rekoboy

Happy Christmas, folks, and a peaceful, virus-free 2021. Although this site is dedicated to German railways I thought I would share this English photo with you. It's one of my favourite places!

Here are a couple of photos, taken in Saarbrücken in the 1970s, of BR 23 in action. Typical carriages, as you can see, are Umbau and Silberlinge.

The wagon represents a private owner vehicle in use on the DRG network in the 1920s. Fleischmann has also a further Homann van and a Homann tanker in the range which are based on vehicles restored by railfans in Osnabrück. The firm still exists, has about 3,000 employees across Europe making salads and salad dressings.

I use Humbrol's or Revell's 'signal red' or Signalrot' - and it looks fine.

The next two buildings for Konradsweiler are now more or less complete. The starting point was, again, an Auhagen kit (Haus Nummer 2) with a scratch-built building adjoining. After some thought, the scratch-built structure has become the post-office, the Auhagen building's use remains for the moment unspecific, although I am tempted to make something political out of it! Following critical comments by a German friend on my last efforts - the buildings were too clean for the brown-coal fuelled GDR - these two structures look greyer. Both buildings are, as usual, part lit - instead of Viessmann lighting kit I have employed sections from cheap LED lighting strips, with the post-office counter area with its tiled floor and the first floor of Haus 2 turned into light boxes to avoid any unwanted light creeping through into other rooms or through cracks. The post-office signs are from my own photo collection.

A German acquaintance pointed me in the direction of the historic section of the website Drehscheibe Online, and pointed me especially to Dick Lawrence's photos of the 1970s and 80s Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn and their steam locos, latterly often around Saalfeld an der Saale. The photos are staggeringly good and are not only a historic record of the DB and DR in action but also snapshots of E German life on and around the railway. Utterly absorbing! https://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?099,9059379

Both Roco and Fleischmann have both produced very nice BR 64 in H0, the Roco model is particularly appealing. Look out also for the latest Gützold BR 64 - a very nice model, not to be confused with the earlier E German Piko/Gützold model with its old fashioned headlamps.

A project, which has taken a good deal longer than planned, is now just about finished. For the town centre at Konradsweiler, the tram terminus, I needed a row of three shops, which had to fit a somewhat curved street. The starting point was a very old butcher's shop kit from Mamos (still made in exactly the same form by Auhagen) which was built more or less as described on the box, but with an interior made from photos of a real butcher's shop and a floor made from a photo of a real tiled floor. I relied on the advice of my family as to the other two businesses - my son is a production manager for a publishing house, so one had to be a bookshop. My daughter thought the other needed to be a bar - she is a teacher! Whereas the butcher's was more or less straight from the kit box, the other two were built out of poly sheet, Evergreen profiles and a lot of parts from Auhagen and Pola. Auhagen makes very nice component sets for kitbashers - various bags or boxes of roof panels, windows, doors, gutters and so forth. The interiors of the bookshop and the bar are based on photos of real-life businesses with Pola wallpaper - the bar has a real wooden floor made out of a cigar box divider. All curtains are from Pola cut-out sheets. The furniture is all by Faller for 'N' - but oversized and so perfect for TT, and the figures are by Preiser or old E German ones from VEB Harzer Schmuck. Lighting is by Viessmann, with the LED units set into the ceilings. The three buildings are still not quite finished - but they are now good enough to show off, I think!

Here is the official website of the Rennsteigbahn... https://www.rennsteigbahn.de/content/

If you are modelling the Rennsteigbahn, then you need its preserved BR 94 loco! Until dieselization of the route through Ilmenau and past Rennsteig through to Themar on the line from Eisenach to Sonneberg (formerly Coburg), services were dominated by the locos of the BR 94 which were fitted with Riggenbach counter-pressure brakes for safety on the steep gradients. The Rennsteigbahn is a a registered EVU (Eisenbahnverkehrsunternehmen) and is licensed to conduct rail traffic throughout Germany. It operates, among other services, the household refuse bulk trains from Ilmenau. The state of Thuringia now supports regular weekend rail passenger services between Ilmenau and Rennsteig which are operated by the Erfurter Bahn. The Rennsteigbahn operates the steam-hauled specials and the freight services. In the last years of the DR the route was the home of the V180 diesel-hydraulics, also fitted with additional braking systems, and most trains were double-decker 2 and 3 car sets. Here is a photo of the preserved BR 94 with a preserved DR double-decker unit. I am also attaching a photo of my TT version of the BR 94, made by Kühn, which is a beautiful model - probably the most impressively detailed rtr loco in TT.

My absolute favourite - the metre-gauge Industriebahn in the suburbs of Halle an der Saale. The standard-gauge wagons (just a couple a day) were transported on Rollböcke to various factories. I lived round the corner from it in the Lutherstraße for three years and was fascinated by it. Sadly gone.

'German 8' looks much more appealing to me, too. I agree with the comment about the station building as a low-relief structure at the back. I think it would be unlikely that a a rural terminus (or a former through station, would have a big freight warehouse. For a small station transformed from a through station to a terminus see, for example, Osterfeld on the former through line from Zeitz to Camburg. Here is a copy of some track plans, including the 'terminus' Osterfeld from the excellent book from the Kenning-Verlag. Gunther Wilde, Hans-Jürgen Barteld: Die Nebenbahn Zeitz–Osterfeld–Camburg (= Nebenbahndokumentation. Band 28). Kenning, Nordhorn 1997, ISBN 3-927587-76-1 (96 S.) Here is also a photo of Osterfeld just before total closure with a railbus belonging to KEG (Karsdorfer Eisenbahngesellschaft). That railway operating company arrived on the scene after German reunification with the privatization of the cement works in Karsdorf.

Good Morning! Does the station track layout have sufficient potential for operating fun and shunting - and is there sufficient opportunity to show off rolling stock to viewers (or to oneself!)? Might the warehouse or goods shed, labelled Spediteur, be replaced with an open-air loading track with a crane? Is there potential to the right of the station to add a one-road loco shed? Might you include a double-slip, found across many minor German termini?

In the early sixties my Dad and I spent many happy hours reading the 'Meccano Magazine' together. Here is a scan of one of my absolutely favourite covers with a brilliant illustration of the Schwebebahn. Enjoy!

It might be best to go straight to www.google.de and use the 'Bilder' option (images) and then type in Industriebahn, Werkbahn, Werkbahnlok (works' loco) etc. I have attached screenshots to help you. Using google.de will produce some good photos - Industriebahn Ludwigsburg is a good one to go for, as is Industriebahn Halle, which was metre gauge and employed transport bogies for standard-gauge wagons

Dampflok Archiv 3 (Seiten 13-17) (Transpress DDR/Alf Teloeken BRD) is a good resource.

On the topic of TT road vehicles, some time ago I discovered the Russian Zvezda range of kits for wargamers which are sold by one of the model shops here in York. Zvezda makes a small range of vehicle kits in UK TT scale (1:100) which are moderately well-detailed, plus a whole selection of planes and figures in 1:72, 1:100 and 1:144 scales. So far I have bought the Opel Blitz (second world war era), the Ural (still in service in the Russian and Ukrainian and other armies), and the good old British AEC Matador. I employed only the chassis and cab of the Blitz, the rest is pretty simple and unrealistic. The main problem with Zvezda's trucks is that the cab windows are solid - an acquaintance told me to pick them out with soft black pencil - and from a distance they look fine! I made a platform body for the Blitz out of poly sheet, SES bits and Evergreen profiles - and made a real wood floor out of a sheet of super-thin ply which you find as a divider in very expensive cigar boxes! The plastic employed by Zvezda is not too keen to take paint - the next time I shall wash the components thoroughly with a splash of washing-up liquid before painting. Although the model is a bit over-scale for German TT it looks fine beside other vehicles. It and its sister are destined to be the transport for a small coal merchant's business on the layout, based on the memories and photos of our nephew Thomas in Eisenach!

There is another project - I was tempted again by my bag of truck parts from MK/Klose/Schirmer and SES, was diverted from more important tasks, I am afraid, and I produced an MAN artic tractor unit and flatbed trailer as might have been seen in the 1980s. I have tried to paint it to look as if it has done some hard service - mostly I employ Tamiya acrylics and very fine brushes for such small jobs. The starting point was the chassis-cab in the photo from Schirmer - the rest is made up of SES chassis parts and wheels as in the photo, poly sheet, Evergreen profiles etc. I am pleased with the result!

There has been activity of late, all connected with the construction of a further building for Konradsweiler, a bakery as a kind of small memorial to my late sister-in-law Gertraud, who trained as a baker and confectioner. The basis of the Bäckerei und Konditorei Gertraud Walter is formed by 4 walls from an ancient Pola kit, sold as for H0, but clearly far too small, and thus suited well to TT. I have been collecting very elderly unmade kits by Pola - allegedly at 1:87 scale, they are actually 1:120 or even 1:140 scale. See comparison of kit parts with an Auhagen TT building. So far I have only employed 4 walls from the rather strange half-timbered cottage kit for the bakery - the half-timbering would need to be glued on separately! Now awaiting construction are the half-built house and the office block which would look laughably tiny on an H0 layout. Most of my bakery is built from poly sheet with a selection of Auhagen parts, including the tiled roof panels, gutters, doors and windows. The roof of the extension is fine sandpaper, the shop sign was produced with the font 'Fraktur' on the PC and printed on photo paper, The shelves full of bread are made of photos of a real bakery glued on to pieces of balsa.

Here are a few photos which illustrate the current situation at Kirchheim. Not too many changes, I fear!

This week I got around at last to a project that has been waiting literally on the shelf for my attention. You may have heard of the Japanese manufacturer, Tomix, which produces a wide range of material in 'N', including an overscale track vacuum cleaning and polishing vehicle. There is plenty of material around on YouTube and on German model rail sites (TT-Board) on how one can re-gauge the Tomix cleaner for TT, with lots of very good reviews as to its cleaning power. The unit possesses a motor for the polishing discs and the vacuum, but needs to be towed behind a loco - that makes the rebuild relatively easy. I wanted to make as few changes as possible to the structure of the Tomix with no major surgery except for a change of bogies. I had a pair of Roco TT bogies in the parts drawer, but they needed quite a bit of modification - see photo. I glued on a platform of 1.5mm poly sheet, with a hole drilled of 5mm diameter to take the Tomix fixing screw, and then glued over the hole a 2mm long piece of poly tube of 5mm internal diameter to act as a bearing ring. Apart from Roco's plastic being difficult to glue, that stage went better than I imagined. At first I intended to fit the Roco bogies with bronze power pickup strips - but then I read a contribution on TT-Board where the writer dispensed with power pick-ups for the Tomix and hooked it up semi-permanently to a diesel loco with connecting leads. Very conveniently (and slightly oddly) the Tomix has a pair of holes (and sockets) in the roof at one end for adding a power-connection for cleaning very dirty or non metallic rail! I made use of those holes and soldered leads to the power buses that run between along the insides of the car, originally to link the power pick-ups on the two bogies. It all worked! The next step was the addition of a PEHO coupler pocket (so far just on the loco end, to test things) and a buffer beam from the scrap box. Finally I dug out a BTTB V180 which was destined to be a source of spare parts and breathed new life into it. I cut a small gap in one of its front skirts to accommodate the two thin leads to power the Tomix. All was hooked up - and then came the first track test. Boy, oh boy, I have scarcely ever been so happy at the outcome of a modelling project! The Tomix has fantastic vacuuming power (the sound of the vacuum motor and the old BTTB V180 motor on full power are impressive!!) and is brilliant for tunnel sections or hard to reach bits of the layout. After the first run the container was half-full of fluff, muck and ballast chippings. Brilliant. So tomorrow I shall add the second PEHO and the other buffer beam - and the job's a good 'un, as they say!

Conrad-Antiquario - no relation to Conrad electronics - in Berlin is an antiquarian dealer for collectors. They have very kindly made electronic versions of numerous German and European model railway catalogues freely available on their web-site. No downloads permitted, though, I am afraid. The catalogues are just fantastic mementos of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Whenever I have a spare moment at present, this is my absolutely favourite web-site, especially as they have also digitalised a selection of Meccano magazines which I used to read with my Dad in the early 1960s. In my teens I built an Egger-Bahn layout - all of Egger's catalogues are there, too. https://www.conradantiquario.de/katalogservice.html Enjoy!

Our nephew Thomas in Eisenach has a brother-in-law, Steffen, who owns a removal and house-clearance business. The last time that we were in Eisenach before the Covid-19 crisis we called in to see Steffen in his office, and he said he had a present for me from a house clearance. The present turned out to be a Stadtilm BR 24 tender loco and a 2-car railbus in S scale, made probably in the early 1960s - production ceased in 1964. Amazingly, both work. I have no S scale track, there was none from the house-clearance, but with leads held on the wheels the motors turn over vigorously, and relatively smoothly and quietly. I am wondering whether to build a little diorama to display them, or simply to add, to my wife's probable dismay, a further show-case to the wall! I have included a shot of the BR24 next to its much younger TT sister by Berliner Bahnen - it illustrates clearly the size of S scale locos. The model trains of Stadtilm (a small town in Thuringia) were produced to keep the Liebmann company going after its initial raison d'etre, building components for the aerospace industry was stopped by the Soviet occupying powers. The first range of toy trains was in 0 scale, in the mid-50s the S range replaced them, and were produced up to 1964. The factory still exists - but it produces propellor shafts for buses and trucks. The trains are really toys, the BR24 is very nice as a memento of the E German model railway industry, but it cannot be described as a scale model! And neither can the railbuses. If you read German and would like to discover a bit more about the Liebmann company and its trains, here is a link to the German Wikipedia page. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallwarenfabrik_Stadtilm There is also a club for collectors which organises regular swap-meets. http://stadtilmerbahnen.de/rueckblicke/

European 1:120 TT was kept alive largely by Zeuke, later Berliner TT Bahnen in E Germany, which developed a good range of locos and rolling stock. As E Germany exported BTTB models in large quantities across the Eastern Bloc, interest in TT grew in such countries as Poland and former Czechoslovakia. Thanks to BTTB's exports in the past and the interest that they created the Czech Republic is home to a wide range of small-scale producers of TT models, often as resin or brass kits - see, for example, https://www.mala-zeleznice.cz/vyrobek/tt-zvedak-patkovy-4x25t_865.html which has a multi-lingual website, or the Czech equivalent of Hattons (!) which has most Czech producers on board....https://1185589887.eshop-rychle.cz/es-pecky The big breakthroughs came in Europe for TT after the fall of the Iron Curtain when BTTB was privatised firstly as Zeuke and then under the name of Tillig, and when Roco took a look at its neighbours in Germany and the Czech Rep, who might just be a lucrative new market and introduced their own TT range. Subsequently, the privatised and very successful Piko in the former E Germany decided to give TT a shot, too, with a huge degree of success. Piko's locos are reasonably priced and top runners. Even good old Hornby, through its German subsidiary Arnold, has entered the TT market, rather half-heartedly, though, and produes a very nice BR 95 Bergkönigin, which I have in my loco stud, if you look back in my posts. In a way, TT has seen a miraculous survival and an impressive rebirth in Germany and neighbouring countries. Present day steam locos by Piko, Roco, Tillig, Gützold or Arnold or Kuehn are easily as good and as detailed as their H0 sisters. Germany has also a number of small producers in addition to the big firms - this BR 64 (one of my favourite locos) is by Schirmer.

More action today! I have fitted the new signal box module into the layout and hooked up the electrics. There is still plenty to be done on that level of the layout, including covering up the join, more greenery, fences and ballasting - but for now I am happy. Next step - the tram route WILL get attention! I aim to get the depot building constructed and solder up some overhead line masts from brass tube.