rekoboy

I have still not had much time for layout activities, but thanks to a friend in Dessau I have had something to keep me busy! Matthias offered to bring back some TTf loco kits from a railway museum in Lithuania where they are sold as simple souvenirs. You might ask - what is TTf? It is used to describe 1:120 scale models of rolling stock built for 600mm gauge, and in the case of these models, so called Brigadeloks built by several loco works for service on the Western Front in WW1. Several have survived and are still in service on the Waldeisenbahn Muskau (http://www.waldeisenbahn.de/de/)and on at least one Pioniereisenbahn. The kits are quite simple but have some fiendishly small parts which are quite demanding for a 60 year old with sausage fingers and short sight! The big plan is to motorize one kit using a Märklin Z gauge mechanism - a pipe dream, I fear - but one loco is now assembled but not completely detailed and is being delivered to the Pioniereisenbahn Kirchheim as I write this - see photos! The slightly overscale chains which do actually secure the loco on its transporter came from a girly shop called 'Claire's Accessories' which you might know! For eight quid you get two long fine necklaces and enough chain to keep me busy for months! So there you have it - diesel and oil stains from cheap black nail varnish and chains from the shop favoured by teenie girls!

As I mentioned in my 'Zittauer Schmalspurbahnen' contribution things have been quiet on the railway front for quite a while thanks to the arrival of grandson Lucas and work-related matters. However, I do have some news from Kirchheim, a new loco has arrived! I have been waiting impatiently for months for the BR 106 shunter from Piko which finally arrived in Herr Ludwig's shop a couple of weeks ago. It has been worth the wait as you can see from the attached photos. The level of detail is fantastic - just look at the hand-rails and grab irons. She runs well but I am not entirely convinced by the transmission concept which seems a bit like Hornby Dublo of the 1960s with the drive on to one axle only and the other three driven by the side rods. We shall see!

Tillig does do a three-way point - I have two in use on my layout. I find the Tillig turnouts OK and I have over 20 standard and curved points, plus 2 three-ways and 2 double slips. They have been generally very reliable, although with a couple the bronze spring strip of the Roco turnout drives sawed through the relatively soft plastic of the tie-bar! Some of the turnouts have been in use now for over 7 years and are still fine. I can recommend Tillig track!

Thanks to the facts that work has been hectic and that the garden has been in need of serious attention not a great deal has happened at Kirchheim lately - although the re-motoring of the 'home-made' BR 64 is proceeding - more of that topic soon. However, there are developments in connection with the trams. At the Dampfloktreff in Dresden I was able to buy for very little money 2 Tatra T4 trams which had been given away with crates of Einsiedler Pilsener at some stage in the recent past. German breweries often give away free model trucks with crates of beer but this particular brewery in Chemnitz did a series of trams as souvenirs - they are very roughly TT scale and are mounted on 9mm gauge bogies. A project for later, I thought but I have already sourced from Plaza Japan an N-gauge Tomytec chassis that will fit! The big excitement came, though, on my last day in Germany when Günther and I visited Herr Ludwig in his excellent model shop in Ziesar - Herr Ludwig mentioned that his friend had a Karsei Gotha T57 with trailer cars in TTm for sale. Karsei is a small manufacturer from a village near Eisenach and produces quite limited runs of very appealing TT rolling stock - the tram is no longer available, so I was more than excited when I discovered that Herr Ludwig's mate wanted only € 100 for the motor-car and 2 trailers. They arrived today - so there is really no excuse any longer for not getting cracking on the tram route!

Danke, John!

Here you go folks - a decent photo of the Jatt BR 38.

Sadly, I have had little time for modelling of late, but whatever time was available was mostly taken up with trying to find the optimal position for the tram terminus at Konradsweiler and to make a permanent road bed to go with the tram track on the left-hand side of the bridge. I think I have finally managed the task and have pinned down the Streamline flexitrack and the Roco points so I can make the templates for the plywood base for the tram terminus and for the styrene road surface up to track level to the left of the bridge. As you can see, the contractors have already brought in some metre-gauge wagons to aid construction! The next test is the conversion of the two Roco 'N' turnouts to simple spring operation - I have the the necessary bits, a report will follow! Some train running has also been going on. Quite a while ago I acquired a Jatt BR 38 4-6-0 which is a beautiful, white-metal model and which runs like a dream, but sadly it seems to have spent most of its working life with me in a display case until recently when I realised that it needed to be out on the main line! You can see it in the photos with a rake of Zeuke/Tillig Eilzugwagen. Lovely! These pics are a bit dark - I'll add further ones later.

You will find this astonishing, folks, but following the (almost) completion of the pub Zum alten Konrad I have found quite a bit more time to attempt some more styrene engineering. For weeks I had been seeking a solution to the combined tram and road bridge over the incline to Konradsweiler village - and at some point on the A59 or the M62 I had a moment of clarity and realised that the N-scale Japanese bridge girders that I had been keeping 'just in case' plus square section styrene tube and the usual heavy-gauge styrene sheet would solve the problem. Having established that the bridge supports are vertical and plumb (any indication to the contrary in the photos is an illusion, honest!) I started to fabricate the bridge and began by sawing the Green Max bridge girders lengthwise in half and gluing the halves on either side of an exactly matching square-section styrene tube. After that had all hardened I separated everything into 4 box girders which were glued to the underside of a piece of styrene sheet. From then on it was just a mechanical task of carefully cutting styrene sheet and gluing it together up to the rail level of a section of Streamline N track. The track is a friction fit within the road surface of the bridge which will shortly get kerbs, a pavement, sidewalls and handrails plus a road surface of Auhagen cobbles.

Good Evening folks, once again apologies for the relative silence of late, but my daughter's house-move, a pile of 6,000-word assignments to mark and the garden(!) have all conspired against railway modelling. I have, however, managed to finish a project, and, oh boy, has it taken a long time! You will notice from previous posts that a Czech station building was cut into two - I separated the ground floor from the rest and promised to use it as the basis of a Gaststätte. Years ago I used to be a keen scratch-builder of structures - this pub is the first, hopefully, of a series. Apart from the ground floor of the Czech kit most components are from Auhagen's excellent bags and boxes of bits - but the extension is made of heavy-gauge polystyrene sheet, the felt roof of the extension is fine-grade sandpaper, the flashing around the embossed plastic brick sheet chimney is made of sugar-paper, and the signs were made on the PC employing a downloaded Konsum sign (the old GDR co-operative society which ran shops, bars, cafes etc etc) a font called 'Magneto' and printed on photo paper. The name of the bar 'Zum alten Konrad' (Old Konrad's bar) is a sly dig at my son who is concerned about his advancing years! There is still quite a bit to do - ridge tiles, gutters, TV aerial - but I am happy with the product of my hours of labour - especially with the little glass cabinet for the menu which started life as a small Auhagen window frame. You may have noticed a couple of wires leading from the pub - a further time-consuming feature of my plan was to equip the building with light-boxes made of sugar paper and poly sheet which mean that the lighting can be confined to individual rooms and can be switched from one to another - or to all.

Sorry about the silence, folks - but our daughter has been moving house and Pa's assistance is essential in such matters. Work on the design and creation of Konradsweiler has continued, though, if slowly, and I have decided on the final location of at least one building and worked out the position of the tram terminus' tracks. The scenery surface of coloured Polyfilla is largely complete, and I have added yet more retaining wall! The first tram AND the tram route's catenary are here on my work table, too, but they need a good deal of assembling! The corrugated iron shed in the photo will disappear soon - but it will be used somewhere! As I threatened in a previous post the Czech station building has been cut down, as you can see, and the lower half will get a toilet block added and a pitched roof and will become the HO Gaststätte at the tram terminus. More buildings, a bus stop and a kiosk will be added eventually. The blue line around the tram tracks is a cutting guide - the tram terminus and its catenary will be on a slot-in and removable piece of MDF so that I can build the overhead wiring and supports at the dining room table in a civilized and healthy seated position! More will follow!

A bulletin from Kirchheim at last. Progress has been slow of late - not especially because of a lack of time, but because of several knotty problems that needed (and still need) to be solved. The first was the bridge over the branch line which will carry a road and a tram-line - with the single-line tram operating in the return direction on the wrong side of the road! This is a small memorial to the much-missed route from Brandenburg to Kirchmöser which caused unsuspecting motorists plenty of Angst when they encountered it on the 'wrong' side of the street in Plaue! The bridge caused me a lot of thoughtful moments - and helped pass the time on my many journeys to schools around Yorkshire! In the end I made the bridge supports from 2 Zeuke bridge piers from the junk box. One was firmly glued to the top of the other and later the new taller pier was carefully sawn vertically in the ratio 2:3 to make two bridge supports. The cutting then acquired retaining walls and a rock face cast as usual from a rubber mould and the track could be finally ballasted. The retaining wall and the rock faces are attached with white glue to a backing piece of thick card to aid positioning. Now it all needs painting!! The landscape around Konradsweiler is taking shape very slowly - as you can see the basis of the scenery is insulation board or foam-board - some polystyrene blocks are awaiting use, too. The foam-board mock up of the Auhagen block gets moved about nearly every day - it will be eventually set into the landscape with retaining walls at the side and back with a block of garages at the side - based on my late sister-in-law's place. The cardboard curve is one of the various templates that I make up to plan the layout of roads and gradients. But before anything is finally fixed I need Frau Rekoboy's artist's eye to get the locations exactly right. The building next to the mock-up - the Czech station - is about to undergo radical surgery to remove a storey and make it more private house-like. Down near the tram terminus where the corrugated iron shed is standing temporarily I shall be adding Auhagen's pub and dance hall to keep the users of the tram and station happy! Other buildings MAY appear - but more thought is required! The tram terminus is based on that of the Lockwitztalbahn (sadly no more) or of the Kirnitzschtalbahn where the motor coach runs round its trailer at the terminus.

Wow! Thank you, Taigatrommel. I have just taken a look at the Piko website http://www.piko-shop.de/index.php?vw_type=warengruppe&vw_view=detail&vw_id=43&page=4 ....and there is the V 60. Brilliant news. I think my Klose V 60 will soon be banished to the display cabinet! As to my inspiration for Konradsweiler - it is more from Thüringen where my late sister-in-law lived (Wutha-Ruhla, Suhl-Schleusingen etc), but I can clearly see what you mean about the Windbergbahn!

The Christmas celebrations - with a houseful of guests - have delayed work on the layout somewhat but I have made some progress. In the Autumn I acquired a Berliner BR 110 for a very modest sum but she turned out to be a poor runner. My major success this holiday has been to put the 110 through the works and, I am pleased to say, it was worth the effort - after a strip-down and a clean and grease she is as good as new. I have managed to complete some work on Konradsweiler HP - the lighting was put in place, the wiring fed through the Kabelkanal (the square of ply and the screw were there simply to hold everything in place until the glue had set!), the main part of the retaining wall has been added and now I have managed to pour the Polyfilla/glue/powder paint mix to create the platform. With the current temperatures in the attic I might need to wait a while before the mix hardens! Note please my improvised shuttering made out of a piece of ply at the end of the platform! There is also a photo of the track-cleaning train passing the platform. I cannot praise Noch's Reiningungszwerge enough. That particular open wagon has two cleaning Zwerge clipped on - they do make a huge difference to running on the layout, especially as my goods trains all have at least one vehicle with pads.

I would like to wish all my readers a Happy Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. Hopefully, I shall be able to use part of the festive season to make some serious progress with Kirchheim!

Those of you who have read my post on the Brandenburg show will have noted that I mentioned a couple of purchases. There were actually three - firstly, Herr Ludwig had got me the latest V 180 by Piko and secondly I obtained from Günther's acquaintance Klaus at the club a white-metal kit of an SKL by Kehi which is a BIG project for later, and finally then the item that really made my heart beat faster! It is one of Joachim Beckmann's very first models when he started his business in the early 1990s, the BR 80 which incorporates quite a lot of BTTB parts including the wheels and valve-gear. Only 150 were made and I have been in pursuit of the loco for years! So when Klaus offered me the BR 80 for a very reasonable price I could hardly believe my ears and eyes! For those of you unacquainted with Beckmann just take a look at the beautiful TT machines on his website - the latest product, the BR 41, is already sold out. www.beckmanntt.de The V 180 by Piko is the C-C version that was built by LKM Babelsberg for lines with a low axle-load limit - she runs absolutely beautifully.

Rather too many urgent tasks at work have left me little time for modelling of late, but I have at last made a proper start on the upper right corner and the Haltepunkt 'Konradsweiler'. As you can see from the photos the edge of the layout and the rear have now been fitted with thin plywood boards to finish everything off, as it were, the piece of retaining wall has been completed (including, for the hawk-eyed a broken coping stone!), the tunnel has acquired a card lining for the first few centimetres to make it suitably black and dark, and a foamboard box has been constructed above the tunnel to take the weight of the scenery - when it gets made! For 30-ish years I have had a box of yard lamps by VEB Modellbau Plauen and although they look a little basic I have decided to use a couple to illuminate the platform. They stand in a kind of styrene foot for two reasons. Firstly, I am about to cast the platform out of my usual Polyfilla and white glue mix and I do not want to fix the lamps permanently nor do I want the bottom end of the lamps with connectors to corrode at all. Secondly, experience has taught me to make electrics easily serviceable so the lamps are a friction fit in the styrene boxes and so removable. The white styrene tube, which you can see by the platform, will carry the wires to the lamps and will be buried under the surface of the platform - just like in real life! Those wires will terminate in a corrugated iron hut by Auhagen where the connection to my ring-main will be made. Thus swapping a duff lamp will be moderately easy. All of my yard-lamps are push-fitted into the baseboard and can also be easily exchanged.

More action, folks! The arrival of the BR 58 has led to more play sessions and less solid work and I have attached two shots of her doing a little shunting! However, some serious work has gone on, too, and I have finally worked the position of the upper hidden sidings which, in order to save space, utilize a further three-way turnout. At first I was sceptical about the safety of the turnout which will be hidden behind a backscene and scenery but it has been tested and tested - including high-speed shunting moves, propelling and trailing, with a rake of bogie coaches and bogie goods wagons. The hidden sidings are energised by means of push-to-make switches - therefore, any loco which might stray into one of the dead ends will stop unless my thumb is on the button, and the Viessmann turnout switches have LEDs to indicate correct setting. The final feature of the hidden sidings are track contacts almost at the buffers which may illuminate a lamp as in the test which you can see OR may be used to trigger a power-off' relay - or both. We'll see. Now I can get on with some scenery building at last! As you can see I am also experimenting with track layouts for the upper terminus - but nothing serious yet!

Steve - thank you for the kind words about my efforts! I have to say, though, that Bad Herzberg looks fantastic - a very impressive piece of TT layout building. My BR 64 came from a gentleman in Berlin - there are always home-produced locos or Kleinserien products based on BTTB parts to be found on German E-Bay or, indeed, on the secondhand shelves of model shops in Eastern Germany. It would be great if we could see more photos of Bad Herzberg!

Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed, planned and built the GWR main line in less time than I am taking with Kirchheim! However, I have found time to start work on the area in the spiral. The landscape is being formed around a curious combination of insulation board and foam board which gives a light, easily sawn or cut foundation. The Haltepunkt called 'Konradsweiler' after my son (and after a location in a play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt!) now has a platform edge which took a lot of positioning as it is on a curve, and the platform will be built up later with the usual white glue and Polyfilla mix. The exact location for the edge was found by lots of shunting moves with an artic carriage set and some Städteexpress carriages. The strange white structure is one of a series of mock-ups in foam board of Auhagen buildings. I can use the mock-ups to work out exact or realistic positions of the buildings and use their dimensions to add or remove bits of landscape. You will also note the arrival of some N gauge track - the tram terminus is on its way. There will, however, be a lot of fiddling around with the track to get the location right. I was planning a reverse loop for the tram but now I have decided to use the Kirnitzschtalbahn from Bad Schandau to Lichtenhain as the inspiration - at the termini the tram runs round its trailer-car. Hence the two N turnouts! They will eventually be sprung so that no motor drives are needed. In fact, I now have a Kato chassis for the first tram in the fleet - eventually, I might even find time to assemble the body kit!!

As promised here is a photo of my BR 80 conversion which was done in about 1988! Next to her is a modern Roco BR 80, and even if you overlook my still unfilled crack in the side-tank you can tell that the proportions of the conversion are not quite right. In the days when no BR 80 could be bought officially one was very happy if one had such a conversion which ran well, and mine does, I am happy to say - although somewhat noisily like all old BTTB ladies. In GDR times such conversions were actually the basis of a small business in some cases and my BR 50.40 which you saw at the beginning of this series of articles (photo here again) was initially made by a model railway club in the Erzgebirge using the body shell and tender from the BTTB BR 35 and driving wheels and motion from the BR 86 and sold only to DMV (Deutscher Modelleisenbahnverband der DDR) members. I got mine by simply being a polite and interested English rail fan who speaks German! The BR 50.40 was then taken up by BTTB who made it more or less just for export - I can remember Mays Models of South London having it on offer. Some enterprising GDR modellers also made a BR 22 2-8-2 express passenger loco out of 2 BTTB BR 35s - the BR 22 had been rebuilt from Prussian BR 39s in the 1950s and shared a lot of common parts with the BR 35 and the BR 50.40. One day I hope to be able to buy one to complete the collection. Another popular conversion was the BR 92 0-8-0 which was transformed into a fairly acceptable BR 94 0-10-0 - that loco, too, is one on my shopping list. How, you might ask? I am a keen trawler through the TT pages on German E-Bay and my search words are always 'Umbau' (rebuild) and 'Eigenbau' (home produced)!

Hello folks, sorry about the lack of news of late - work has been very hectic. An abiding interest of mine during and since my time in the GDR has been the creativity of the TT modellers who had only the BTTB range in the shops. The choice was often very limited, as BTTB exported as much as possible to enhance the state's foreign currency reserves, and especially the fan of steam locos had little of interest to buy. This, as in so many other areas of model rail endeavour, led to an explosion of loco building based around BTTB parts. Some of very popular kitchen-table projects included the conversion of the BR 81 into the very similar but smaller 0-6-0 BR 80. I, too, had a go at that and managed to produce a very acceptable and smooth running chassis but the shortening of the body shell was not very successful. I shall post a photo separately. A further very popular choice was the rebuilding of the BR 86 2-8-2 into the sister loco, the BR 64. I have one in my possession - see photo - and it looks OK except for the fact that the driving and pony wheels are too small. My BR 64 is about to be re-motorized - more later. Now I have just acquired my second BR 58 2-10-0 which has been a matter of my dreams for the last 30-odd years. The conversion is based upon, of course, the BTTB BR 56 as the BR 58 shared many parts with it. Sadly, my experience has been that EITHER the chassis rebuild was really good - as in this one - OR the body lengthening was done brilliantly - but seldom both together. I have a BR 58 in pieces, too - the body is brilliant, but the chassis refused to run. ONE day I will get down to building a new chassis for her. As you can see, though, from the photos the body conversion on this old lady is not too bad, and the addition of some pipework and a fresh go with the airbrush will make her very acceptable.

Please take a look at my post on model paints - you may find something there. The RAL classification of the colour will help. I made the posting on 19th July -ish.

Apologies for the lack of articles of late but we were away in Germany (hence the Molli article) and then had our god-daughter from Dessau here with her family - no time for much modelling!! However, I have been involved with the layout of late and, rather than adding exciting new bits, I have had to relay some track and improve access to the 'underground' section. My friend Günther and others told me never to install curved turnouts in difficult locations as they are seldom as reliable as straight ones. I pooh-poohed this, of course, and lengthened the hidden sidings at the back of the layout with a Tillig curved turnout which then caused relatively frequent derailments, especially when visitors were watching the trains! So, a few days ago off came the upper base-board, the turnout and motor were removed, the track slightly re-aligned and a brand-new turnout and Fleischmann motor were installed! Additionally, as you can see from the photos a service hatch exactly above the turnout was cut out. And - success! Everything has been tested to the point of tedium with the two trains in the photo which include as many easily derailed vehicles as possible - and there has not yet been a single derailment on the curve or on the turnout. Yay!!

Here are a couple more photos which I forgot to add last time. There's another picture of the 'mainline' section of Bad Doberan station and a further pic of street running in Bad Doberan.

The rail link to Graal-Müritz is still open with fairly frequent Regionalbahnen to Rostock Hbf. The station in Graal-Müritz has been moved about 500m and the terminus is now seriously basic - just a modern concrete platform and DB AG blue signage! The original station building is still there, has been restored and contains a bar and restaurant. I have to admit that we did not use DB AG standard gauge trains at all on this trip - as with work visits to Germany we flew to Hamburg and hired a car to drive to Meck-Pomm. A sad revelation! Here is the link to arrivals/departures at Graal-Müritz on the DB AG website..... http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/bhftafel.exe/dn?ld=96241&country=DEU&rt=1&input=Graal-M%FCritz%238012583&boardType=dep&time=09:00%2B60&productsFilter=11111&&&date=22.08.14&&selectDate=&maxJourneys=&start=yes And here is a photo of the 'improved' terminus...