readingtype

I recommend David's recent articles. A German language site, and another casualty of time, Lokalbahn-Reminiszenzen (branch line reminiscences) has been saved by the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20161124213836/http://www.lokalbahn-reminiszenzen.de/start.htm The site concentrates on a small number of lines but has plenty of detail. Follow the links to 'Gleispläne' (track plans). An example page: https://web.archive.org/web/20161114154045/http://www.lokalbahn-reminiszenzen.de/gleisplaene/modellbahnplaene1.htm 'Lokalbahn' is the word used in Bavaria and Austria for a low-speed branch line with the most basic signalling and permitting only light loadings; 'Nebenbahn' is the general German term. This may help when searching the web (I suggest you use google.de for better results if you don't already). I don't know whether the variance in terminology relates directly to the legal status of the lines, but I believe there was a law in one or other of the German states broadly equivalent to the British Light Railways Act but earlier. Others will correct me :-)

Hi, The UK FREMO group are looking for some telecoms expertise in connection with our upcoming meeting (this will be H0, based on German branchline practice, set in Epoch III/IV). If you are a telecoms engineer or have relevant experience and you would be willing to give some guidance on setting up a small (5-10 extensions) network, we would like to hear from you. Please send me a private message if you are interested. More info on the FREMO standard we work to: https://www.fremo-net.eu/en/modular-systems/h0-scale/h0-europe/ Thanks Ben

Absolutely. The range of models available is really remarkable, just given the obvious cost in creating the tools for each. But it seems they sell all the ones they make, so it's not just the people in the toolmaking department who do a good job (for the shareholders anyway). Oh and then there are those of us who kindly volunteer to buy them :-) Does anyone here know how much this market is worth?

For anyone afraid to ask, the RAL system is a set of standard colours (originated in Germany in 1927 according to Wikipedia, now used internationally in industry). In German model railway shops you can buy paint brands like Vallejo in RAL colours; I don't know how easy that is here (if you are lucky enough to find such a shop). The RAL colours are often referred to by their familiar names (as in the references to 'Karminrot', 'Orientrot' and 'Verkehrsrot' for the reds used on DB/DBAG locos at different epochs). Anyway, if you want to know the RAL colour you need, you could try this handy chart: Railway RAL colours (German Wikipedia) Converting between differing systems of colour classification is an interesting passtime ;-)

Off-topic, sorry: I hadn't considered trying to create Märklin M-Gleis templates in Templot, but the presence of @martin_wynne's post tempts me to consider the possibility. Was Templot a hitherto uncredited R&D tool in the Märklin factory back in the day? I did have a go at the standard German Reichsbahnweiche (moderately detailed official information on the prototype reproduced here) with a 1:9 crossing angle in H0 (to NEM standards, nothing too ambitious) and this truly taxed my limited understanding of Templot. Got the angle in, but then I tripped up on the timbering :-)

Thanks for this report and the photos. I visited the station at Pacy-sur-Eure with a friend a few years ago and was bemused by the layout so it's good to have a photographic explanation, thanks. It was almost entirely deserted, certainly no trains running, and nobody seemed to mind us wandering about and looking at things, so we did. Being pretty ignorant of French railway history I'm not sure that there is anything especially coherent about the collection of vehicles but I could tell that there were some venerable and probably quite unusual ones there. The Whitcomb diesel for example (the blue Bo-Bo with yellow stripes shown looking respendant in one of @Pacific231G's photos, originally US built for use in WW2), the 'saucisson' carriage (dark green with oval windows and aftermarket graffiti) and that magnificent Renault railcar. There was an open 4-wheel wagon with a body that might I think simply decompose where it stands. I think the secret is to ignore all the road signs. You need a willing navigator though.

Nearby and slightly more conventional is the Santa Teresa Tramway. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Teresa_Tram. I read on Wikipedia that the original ancient toastrack trams have been replaced -- a pity, as these were properly venerable giving out lots of appealing creaks and squeaks. Wikipedia makes it all seem fairly rational but in fact the rather frequent mishaps (I went on it about three months before the serious accident in 2011), the fact that it runs through some colourful neighbourhoods, and the general atmosphere of Rio make it very memorable. Would make a fantastic model (with its 'very unusual' gauge), so long as you can work out how to stop everything rolling down the hill

As well as the illustrious GRS event there was also a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the opening of the line between Didcot and Oxford on Saturday, and this was the scene at Didcot just after 18:00 as I waited for my train back from the show.

I'm not an entirely disinterested party, but even after the harsh pruning I reckon this is still a great group of layouts to bring together. And if we still have use of the tea-making equipment all will be well :-)

I would be interested to see your FiNe 1/160 layout should it ever venture out. Interesting shape for a layout and interesting choice of scale/standard. Never mind the absence of reverse curves!

Today's fun: trying to fit Bill Bedford BR 'modern image' W-irons under a Cambrian SR/BR 25t Toad. Catch is: the gauge is EM and the van has the narrowest frames. Evah. I chose the (sprung) W-irons because for some reason I thought the van wouldn't ride nicely (old moulds, my dodgy construction skills, runes consulted etc). I trimmed them to broadly the right shape with a knife (note the ones on this van, at least following the mouldings in the kit, are unusually wide and lack any weight relieving holes). Trouble is that the width of the whole W-iron unit is 26mm, a good 3mm more than the space available between the frames. So the two W-irons have been chopped in half and (carefully, but not skillfully) soldered back together. The only axle I could find that would go in was an old Märklin one (remember: h0 is like 00, just 0.87 times as much ...) and this axle was 24mm tip to tip. Filing off the tips got it down to 23mm. Off came the old wheels, the ends of the axles were ridged with a file (as in the Gibson instructions for fitting drive gears to proprietary axles) and on went the Gibson wheels. There's not a lot between the front face of the wheel and the rear face of W-iron. I've cut the moulded W-irons on the solebars back to the springs. We shall see how this turns out; the frame's currently held together with hair clips and the solvent is doing whatever it needs to do. And here is one of Paul Bartlett's photos of a prototype 25t van. I'm doing this diagram, D1582, there are a few others covered by the kit

OK, I'm biased, but surely: in for a penny, in for a pound? I think that having returned quite recently to railway modelling I get much more out of the crazy British railway (and railway modelling) world now that (in theory) I'm modelling continental stuff. It just helps put things in context. The way real railways are done in Britain -- and to a lesser extent the places British railway practice went -- is so radically different from elsewhere. And I reckon the same can be said for the modelling. I spent the most pleasant part of my day kitbashing a Cambrian kit, using old Märklin axles with Gibson wheels on them ... just need to think what on earth to do with those awful pizza cutter discs now left over!

Thanks for sharing! As for what that V100 was doing: I would speculate that as it appears to be running light engine, economically speaking, it was doing nothing at all ;-) If it's actually V100 2299 it belongs to the Vulcan-Eifel-Bahn, a local preserved railway operator, goods haulier and hirer of locos, here's their page about V100s: https://www.veb.de/fahrzeuge/fahrzeuge/detail/Diesellok-Baureihe-212-Typ-V-100--4n/

Bizarrely enough the missing chunk reappeared -- it had somehow jumped right into the takeaway box where all the things I'd pulled off the loco live. I've glued it back with ordinary superglue and much to my surprise made a fairly neat job of it. Not very confident it will survive a test run though. Thanks for the tip on the Comet replacement pony truck. For the record this seems the likely candidate: https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/shop/locomotive/ls2/ (pre-WW2 LMS)

I'm a lot happier with the running now than I was. As I mentioned, I'm really looking at how well it pulls away and runs at slow speed, because I want to play with it rather than just watch it run. Once travelling at line speed there has been no problem since the contact issue for the driving axles was solved. This is tempting: ESU's LokSound for the 140.C. Pip pip!

Thanks! Well, it was second hand -- but not dirty or showing any sign of wear. Glad to think that my experience doesn't represent the normal standard.

This is Liliput's 140.C from ten years ago or thereabouts, in 1:87. The real thing was made by North British in Glasgow and shipped to France in 1916 as part of an order for the French artillery (see Wikipedia article). I acquired this one recently. It did not run well; very hesitant, and prone to stopping with the gear in the same position on each revolution of the driving wheels. I dismantled it and found numerous interesting features, any one of which would probably be enough to put it off its stride, including: no pickup from loco wheels due to a connector on the wheel retaining baseplate which never connected motor cradle screws loose swarf in the gear chain gearwheel on rear axle misaligned twist in one connecting rod, leading to binding unfinished surfaces on connecting rods and coupling rods, leading to binding Basically, it's a lovely model and the parts are interestingly designed and made (look at the nuts on the bolts that hold the big end of the connecting rod together), but when it comes to assembly the cosmetic stuff has obviously received attention whereas the parts that make it run well haven't even been completely manufactured before they were not quite correctly assembled. On the plus side, following some work over the weekend it's now running much better at very low speed (anyone can make something run at top speed), so this is progress. As long as I don't break too many more of the cosmetic parts in the process of troubleshooting. It's now got much better looking wheels too thanks to the kindness of my friend John who's taken down the absolutely gigantic flanges to something less unsightly. Plenty more to do. And I have yet to damage the pony truck on this one :-) BTW here's a comparison of a rod as supplied and after a bit of cleaning up (excuse the filaments from my glass fibre brush).

My intended conversion to EM of an old Bachmann Austerity was coming along so well until I put the chassis in the body and then picked the loco up by the body :-( The pony truck is the only casualty. But it's a functional component. So it goes... Here's the rest of the chassis. It rolls along, but lots of work lies ahead to make the crank pins happy and to reconcile the connecting rods and valve gear. And now I also need to work out what to do with the broken pony truck.

I think a few years ago there was a 1:76 scale Faiveley pantograph kit available -- does anyone have any info? I know you could get a Brecknell-Willis one in the early 1990s -- I bought one that never got built, but that's a story from my misspent youth and the chapter is closed ;-)

Aha! Was trying to track one of those down. Thanks a lot.

After several decades' consideration, this has finally been removed from its place on the roof of my blue 86219. More force was required than I had expected. Now comes the task of working out how to replace it.

Thanks! I have just found a photo that shows exactly that, in August 1968. It's on page 39 of Eisenbahn Journal Exklusiv 1-2015, Wendezüge in Deutschland, and shows exactly the same train formation with 78 246 pushing. Could be the same vehicles, though the weather is much sunnier. Perhaps earlier in the day?

If my observations are part of a larger picture then Silberlingen in plastic at 1:87 seem occasionally to go a bit banana-shaped in the manufacturing process. I was disappointed to notice that one of the Piko ones I bought online suffered in this respect. It wouldn't be so bad if it sagged a little, but (probably to do with the way things go with the tension in the plastic moulding) it arches. I've seen this in another one of scale length -- can't remember the manufacturer. (I'd stay away from anything not scale length by the way, even if it was less likely to sag!) The window frames in the Piko ones are a bit overcooked, but otherwise the models are reasonable given where they are pegged pricewise against Roco's ones (I don't have any of those to do a visual comparison but they do look a little sharper). Shall we say the Pikos would be a good choice if you wanted to create a long train? I thought the ride height of mine was too high, and fiddled about with the bogie pivots. I'm not sure this was a great idea, and it was complicated by the sagging as the bogies are a fair way in from the ends. Moral: check for warp on delivery and if in doubt send it back! I wonder what Brawa have done to represent the 'peacock's eyes' -- the circular burnishings on the lower bodysides of the prototype. Different manufacturers have tried various ploys to represent these, some resembling fish scales more than anything else. I'm sure the general feel of the Brawa model will be lovely and the detailing characteristically delicate. Secondhand Ade Silberlingen from the 1980s are interesting but I think my advice would be to avoid unless you want to spend a lot of time fiddling about with them. Ade coaches were (as I understand) originally sold only as kits and have amongst other things an innovative and slightly maddening coupling system of their own. The details are great with lovely filigree bogies that capture the very fine parts of the prototype, but it's fairly easy even for me to point out a couple of things that aren't really right about the bodies and I have never seen such thin tyres and such deep flanges combined in a single NEM wheel as with Ade. I very much like the photo of the possible push-pull train (Wendezug), thanks for sharing that. I particularly like the combination of the massive Prussian T18 / BR 78 (a design dating back to 1912) with the long, sleek and evidently lightweight Silberling -- even with the rather messy details of the sides and ends, the driving trailer (Steuerwagen) is like a spaceship alongside all that cast iron and plumbing. I hope to be able to replicate it in miniature some time, and perhaps meanwhile someone can confirm whether it would have been possible to run the control connection from the Steuerwagen through to the loco via the two 6-wheelers? Ben

The Piko BR 364 (Era 5) is reviewed in Eisenbahn Kurier 2/2019. Looks good; inside it is much tidier than the ESU model. Price in Germany is 260 EUR with all bells and whistles (no smoke though). Again massive flanges. The H0 manufacturers must get a constant stream of complaints from users with poor track that their locos derail, because the NEM standard is quite flexible on this dimension and I'm sure they are far from reaching the minimum depth allowed (forget 'RP25'). It looks as if there is a bit more 'air' under the front walkway above the bufferbeam. Again there is a moulding line down the middle of the exhaust cowling. Must be a fact of life for mouldings of this particular loco's body -- the Roco one has it too :-( In passing, I think it's nice that these two manufacturers have started at opposite ends of the lifespan of the V60 :-)

Would love to. I daydream happily about gauge 1; the models are fantastic but for now that's the closest I get. Obviously, it's a scale prioritising quality over quantity, but that still leaves the need to focus on particular prototypes in a market where almost all models are in very short runs that sell out quickly. Märklin is surely the only exception to that!