rekoboy

Happy New Year to all my readers! Before I forget I would like to thank some particular supporters of my works - Günther and Hartmut in Brandenburg, Herr Ludwig and his excellent shop in Ziesar, and John, whose gift of his collection of BTTB material finally provoked me into layout building! The festive season has not seen much activity on the layout - the family kept me busy! However, I have completed the road down to the freight depot - more or less - and I have started work on the left-hand tunnel mouth. The mouth itself is by Auhagen, the basic structure as everywhere on the layout is of foamboard and the masonry cladding is, as usual, by Faller. You will note that the upper part of the layout consists of bare MDF - when I am happy with the plans for the upper section that panel will come off and the track, turnout machines and wiring will be added on the bench before the panel is finally fixed. I still cannot make up my mind how to develop that section - I am very tempted to have a minimum of railway but more townscape and industry and a TTm tram route!

The current price for 99 6101 in Modellbahnshop Sebnitz is € 190.35. http://www.modellbahnshop-sebnitz.de/

This week has seen relatively little done apart from the completion of the retaining wall by the road down to the freight yard and the road surface itself which needs weathering and distressing. HOWEVER, there has been a new arrival at the Lokeinsatzstelle (sub-shed would be a translation) - a lovely Piko V 15 which the gentleman from Hermes delivered yesterday. The only thing I can criticize at all on the V 15 is the excessive brightness of the lamps - otherwise perfection! And there is power! She will take several wagons up the incline spiral thanks to the cast metal body and is amazingly sure-footed on pointwork! Fantastic! I think this weekend will see some serious shunting going on. As you can see my depot is now dieselized - for the time being, anyway!

I've not had especially much time of late to do much with Kirchheim, but I have managed to complete the area around the old box-van body and give the van some weathering. The weathering was a wash of black ink and surgical spirit and a splash of diluted brown powder paint followed by a quick spray of Humbrol acrylic matt finish. It looks OK, I think. Now on to building the signal box kit and finishing the cobbled road down to the goods yard. For those interested in how Kirchheim is powered there is also a photo. The power supply comes from two elderly Piko FZ1 transformers which may not offer particularly fine control but which are robust and have, more importantly, separate windings for the 12V track supply and for the 16V accessory output. Therefore they are perfectly suited to my version of common return. The situation will eventually change as a third Piko power unit is awaiting connection, but at present the right-hand unit powers the lower circuit and all turnout drives and the other unit powers the branchline and all lighting and accessories. Under the layout from left to right and back to front is a cross of heavy gauge bare copper wire which is hooked up to the return side of both 12V and 16 V on both transformers. Thus a huge amount of wiring is saved - the return side rail, all turnout drive return paths, the return side of all lights and accessories are just soldered to the copper cross as near to the location as possible. There are numerous connections from the return rail to the copper cross and they go a long way to ensuring reliable running. A good feature of the common return system is the fact that the buffer stop LEDs have their return side just soldered to the relevant rail - saving wire again. As you can see from the numerous switches the layout is also extensively sectionalized - EVENTUALLY (!) all the switches will be combined into a track diagram with electric-probe point switching, but right now all turnouts are controlled by a mixture of Piko and Viessmann switches (they are identical in design and from the same Chinese factory!) which were bought second-hand in Berlin. Some have LED indicators - I use them where the turnouts cannot be easily seen. And finally - more Czech road transport waiting for a road! The LIAZ tipper is from a kit, the low loader was bought in a model shop in Prague and the Japanese digger is by Tomytec to 1:150 scale - perfect for TT, as real-life excavators come in many sizes.

Today Frau Rekoboy decided to do something about the mini forest in the corner area. Now we have more trees, placed after much thought on her part, undergrowth and 2 gentlemen with a dog - one of the men is, in fact, Herr Jägermeister with a rifle over his shoulder. It all looks very good, indeed - although I had real problems getting the camera's autofocus to cope with the scene.

I have managed to pull in a couple more hours work on Kirchheim. The retaining wall behind the loco shed is now in place - it consists of my favourite Faller panels on a plastic card frame which tilts it slightly away from the wooden strip behind it and gives it a realistic slant. It needs, of course, its coping stones and a couple of buttresses. As you can see from the attached photos I have also filled up the space within the road down to the goods depot with an another of my favourite scenery tricks - the foam-board and expanded polystyrene sandwich. Foam-board from the art shop is a brilliant material for model building - it makes a great, quick and solid core for scratch-built structures and I use it in scenery. too, as in the round space inside the spiral. Foam-board can be cut with a sharp craft-knife, the expanded polystyrene is cut with a cheap hot-wire cutter hooked up to an old 6V Atari transformer rescued from the bin!! Whenever I make scenery shapes out of expanded polystyrene I start with a template made of A4 paper which is carefully made from the space available - then a piece like my 'sandwich' will simply drop into place. All of the scenery bits are stuck together or down with cheap white wood glue from the local do-it-yourself shop. When the retaining wall by the road is done (including a rock face cast in a Woodland Scenics mould) I shall add the road surface of Auhagen cobbles. Phew!

The corner scenery is finished! Well, nearly, anyway. Frau Rekoboy is casting an eye over the trees at the moment - she thinks that there should be one or two more and that the rows are too symmetrical. But overall, I am very happy with the results of my labours. Scenery for me has to be effective - but cheap! The most expensive item was the Faller retaining wall - everything else was virtually at no cost. The scenery is built on waste expanded polystyrene packaging cut with the hot wire, I used the cheapest possible filler from a do-it-yourself shop coloured with cheap powder paints bought in giant tins from a toy store, the coping stones on the wall are scored thick card from some packaging, and the trees, flock and decorative stuff were similarly bought in bulk in Germany - for, as they say, next to nowt! Aaah!

Oh yes, I cannot resist another shot of my Hornby-Arnold Köf at work. It's a tiny loco but seems hardly ever to stick on dead frogs.

Thanks to Elke and Marina at Tillig's parts department I got a replacement body shell for Sergei, my V 200, within 5 working days. Tillig's service is brilliant - for small items that I've needed in the past they did not charge anything, and dispatch is always very fast. The V 200's German nickname is 'Taigatrommel', coined because of the incredibly loud exhaust system that the first batch of locos possessed. The silencers were OK for thinly populated areas of the Taiga but not for the GDR where the exhaust note of an early V 200 working hard could be heard from several kilometers distance. The exhausts tended to glow red in the dark, too! Sergei, by the way, is the nickname bestowed on the class by Czech and Polish railmen - odd that the following class is female 'Ludmilla'! The V 200 is an interesting loco as regards its engine which is a GM-EMD two-stroke diesel built under licence in Russia. A V 200 with the modified/modernized exhaust system sounds very much like our very own Class 66, which is, of course, a GM product.

This must be a record! I have spent a few more hours at work on Kirchheim and the left-hand corner scenery is more or less finished, although the track still needs some treatment (rust, weeds etc!) and more greenery will be added, too - when I have time! I am also not entirely happy with the retaining wall - that needs some addition of damp patches, mortar, greenery and so forth. But on the whole I think it looks OK!

At last further news from Kirchheim. I'm afraid work has got in the way of any modelling for quite a while - but now I am back on task and have completed the 'rough work' for the left-hand corner which includes a large retaining wall made from my favourite N scale Faller masonry sheets. The siding next to the wall rises a little and has its own mini retaining wall - this is an experiment in deceitful perspective to make the viewer think the main line is on a falling gradient as the loco depot and sidings are pitched slightly higher, too. I am also experimenting with a new medium - black nail varnish, which looks great as oil or diesel puddles. My friend Matthias commented that I would be in serious bother if my layout had an environmental inspector round! Other work cannot be seen - I am putting up a 'safety fence' at the back where the hidden sidings are - in spite of functioning track circuits I managed a collision between my beloved V 200 Taigatrommel and a Ludmilla - the noise as the V 200 hit the ground and fell apart was heart stopping. A new body is on its way from Tillig as I write.

Gassner, which has the biggest range, does have a website - www.gassner-beschriftungen.de

Germany is teeming with decal manufacturers! Follow this link and you wll see what I mean! http://modellbeschriftung.de/hersteller_liste.htm Best wishes, Rekoboy

The last couple of months have seen relatively little done to the layout as the garden and holidays have taken up most of my time. However, the goods loading area is now virtually finished with Auhagen cobbles treated with some black ink thinned with surgical spirit (great for ageing and making plastic parts less plasticky!)and I have begun to make stacks of timber from sawn-up garden twigs stuck with white glue on to bits of OHP transparency. The clear plastic cannot be seen and the stacks can easily be moved about. I am buiding a gantry crane from an Auhagen kit to assist the timber loading. The artic in the picture is a Liaz tractor unit from a Czech kit and a Klose trailer. The road down to goods area is half done, the foundation area for a signal box (Auhagen again) is complete, I have added an old goods van body for storage, and I have made a start on the left hand (west) end of the station where the final long siding is complete. There's still a lot to do. The area within the spiral to the second level is going to acquire a Werk, probably a mine, with workers' houses and a kick-back siding bridging the gradient to the upper level.

There has been a littlle more progress - the road down to the goods depot is taking shape. A you might see from the picture I love two sorts of material for model-building - foam packaging which I cut with a hot wire and foam-board which is fantastic for quick building of structures. The centre of the spiral is foam packaging with a layer of foam-board on top - there you will soon see the start of a town development, but as I want to include the terminus of a TTm tram route things could drag a little until I am sure of the exact position of the tram track.

More action at Kirchheim! The goods facilities are taking shape - the loading area is cobbled sheet by Auhagen which has been treated with a wash of black Quink ink diluted with a a good quantity of surgical spirit! It works well! My depot (Einsatzstelle Kirchheim) has just been allocated a new loco ( and Frau Rekoboy is not quite aware of its cost!!) which is the lovely BR 64 2-6-2 by Schirmer. One platform and one foot-crossing both have an undercoat - so progress is being made!

More progress! Yesterday and today I managed to add more scenic detail to the mountain at the right-hand end of Kirchheim, but the main advance was the completion of trackwork with the addition of the very nice Tillig three-way turnout which was bought last Autumn in Leipzig and which has been screaming for attention! The new turnout caused a good deal of head-scratching at first as it would just not work adequately with Roco/Fleischmann drives. A correspondent on the (German) TT-Board website advised me to carefully loosen up the pressings which link blades to tiebars - and yeaah - the turnout works perfectly. Now my scrap-merchant is to get his own siding - as you can see his loader has already driven up!

Hello Squeaky, Assembly was fairly quick. The instructions were a bit rudimentary but there were exploded diagrams, and if you have built any Auhagen or Faller or indeed Airfix building kits it will be no problem!

Hello Squeaky! I am really sorry I cannot tell you - I bought the kit in a model shop in Usti nad Labem in the Czech rep. The building kit was packed in a white box which I threw away. Sorry!

I have finally escaped from the PC in my office, school visits and the garden to conduct a little more work on Kirchheim. The platforms are now in place (Auhagen edges) and the track ballasted and the foot-crossings added. More painting and detailing may follow soon-ish! There is also a photo of my favourite loco - the Gützold BR 24 which looks absolutely fantastic!

A couple more progress photos for you - the platforms are slowly taking shape. They are made from Auhagen platform edges on a plasticard base and ends - this base is then filled with a runny mixture of Polyfilla, white glue and water. After a couple of days you have a very solid platform. The further of the two platform includes wood strips which will be drilled eventually as a firm foundation for the Auhagen canopy supports once the fill mix is dry and solid. The retaining walls are by Faller and designed for N - for which they are overscale, so perfect for TT. They are made of polystyrene with a factory-added stone veneer and can be gently bent into curved formations. In the background you can see the beginnings of a scrapyard with one of my Chinese diggers in 1:122 scale. That scene will be properly developed later.

Happy Easter! By far the cheapest way to lay decent TT track is to use Tillig's sleeper strips (Schwellenband) which is available either pre-formed in the standard track lengths and radii or a flex-strip together with their metre lengths of rail. That is the material that I am using - there are even relatively cheap turnout kits - and I have saved quite a lot. The Tillig do-it-yourself material is available, obviously, in every German model store - to get it here you can order from Conrad Electronics, a German company with an English branch. www.conrad-uk.com and http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/overview/1606350/TT-Tillig-Track Their model railway pages are very good but you might need Tilli's own website - www.tillig.com - to work out product numbers

Sorry - I forgot to include this rather better aerial photo!

Rather unusually, I have managed to find some time to actually put in a couple of days solid work into the layout and now the right-hand corner of Kirchheim is almost complete - apart from a colour wash (probably very dilute Indian ink)on the Auhagen cobbled surface and the addition of a few more details. The Koef has its own shed at last! In the attached photo a BR 86 (the original BTTB model) is passing with some 6-wheel Rekos while a V 60and a Koef await their next duties.

Klose traded under the name of MiKi-Klose and was based in Altenbach, a village between Leipzig and Riesa on the main line to Dresden. His products had the reputation of being of second-rate quality and he announced models (such as BR 58 and BR 55 in TT) which never actually made it on to the market. He made copious use of Berliner TT Bahn parts in his locos. After Klose's death his moulds and tooling were taken over by the firm of Modellbau Schirmer which now markets a revised and very nice version of his BR 64 2-6-2 tank loco and his TT scale model trucks - his MAN artic tractor unit still looks fantastic although it is a good many years old. The V 60 in my photo was a source of friction between me and Herr Klose - I ordered it with a bank transfer from England and never received it even after my brother-in-law Waldemar paid him a visit and he promised to mend his ways! I got the loco eventually after 2 personal visits to Altenbach!