit travelled in Europe on a UK passport, and just produced the GDR one at the GDR border. Our children, born in the GDR, are in the same position - they have GDR birth certificates, and so with their mother, became citizens of the new Germany in 1990 while maintaining their British citizenship. So right now my wife, my son, my daughter and my grandchildren can use their shiny German passports to spend as long as they like in the EU - I cannot,.

On a positive note I have just bought yet another Auhagen kit from a favourite model shop in Oranienburg, just outside Berlin. No delay, transit time via Deutsche Post and Royal Mail just as before - and the shop forgot to add a customs sticker! There is hope!