Supaned

Watching with A LOT of interest - love visiting Thailand and travelling on Thai Railways.

Thonburi is indeed a good choice .

Even recently pretty much every main line diesel class (GEK , Alsthom , Hitachi and big GE) work there regularly , as well as a Daewoo railcar service out along the Southern Line. There was also a Henschel shunter (79) outbased there , that has recently been replaced by GEK 4014. SRT tends to use the vacuum braked GEKs on pilot duties more nowadays.

The depot is home to the SRT preserved steam fleet , and also there is for some odd reason a solitary Krupp diesel (3118) which must be some sort of depot pet as it is keep immaculate and in working order , it sometimes has a little run out on the Southern line on one of the passenger trains.

Nice Henschel shunter. Sadly loco 79 which was the resident at Thonburi has moved away , and now GEK 4014 is the station pilot. SRT seems to be overhauling the vacuum brake only GEKs for use as shunters , several examples are now immaculate in the older paint scheme.

My joint favourite DR power (along with 219s) - that howl still sends a shiver down my spine even now.

Achtung U-boat! I have several Gutzold and Brawa 219/229s , to my eyes the Gutzold model seems a little on the "fat" side compared with the Brawa , although the very heavy Gutzold model certainly runs well.

Much missed on the main line....

A couple of MEG 143s were also used on passenger workings around Berlin within the past couple of years....

I did indeed enjoy the article. Probably my favourite German loco class , I own Gutzold's DB Cargo 156 and the earlier 252 , a pity they couldn't bring out some of the other livery variations as well...

Also in my collection is an LEW worksplate off the real 156001 :-)

Thanks for the write-up.

I think the reason the 50s were called "bleeps" is that they were the first locos to be fitted with a driver vigilance device - basically if there is no control input within a set period , a bleeper sounds and the driver has to release and then re-press the DSD pedal (deadman's pedal).

To be honest , I don't think there's that many folk that are too familiar with the colour schemes of German station furniture to pick up on it - a more glaring discrepancy in my mind is the mixing of stock and eras , so as long as that is consistent then all should be fine.

Nice pic - you must live just down the road from me (literally) :-)

Now that really does look good....cracking work.

I think there's still a lot of potential with Bad Horn , it's more about setting the location - If it were somewhere on the former border between East and West , perhaps with a re-opened link towards the East after unification , then the Hp signals and theme become far more viable in terms of ex DR stock appearing.

Contrived - perhaps , but there was some mingling off ex DB and DR motive power , ie class 216s at Nordhausen.

As I said in my earlier post , unless you're at a specialised exhibition , I can't see too many picking fault , and especially as the locos and stock are well matched.

I think you have a point regarding exhibition layouts and in general the increasing standards , this can only be a good thing , but , on the other side of the coin it can lead to self-doubt and dismissing of your own abilities and layout.

Regarding signalling , to be honest , unless you went to a very specialist exhibition , I can't see too many picking fault with the signals you have , and to cite an example, Dresden Neustadt did until recently have semaphore signals - whether the DR semaphores were notably different to DB ones I really couldn't say , they looked like the sort of thing that Viessmann make so that would be good enough for me. Now , if it was colour lights then that might be different with the ex DR Hl signals...

As for layout subject , I'd have thought something a bit different from a TMD or GWR BLT would be most welcome , if only for the visual differences.

interesting layout idea - I've not yet been up as far as Niebull , but I've seen plenty of pics and it does look quite modellable.

Great pics of the operating session - personally I think the layout looks better populated by ex DR power.

Hope the move back goes well.

I suppose it depends on where and when you intended to set the layout - looking at the Tillig range , a lot of the models are East German in origin (so you can have some Trabbis) , but , as you say , some key items of stock are noticeably absent , for example the 628 DMU , although a company called Kühn seems to make the Gorlitz type double deck stock, although not in DBAG red , and only with the original driving cab.

take a look at http://www.kuehn-modell.de/index.html if you haven't seen it before.

I know where you're coming from . I have lots of DR era 4 models and a half-built layout to run them on , but every now and again , something else grabs me and I start off on a tangent.

I do like the city classic layout idea - did you ever see the layout "Berlin Revisited"? it was a section of elevated S-Bahn line with a main line alongside (like the stadtbahn in Berlin) , and also had a small yard at one end for shunting etc. Set in 1992 or so , it was one of the first layouts to spark my interest in German railways.

On a split level theme , some of the lines in the Dresden area were elevated with a lower level yard or sidings , especially around DD Neustadt.

I do like the idea of Coombe Junction as a later add-on , I suppose if desired , you could then use boards 3,4 and 5 to exhibit "just" the Coombe Junction section (leaving Moorswater behind) , so if you went to the same exhibition twice , in effect you'd see two different layouts , even though they were part of the same thing.

Looking good , and the control panel looks neat - did you use a bought-in box to fit it in to?

Don't loose heart - I think what you've done so far looks good , certainly far more than I've managed.

I think sometimes we do get too critical of our efforts , whilst there's nothing wrong in striving to achieve a very high standard , I do think that we overlook the positives.

As for the hardstanding , is it intended to represent tarmac? I have a concreted area on my layout ,and I used phoenix paint's "concrete" colour , which apart from a bit of weathering doesn't look too bad for that. I guess black is one of those colours which doesn't quite scale down , if you understand what I mean....?

From what I remember , I just wired in a Lenz accessory decoder - it all worked ok first time , whether by luck or judgement I can't say.. I think the Piko coach instructions show how to wire in the decoder.

I reckon the 93xxx headcodes are light engine moves - if you look at the timings these correspond to the arrival/departure time of the night train ferry at Sassnitz , and Stralsund would be the nearest stabling point and train crew booking-on point.

93028 - engine detached from D318 (0320 arrival) - the coaches were shunted onto the ferry by a 346 pilot.

93028 - engine attached to D319 (0230 departure) after coaches shunted off train ferry

I suspect the actual headcodes would have a L0 prefix , inferring Light engine movement.

HTH

Ref your Push-pull set . I did the same thing with an S-bahn set , DR 242 loco and 2 Piko Dostos , including a driving trailer, I fitted an accessory decoder to the driving trailer and consisted it with the same address as the loco , so when changing ends , both vehicle lights changeover. As you can't see both ends of the train at the same time , it's a good way around this problem.

Now to get the loco pantographs to change ends.....

That nose end looks much better now it sticks out a little , definately a marked improvement.

A pity there isn't an etch to improve the windows in the same way that the Shawplan etch does for the 4mm version - maybe a word with an enterprising etcher could provide this?

Slightly OT , but do you remember me banging on about 37068? I've just been researching a few things and turned up this pic of 415 paired with 068 :icon_drool:

http://www.bescot.plus.com/trains/37415_Pensnett/

It's almost a pity to put it inside a loco - that is outstanding work

I can't wait for the finished article - it's certainly continuing to the same high standard as your 4mm stuff :icon_thumbsup2: