faded_Glory

I travel mostly by myself these days. I got a flexible 10-day Interrail card (10 train days within 2 months) so I could take breaks from the trains. Although, in fact I only had one totally train-free day (on the way back I stayed for a day in Aachen to see the sights of the town). My off-day in Lucerne was largely spent in the Museum of Transport, and there are plenty of trains there :) I ended up using only 9 days of the card (in a 13 day period) - I knew that the card only gives a discount on the Interlaken - Jungfraujoch trip and not free travel, but I hadn't realised that you don't actually have to use up a train day for that, all you need is for the pass to be valid on the day you go there. So I still have a leftover day, but I can't use it in the UK and I have already used my inbound and outbound journeys. I suppose I could fly to somewhere in Europe and use the free train day there, but hey ho :)

Let me link to a couple of short vids: The start of the day in Samedan (unfortunately photobombed): After turning the engine in Filisur: And the Blasmusik :)

Passengers were given a programme laid out as a vintage paper, the 'Engadiner Dampfpost' which was a nice touch. Also, at the station of Berguen/Bravough there was a brass band (the 'Blasmusik Rhaetische Bahn') on the forecourt playing traditional music. Tickets for the museum were old-fashioned cardboard ones. Lunch was as a group on long tables in the loft of the museum. All in all a lot of fun, and worth going to if you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Back in Samedan I saw a train passing with a Gourmino coach, and waiting in a siding a container train dual-headed by two Ge 4/4 II's (633 and 622).

There was a lot to see in Filisur during our stopover: Ge 4/4 II 620 with the Glacier Express, Ge 4/4 I 605 with some heritage coaches, Ge 4/4/ III 648 'Watson' with an ordinary service, and another normal service with red Ge 4/4 III 644 (with world record graphics).

The engine ran round the train in Surava, and then it was turned in Filisur. We stopped for an hour there to allow the operation to fit in with the ordinary services (Filisur station is quite busy on a Saturday morning). After that we rode to Berguen/Bravougn for lunch and the museum. I bailed out early and took a normal train back to Samedan because I wanted to have time to go up and down to Scuol as well. Besides, the seats in the modern trains are a lot more comfortable ;)

Earlier this month I took a trip to Switzerland, my first one in years and my first one entirely by rail. I ticked most of the touristy boxes like the Golden Pass Express, the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express, and I also went to the Lucerne Transport Museum and rode the Centovalli Line from Locarno to Domodossola. The high point in more than one sense was undoubtedly the trip from Interlaken to Jungfraujoch. I had planned my trip so I could take part in the Rhaetische Bahn Steam Weekend on October 14 and 15. Specifically, I rode the vintage steam train from Samedan to Surava, and back via Filisur to Berguen/Bravougn on October 14th. The trip included a visit to the Albula museum with lunch. The steam train was pulled by Ge 3/4 11 'Heidi' and consisted of four 4-wheel vintage coaches (with very hard wooden benches!). The train staff was all dressed up in period uniforms, and a good time was had by all. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Good news! Today I gave it another go, and by closely following PaulRhB's instructions I managed to get the bogie off at the side of the speaker. Removing clip 35 is the key. That allowed me to completely replace the red feed wire at that side. It had clearly been damaged internally because of it being squished by the speaker. Fitting a longer wire to go above the speaker rather than underneath has now fixed the issue. The loco is now happily traversing point work at low speed again, as it used to do in the past. I found it a fiddly job, not helped by the ridiculously sketchy notes by Brawa. Without your help I wouldn't have managed, so thank you both very much for your time and trouble!

Righty, some more progress, but not a solution as yet... I pulled off the plastic wire clips and found that none of the wires are actually soldered to the PCB, just held in place by the clips. Sometimes rather badly. Clearly this makes it easier to remove the PCB if there is a need, but I'd think it also increases the risk of a poor contact. So, I soldered them on before replacing the clips. However, on one end of the loco there is the speaker (it has a LokSound decoder), and when I unscrewed that it became obvious that one of the pickup leads had been badly squashed between the speaker and the frame. In fact it has come loose from the PCB. Without the speaker I could solder both pickup wires on that side to the PCB as well. I unsoldered the speaker completely and will leave it off, I don't really need sound on electric locos anyway. Unfortunately, this hasn't cured the problem. The loco still stalls over pointwork and sometimes stutters badly even on open track. I now think that there may also be a problem where the other ends of the pickup wires attach to the bogie sides (pickup appears to be via the axle ends). Helped by your comments I did manage to prise off the bogie covers with a tiny screwdriver, but that didn't really get me much further. All I see is lots of gears. It seems that I still need to get the bogies off, and I still don't understand how to do that. Anyway, in other news, as I was faffing about a tiny fragment of a part suddenly fell out of the loco. Never seen it before, and I can't work out what it is and where it came from. Nothing that I can see appears to be missing or broken. Perhaps it has flown in from another dimension, where a fellow modeller is now frantically searching his carpet for that tiny part that just flew away...? Oh, the joys...

These are all the relevant diagrams there are :(

Excellent, thank you so much, both of you! I will give it a try tomorrow. Why did they think that just writing 'apply lateral force' would be helpful to anyone?

Thank you so much for your detailed help! I may give it another go. Another question, if I may: which parts in the diagram are the actual pick-ups?

Now that is an intriguing idea! I did order a Del Prado one, they go for pennies on the Internet, it should be with me in a few days. What Kato chasis did you use? I presume a Bo-Bo one, making it more akin to the Ge 4/4 82? These are the trains I can run right now: Ge 4/4 II with a rake of EW1 coaches and a Gourmino Ge 4/4 III Unesco with the container wagons Allegra with 3 Bernina panorama coaches plus the open coach (in summer) or a 4th panaorama (in winter) I have another rake of EW1 coaches plus the luggage coach, but no locomotive just yet. I was thinking of getting another Ge 4/4 III, I know where I can get a plain red one for a reasonable price (the fancy coloured ones go for silly money, if you can find one at all). On the other hand, I could put a baby Crocodile in front of the container coaches and use the Unesco loco for the passenger train. To be honest I'm not too fussed about historically accurate train compositions. At the moment I am just laying out track on the kitchen table. I have a hobby room with a fixed H0 layout along the walls. I could make some changes in that room which would give me space for a 4x7 feet Rhatische Bahn layout (without affecting the H0 one). Worth thinking about. I'm going on a rail tour to Switzerland in October :)

Thanks guys! I did some more prodding and poking. First I took the plunge and swapped the decoder for one from another (good running) loco, and that told me that the decoder is ok. I also pulled again a little (with tweezers, and very gently) on all the wires I can see, and again, nothing appears to be loose. You mentioned push-on connectors, are they the little black cubes where the wires disappear into, like here with the grey motor lead? How do I pull the wires off these, just pull? Seems brutish! Then cleaned the wheels with a cottonbud and some IPA. When I put it back on the tracks, it appeared to run a little better, perhaps, but it still stalls on pointwork. It has pickup on both bogies so I now think that at least one, or both, may be compromised. I'm still none the wiser on how to get access. Unscrewing the PCB board only gets me so far, because all the wires stop it from fully coming off. Access from the underside is also not straighforward. Fig. 6 very helpfully shows a screw, but in reality that is covered by a plastic plate that I can't easily get off. It has those devilish clips that are easy if you want to clip it on, but defeat me when I want to clip it off. Is this where I apply lateral force, lol? What is the trick with these, use pliers to squeeze the tabs and then use my third hand to pull upwards? It is a very fragile environment in between the bogie sides so I can't really wriggle with a screwdriver. I feel lost. Looking at my diary to see when I can get it to the local hobby shop.

I have had this model for some years, and until now it has performed well enough. It doesn't come out of the display case very often, but when it does, it makes for a nice train with my CIWL coaches. Now it has started to have problems, unfortunately. It stutters, especially in one direction, the lights blink from time to time, and on occasion it stalls completely, especially over point work. So, I took the cab off to have a look: At first sight everything looks in order. With tweezers I tugged very gently at the various wires but none seem to be loose. So I reckon it might either be the decoder (an ESU Loksound V4) or an issue with the pickup. This now is where I am getting stuck. I don't know how to get access to the pickups, the manual notwithstanding. When it comes to removing the bogies I find it next to useless: "Remove bogie from the frame by applying lateral pressure". Come again? What, where, how? Whack it with a hammer? The drawings don't help much either: (Edit: I replaced the blurry pictures for somewhat better ones) There is undoubtedly a trick for this but it isn't explained, and I am hesitant to just grab it and 'apply lateral pressure' for fear of breaking things (which wouldn't be the first time, to be honest). So I'm stuck on that approach, for now. Does anyone have actual experienc with Brawa locs and how to get the bogies off? The alternative is that the decoder is fried, at least partially. It is an ESU Loksound that came built-in. There is something odd with it anyway - whenever I put the loco on the rails, the brakes hiss at me quite loudly. Even before I have set up any particular sounds with the Multi Maus. Same thing happens when the loco is already on the layout as I switch on the track power. No other loco I have does that. I tired to reset it (first had to unlock it with CV15 and 16 and then reset CV8 to 8) but I don't think that has made a difference. I could swap the decoder with one from a working loco, but I'm concerned that, if there is something else wrong, that one might get fried as well, leaving me even further from home. I don't know how to test the decoder out of the loco. Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated. Else, I may have to go and take it to the shop. Many thanks, Jur

Thank you for responding! It doesn't sound too good then, at least for the near term. I have a 'spare' rake of coaches and was thinking of putting off buying locomotive power for that, in case the Crocodile suddenly appears on the scene. Now I think that perhaps I should just get another Ge 4/4 III for now, and let the future take care of itself. If they ever do release it, it might well come as a set with dedicated coaches anyway... In the meantime I could always get a Del Prado one as a scenic ornament! Thanks again!

Having just dived into the wonderful world of the Kato Rhaetische Bahn I am sooo hoping that they will at some point release a Ge 6/6 1 Crocodile. What are the chances of that? Kato produce models of steam engines so the coupling rods shouldn't really be a problem for them. I imagine that it would be a massively popular model. Does anyone have any info/rumours about this, by any chance?

That is a good thought, thanks, I will look into it. Some of the cliffs will have to be lowered a bit but that can be done. It is the bit above the tunnel that bothers me and your idea might work.

Just a quick update, after I glued the various rocks in place it turned out that I can't place the shelf back below the desk. To do so I have to tilt it and then the rocks in the middle part of the layout are fouling the desktop, even though their height would allow them to fit underneath once the shelf is in place. Even the little tunnel is barely low enough and I won't be able to build much landscape over it, which makes it a bit pointless. So I have dismantled the rocks again, and will have a good think on how to proceed. Perhaps lower rocks and a cutting is still worth doing, although it wasn't really what I had in mind. For the time being therefore this little project is on hold.

Right, there has been a change in the sequencing. Brighter minds than mine might have spotted a problem with laying the track after the landscaping is complete - including a tunnel! So I now have decided to lay the track first, then do the ballasting at least in the tunnel area, and then continue with the landscaping. I could have just laid a short piece of track where the tunnel goes, and that probably would have been wiser, but once those navvies get going it is hard to stop them! So I ended up laying it all. I had to totally murder the Peco track to go round a 6" curve (which actually is closer to 5 1/2"!) but eventually it went down with the help of lots of track pins. I normally never use these but I didn't have much choice here. Once the track has been ballasted with PVA I hope I can pull them out again and fill the holes. I then built a small tunnel from some foamboard and coffee stirrers and placed it on the layout. Now I can fit the mountains around it (this is not how things are done in real life, by the way). Only the next day I realised that I hadn't soldered the connection leads to the track! So much about careful planning. So I did that today. I buried the wires in the cork bed, they will be covered later. For now I have connected them to a choc block and from there to my old controller. I got hold of a small PCB mounted 12V speed and direction controller that I will fit inside a small building on the bottom right corner. This will be connected to a 9V power brick - a bit of testing showed that 9V is plenty fast for this little loco. So now I could do a running test. It goes ok except just past where the curve joins the turnout, there is a bit of a wobble here. Everything goes over it ok but it looks untidy and I need to look into it. This little old lady can pull quite an impressive train though! The obligatory video clip: https://youtu.be/GC5O-4tVdIA

I spent a happy few hours messing about with foam and plaster casts, and the landscape is beginning to appear. The back left area is more or less what I have in mind. Everything is still loose, obviously once things have been glued down I will need to apply sculptamold and more plaster to finalise the shapes and fill all the gaps and holes. I've thrown on some tracks just for effect. The tunnel is a quick mock-up for fitting and the building is a print from the internet - what it mainly shows is that I need a new printer! The Indians have already set up camp and some bandits have also been spotted! I have never built this kind of scenery before so this is all trial end error and hoping for the best! What I'm mainly impressed with is how much space I have (except vertically...)!

A bit more progress today. First I cut the trackbed from 2 mm cork and glued it to the baseboard, followed by a coat of light brown wall paint. Then I had fun messing about with moulds and plaster, not done that before: Great fun! Just to see the results I placed some rocks randomly on the layout: The overall idea is to have a little station at the front, plus one or two small houses. Behind that would be a cliff designed to hide part of the tracks at the rear left. There will be further cliffs along the back. The inspiration is something like this: Before I lay the tracks I want to complete most of the scenery. I reckon that will be quite a bit of messy fun

SInce you are not supposed to park wagons on the points (at least I think those are the rules), you could design it with the points under the bridge and the sidings sticking out on either side. If you keep the bridge removable you'd still have access for cleaning/maintenance. This might also make the feeder track long enough for the loco + 3 wagons and still stay clear of the point that feeds the platform.

You could also move the entire Inglenook to the left by extending the feeder track, and build it as part of your on-scene section. You could then make a partition to separate the shunting yard from the station fiddle yard behind it.

This is looking good again! Can you show it to us with some motive power on it?

I like your plan and the general setting. The only thing I would question is having the Inglnook sidings underneath the bridge. You will need to do a lot of coupling and uncoupling during the shunting, that may be a bit of a problem if the tracks are not easily accessible? Could you move the bridge further to the left, or place it at a more slanted angle?