readingtype

I understand the urge to pack as much in as possible, but (maybe as a result) the modelling is not matching the fireworks. The detailing and shaping of the end footsteps, walkway, handrails and warning panels is important for this loco and the photos don't give the impression that has turned out better than Roco's model. The V60's bufferbeam is in the same style as Einheitsdampfloks -- it's a U lying on its side and only connected to the end crossmember of the frames from the back; the walkway above should be independent of it with 'air' between. And unfortunately in the still for the video above the light has caught a moulding line running right up the exhaust :-( I guess we need to wait for the rest of the contestants to turn up to see whether anyone has truly refined the conventional aspects of the modelling. That's not to say it's not a lovely little model, of course :-)

Oh yeah, and ESU is releasing a V60 too (the same one that was released a few years ago and then withdrawn?), thanks to the Drehscheibe Online model forum here's their promo video: https://youtu.be/20xl2v2ZD9A The closeups seem to me to show that Roco's model is going to be difficult to beat. The wheels are NEM profile but I think that Weinert may be offering suitable replacement axles now that they have a nice pile of suitable wheels. Anyway, there's an amazing amount of stuff packed into the model, and it'll certainly be fun to play with. Whereas when I see smoke coming out of my old Roco model it'll just be the DCC chip cooking again ;-)

Hi, Firstly I'd say 8 feet is quite long for a 'micro' layout in h0, but that's to split hairs. It looks manageable and you'd actually get decent length trains in, except you only have 1 foot each end which would not fit a loco and two wagons, or a loco and a bogie carriage (a railbus would fit though, and you could stick to 4-wheel 'Kleinloks'). But with a layout this size you need to be able to get more than one wagon into your trains, really. Secondly I think it would be worth giving us an idea what you think you will be running on the layout. It looks like a through station with a loop and a goods handling area. But that's to speculate. What kinds of services do you plan? Where in Germany: flatland, mountains, West, East? Hope this is helpful. By the way, I wanted to recommend Peco's recent book 'Modelling German Railways' but it is perversely lacking any 'classic' small layout plans! The identically titled 'Modelling German Railways' by Chris Ellis has about ten useful track plans, and lots of the background info that helps when deciding what to do. It looks a bit scrappy but don't be put off. I bought a copy from here: http://www.modeltrainsinternational.co.uk/ Cheers Ben

A pleasure. I think considering that you get three (plus one) axles in a product that is well thought through and finished they're good value. No quartering, no painting, and the running is better afterwards. Here's a close up photo.

These arrived at the end of November (ordered October 2017) and look pretty good. There are 'RP25' (Weinert part number 5625, as shown here) and 'fine scale RP25' (part number 5626) versions. I've written up the conversion on the German Railways Society forum but here are some photos and a short synopsis. The most important thing to know -- and it is in the instructions -- is that if you convert a model from the first or second series which have two captive axles then you need a new chassis casting and a new retaining cover for the worm gear at the top of the gear chain. Also worth having is a set of replacement crank pins, as these are plastic and ready to break (as one of mine did, despite taking some care) or ping off into the mouth of the waiting Carpet Monster. You will also need to file clearance into the plastic base plate that retains the axles, but only for the front and centre axles. Roco's original wheels on the original chassis Weinert wheels on replacement chassis The replacement axles showing why the clearance is required. The replacement axles run in brass bushes. I can report running with the new axles is very good, and the appearance is much better. It's worth noting that this is just in time for Piko and Brawa to release new models of the V60 -- Piko report the first of theirs will be available before the new year.

I have some Märklin H0 stuff which I'm very fond of. About three years ago I ordered some of the copper stud strips directly from Peco themselves by phoning up their 'Technical Advice Bureau'. I had a good play with these under Peco streamline flexible track and a medium radius turnout (there are higher ones for turnouts so the skates clear the blades, lower ones for plain track). The wheels have very deep flanges but run fine on code 100 track. It's not quick or simple to build the stud contact track this way, so you need some dedication over what you will need either to use two-rail flexible track or to use set track.

Do it! In 1:76 scale, EM is the best possible compromise you can have between fidelity and good running for standard gauge models. There are good workable standards for all the important dimensions. The EM Gauge Society's manual sheets going back decades are very readable and down to earth. As noted above, converting a RTR diesel or electric loco can be the work of moments and a finer wheelset will make it will look much better then and there -- finishing the job the manufacturer started! I'm very pleased to hear this announcement and I completely agree with those who say it will boost the other track manufacturers' prospects. Let's hope the turnouts are soon flying off the EMGS store shelves ;-)

I'd be very interested to hear more about this. Will it accommodate EM?

Thanks for the correction. A bit of wishful thinking on my part!

As it happens I was waiting at Canonbury station last night and the empty car transporter train (Ford?) that runs through the Channel Tunnel went through on the goods loop. It's one of the longer UK trains, and after the double deckers there are both 2- and 4-axle flats; as the 2-axle ones passed I got the impression they may have been converted from the Lfs-t, the flat wagon that is basically on the same underframe as the Hfs and Tcefs but with solebar bracing ('Sprengwerk'). It would be a nice coincidence if that were true. Oh, and I appreciated the fact that the class 92 hauling it is (still) named 'Couperin' -- an appropriate choice of composer for railway nuts as he obviously liked mechanical stuff. 'Le tic-toc-choc ou les maillotins' is one of his better known pieces, inspired by the ticking of a clock. I think this might be off-topic though.

I was pleased (and surprised) to see an ad for these in the freebie Railway Magazine modelling newspaper a month or so back. I thought that if I wanted one I had better move. The prototype wagons were ordered by Deutsche Bundesbahn for ferry traffic to the UK via Hook of Holland and Harwich in 1964. From the DB point of view such vehicles were rather small, rather low-capacity vehicles that had had to be extended lengthways to compensate for the lack of width and height. They were direct successors to the Gbmhs (later Hfs) with planked sides of 1953, and according to Güterwagen Band 1, Gedeckte Wagen (Stefan Carstens and Rudolf Ossig, 1989) they squeezed an extra 0.5m2 of load space onto the same underframe as the earlier wagons, being fractionally wider. Unlike the earlier wagons they had end doors and sliding roofs. They had dual air and vacuum braking systems. This image shows the Tcefs on the left, with its supplied NEM wheels. The Liliput Gbmhs on the right is on RP25 wheels, which is why it's a little lower overall. A photo of a prototype vehicle preserved at Bochum-Dahlhausen. The narrow profile is evident in comparison with the next wagon, built to the UIC profile. The brake lever was required to comply with British regulations. Most European wagons of this type had no way to apply the brakes manually. Up to the 1960s in every five or so were built with a brakeman's platform and a screw-down brake lever, but wagons built soon after these ones didn't include them. The brake lever passes behind the v-hanger, which I think is unusual or even unknown on British-built wagons. The information panel stencilled across one of the side doors. This pattern was used for decades on many different vehicles. There is something perverse about the way it crosses a reinforcing stanchion, distorting the lettering, when a different shaped box would have fitted just as well onto the doors. The weathering on this wagon is really good, turning the original brown into many shades of russet and red-beige. Lichen adds a finishing touch, though I suspect in service this didn't get a chance to settle. Turning to the model, overall impressions are very good. The body panels don't offer a lot of texture potential as they are ply, but the strapping and reinforcing stanchions are fine and convincing. The ventilation hatches and the fine channels they slide in are moulded separately and look solid. The V-shaped props that hold the hatches are less good; they're moulded as part of the body. It seems from various other attempts that these are difficult to get right. They should really be from perhaps 0.5mm wire. A glance a the Liliput wagon will show one way that doesn't work. The roof is also a bit disappointing with catches that seem only to suggest at the real objects, but I have no source of information about what these catches actually look like. Weathering would help them. The ends are excellent, with the door hinges, locking bars and catches and the two ladders which are kinked about half way up really lending a feeling of solidity and realism. On the underframe, the axleboxes don't match the ones at Bochum-Dahlhausen, which is odd as the latter are the absolute standard DB pattern. They have two reinforcing flanges either side of the box, whereas the full size ones only have one each side. These models are up to the best current standards for European continental models in H0. They are only available through Modellbahn Union, but I think the price is closely comparable with more widely available brands I have encountered such as Exact-train or Brawa. You get very good clear moulding, lots of detail on the underframe, loads of grab handles and rails and a few other separate parts such as the platforms on the ends above the doors which are a mix of etch and plastic. In contrast, while the established brands may offer tough models which can be dimensionally accurate and beautifully engineered, they still steer clear of fine detail and laboriously-applied extra parts. The weight is 66g which probably is the absolute minimum for this chassis length; I haven't opened one up to see what potential there is to add weight, but the doors do open so you could sling in a 'load'. I wonder why NEM wheels are supplied; it seems to me the market segment which would need them and wants to buy such a model is a small fraction of the total ownership. I was pleased to read on the packaging that the models were researched at Bochum-Dahlhausen where I took my photos and intrigued that they were designed partly in the UK. I actually bought two and the box labels state that each is one of a limited edition of 200. This provides some insight into the economics of producing plastic models at the moment; there are six running numbers on offer, straddling two sub-epochs, giving a total run of only 1,200. All are priced at EUR 39.99 a pop except the weathered one that costs a bit more. I am happy that Modellbahn Union has chosen to reproduce this prototype and I hope the models will appeal to others in the UK with H0 tendencies. Don't forget these can trundle along behind an 08 or a 33, both available in 1:87.

Hi, I recently acquired an early Roco kkStB 310 (art. no 63310), a product first released almost twenty years ago. They're rather nice models of an absolutely brilliant prototype from pre-first world war Austria, but that's not the subject of my post. Neither are the later versions of the same model which have an entirely different inner life. Roco fitted an integral DCC decoder (developed and supplied by Lenz) onto the circuit board inside the boiler of the early releases of the model, and then confused everyone by also fitting an eight-pin plug and socket under the 'coal' in the tender. This is easy to find and people think it is an eight-pin decoder socket, but in fact it is a jumper which is rotated 180 degrees and plugged back in to switch the model from analogue to DCC operation. I had a few problems with the running of my model, and this seems to be fairly common. The motor would buzz and the loco would start to move and then hesitate and give up. If it was still in contact with the track it would repeat the process, but it never actually accelerated and generally just stopped where it was. Note that at this point I had tried to program the loco with a Lenz LH100 controller, and then tried to do a factory reset (see below) when things did not work out. In my case some of the problem was due to dirty contacts and some to a slightly bent cardan shaft between tender and loco, but the rest was due to the decoder. Looking around the web it is clear that the decoder has caused other people trouble. I used JMRI Decoder Pro and a Sprog DCC interface to see if I could improve things. Attached is a listing of the CV settings which actually worked for me. I have run my model successfully on Lenz and NCE systems with these settings. Roco_63310_CVs.pdf I feel doubtful that all these CVs are actually read by the decoder. The decoder isn't recognised by Decoder Pro, and neither Lenz nor Roco provide any information about it (several people have asked). The bare minimum set of values seem to be the short and long address and the starting voltage. As far as I remember, trying to reset as you would for a modern Lenz decoder (by putting a value of 33 in CV08) has no effect. Nothing in CV 29 seemed to do anything. As far as I can tell, it is essential to send commands to the loco in 28 speed step mode. The Decoder Pro/Sprog DCC combination prefers 128 steps and this compresses all the usable values into a small fraction of the throttle, meaning it's extremely hard to control the loco speed and it looks as if it's malfunctioning. Values over 28 have no effect. You have to tick a box in Decoder Pro's Sprog console window to set the speed steps to 28 and this setting is not stored. I have not yet found a way to turn off the front lights using DCC. A disclaimer: my experience in DCC is very modest. These values were found by trial and error. They might rescue a non-running 310. I recommend you do not try to adjust one that already runs well on DCC! Finally some of the earlier posts on this decoder, in English: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/germanrailfr/roco-63310-t712.html And in German: https://www.h0-modellbahnforum.de/t310899f54863-ROCO-DRG-BR-ex-BB-Rh-oeffnen.html https://www.h0-modellbahnforum.de/t312280f19606-Welcher-Decoder-in-Roco-Rh-der-BB.html http://zimoforum.huebsch.at/Lists/STP%20%20PfuSch/Flach.aspx?RootFolder=%2fLists%2fSTP%20%20PfuSch%2fDecodersubtyp%20in%20Roco%2063310%20bzw%2e%2063311&FolderCTID=0x01200200E0CC0759D9D36847A090218DF72CD5B8

Of course I am a bit late the the Fleischmann BR 86 party. Roco have published some photos of work on their replacement. It looks as if the traditional wheel profile will be retained (though hopefully they won't be bright blue as depicted in the 3D model): https://www.roco.cc/de/news/items/215-0-0-0-0-0-0-003-0/index.html

Moderately so; more than one new 00 steam loco definitely, but not one new H0 one (and the tyres and flanges of the 00 loco would most likely have looked finer than the H0 for what that may be worth). This 86 cost me very little (it wasn't looking very pretty having been mostly covered in a thick layer of green paint), so it can almost be rationalised in money terms. I got a new motor fitted too, and was pleased to get pretty much all the old parts back at the end for recycling. I thought quite hard before exporting the currency, but kept remembering a comment from someone who had a Fleischmann BR 94 'done': the end result runs beautifully, and the whole lot cost a lot less than a Weinert kit that could in any case go disastrously wrong! NB the 94 is a very tricky proposition as the only way to have the right wheelbase, the right diameter wheels and flanges is with Proto:87. I don't think I have actually yet seen a Proto:87 vehicle in the flesh, certainly not a European one.

Yes, very good for slicing pizza, although the cheese sometimes gets caught in the spokes. Here's the loco following a visit to Herr Gräler's workshop. She looks a lot better (having all the other bits on also helps; the last photo showed her a little less than fully dressed)

Great to read these comments. Alan has written up the show on the GRS web site: http://grs-uk.org/shows/2018/05/02/Globalrail-2018-review.html

The showguide's online now with more details. http://grs-uk.org/shows/2018/04/26/Globalrail-2018.html

'1926: new painting guidelines. Black/red standard livery for steam locomotives. Above the footplate: black paint had an optical basis and made the dirtiness of the steam locomotives less conspicuous. Below the footplate: red paint made it easier to discover cracks and warned of the dangers of the motion.' Apologies for spoiling the surprise, but that's what I photographed on a display case in the DB Museum in Nuremberg earlier in the year. In the case a beautiful model of 43 001. Lots of other treasures remain though (NB all captions are monolingual in German).

They were there in 1946, working in the Ruhr, according to Austerity 2-8-0s & 2-10-0s by J W P Rowledge, published in 1987. I daydream about a WD in H0 to go with the lovely Roco S160. Put either of these next to something continental (say, a BR 52 just for instance) and marvel anyone could have thought them perfectly capable of hauling a heavy train. Then there's the lovely Liberation class built by Vulcan Foundry, admittedly a different fish of kettle altogether. But I did discover that there is a brass model of that in H0, if you can track one down.

I think this is an example of the comedy referred to above. It really spoils a neat model (excuse undercoat and state of partial disassembly, another story). I acquired the loco cheaply, which partially explains the repaint, and I am thinking about whether to replace the wheels. Has anyone had dealings with Holger Graeler, who I hear offers a service of reprofiling/replacing commercial h0 wheels? If I succeed in transacting with him then I'll post a photo of the non-comedic replacements.

A quick note from me as a member of the Empire Mills team to say thank you to those who came to look at the layout over the weekend. We were all pleased to receive compliments on the layout and personally I was impressed by the number of times I got the Sprat and Winkles to work. But then I did spend quite a lot of time chatting to passers-by and fettling some of the ones that didn't. Wandering around the show on breaks, there was loads to inspire -- I'd echo the comments above without wanting to single any layouts out -- and a general good feeling. What struck me at five on Sunday afternoon is how intricate and sometimes brilliantly transformed many knocked-down and packed-up layouts look. Has anyone documented this? Ben

My guess is a dry joint. And that means opening it up of course :-( I can't see from the service sheet http://www.fleischmann.de/doc/ET/2/DE/400602_201511.pdf exactly how things go together but it does seem like the boiler has to come off to reveal the cabling. Get those tweezers out...

SWR (the regional broadcaster) were reporting today that the line re-opened overnight. I read some moderately scathing commentary in Eisenbahn Kurier, but in the same issue of course the extensive freight diversions (some into France) made good photo material.

Thanks for the recommendation. I entirely agree, and I'm pleased to have got myself a copy. Many great photographs and a remarkable number of manufacturing drawings. For anyone else remotely curious: this is a book that is almost entirely concerned with the various metal plates carrying inscriptions such as number, owner, classification etc on German locomotives, mostly steam; it begins with the first locomotives to run in Germany, works its way forwards in time from there. As noted above it covers the change to 'Computer numbers' with a check digit at which point (as I understand from a quick read) stick-on lettering started to be used. This takes the story up to Epoch IVa and there is a description of the style, dimensions and colour of lettering that came into use then which includes diesels and electrics. Naturally the DR (Ost) is also covered. The history rounds off with the creation of DBAG and the author then looks briefly at manufacturing and at collecting locomotive plates. Ben

Aha! Google has found: Lokomotivschilder: Bezeichnungen und Beschilderungen deutscher Lokomotiven by Thomas Samek (EK-Verlag). ISBN 978-3-88255-235-5. Must be the one!