SNCF stephen

Thanks Barry. Some of the quality of the photo's was not great but I had to use my phone because I did not pack the digital camera.

Well its pretty cold here in Staffordshire so I thought I would post some pictures of warmer times from last summer in France. I should have done it a long time ago but other things got in the way. We went on a trip to Mont Dore for a day trip and visited the station in the resort. It being a Sunday there were no trains due but I snapped a few pictures of the station. Here is one: Then we went down the line to Bourboille (please forgive me if I am spelling these incorrectly) and again snapped a few nice shots of the station: On the way back we decided to stop off at Bort Les Ourges: Where there were a number of older Autorails stabled in the open and two Draisines. The line is currently not operational due to a few maintenance issues and the cost of putting these right meaning that the local funding authority has withdrawn funding. However I am hopeful that these issues will be resolved soon. Stabled on the line are two X2700 units that look newer than they are due to being refurbished by the SNCF. There is also an X7400 Autorail Trailer. An X2900 Autorail (in very nice condition). 2 Draisines (1 of which is a DU65 similar to the kind I have made an N Gauge model of, the other I am unsure of the type). Finally there is an X3900 Picasso inspection Salon in very poor rusted condition. More information can be found about the railway here. On the way back we stopped briefly in Bugeat on the Limoges - Ussel line. I was taking a picture of the goods shed (which is in a very nice unspoilt condition except for the satellite dish!): Then the bells on the Level Crossing sounded and an X73500 railcare came through: It had someones Grafiti tag on the front end of it: Following this we jumped in the van and drove to Eymoutier to see if I could get a quick picture of it there. We managed to arrive just ahead of it and got a nice snap of a busy weekend train loading and unloading: Over the next few days we visited St Germainne Le Belle which is on the mainline towards Toulouse. Unfortunately time was against us and we could not wait for half an hour to see the local train pull in and pick up the passengers. However I did get a few nice snaps of the station: On Bastille day a French preservation society runs TD 740 from Limoges to Eymoutier then from Eymoutier to Chatteuxneuf and back to Eymoutier before returning in the early evening to Limoges. We went to see the locomotive arrive in Eymoutier: After which we went to the Vide Grenier which was in the town centre. This was kind of like a car boot sale but without the car boots. There were countless items of junk being sold but a few nice treasures. It was a fantastic holiday and hopefully when I go out again this year there will be some more rail pictures to post.

Wow, your shed must be one of the most highly dense model railway environment in the country!

This time last year I blogged about how I had done nothing on my layout for some time. Well this year is no different and I think I am discovering why. I find that winter is a bad season to model for me because of Christmas eating away at my budget and the lack of light makes it more difficult to do any decent amount of modelling. Still I do enjoy messing around with my trains, its just that major projects seem to be a bit much at the moment for me to handle. Therefore I am postponing some of these until the spring. So far I have a few major projects that I want to complete this year and they are: Complete the around the room extension with removable section to allow the space to be more flexible, (I guess I had better produce a track plan for this???) remodel the station on my current board to give more engine shed space, more siding space and larger passing loops, Add scenery to the new module that I built last year (lots of trees needed), Create a new fiddle yard that will link with the extension mentioned above to provide more off scene storage (with the possible added bonus of having this made up to look like an engine shed). In terms of stock I want to work on the following: X5800 Railcar needs completion - not much work needed but a fair bit of painting is required. X3900 Railcar conversion needs starting. X3800 trailer needs starting - A Tomix TM-08 is needed for this, the motor will be removed to allow it to run freely. I was recently let down by an online French store which means the X73500 is no longer likely to be coming (as well as some other Resin Buildings). Which I am very sad about as this is a truly spectacular looking train. I am tempted to wait until the Arnold version comes out but that could be some time. I believe that I will now no longer be able to get the Mabar ABJ4 that I was after for some time as they have sold out. Somehow I think that just writing this short article may have motivated me to have a go at getting the X3900 started soon and also finish that X5800. I also discovered a huge array of pictures that were taken this summer on my trip to France so I shall post them on here in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for reading. Stephen

http://www.dft.gov.uk/press/speechesstatements/statements/hammond20101220 Paragraph 8 and 11 seem to indicate that trains will run from the north to Europe using the connections mentioned in Para 8. Surely if they are building new stations then they will design them in such a way to be friendly to international services. With them being new build this should theoretically be easier to do and if the Birmingham link is being constructed first then there is scope to see how it performs before adding the facillities at the other stations on the northern section. As far as timetabling is concerned I doubt there would be a huge amount of trains running initially from Birmingham to the continent so the timetabling issue might not be a major stumbling block to start with. Anyway what are the real problems with having a timetable that links with HS1? Surely having say 8 to 10 trains a day running at a set time is not too difficult to plan around? Or am I being very naive?

What about the link with Crossrail? Is this not central enough to London to be of benefit? The link with Crossrail is a through route on HS2 with excellent links with what will then be a fully operational rail link crossing London. Surely any stopping international service could call there instead of St Pancreas. Having a central location is good if you are trying to cater for everyone but surely the fact that people from the rest of the country can access the rail service at other locations means that Londoners could travel out to this interchange? There was a ministerial statement released today following the announcement yesterday. It is worth a read because it clarifies some of the points but not all of them.

Having read a number of documents on the HS2 proposals I think that there will surely be some provision for international travel from other stations in the country. The Tory Government has come in and encouraged the designs to include links to HS1 which makes sense as it does encourage travel from other UK destinations to further afield and would certainly assist in reducing the amount of short haul flights in the UK. If I remember correctly (and I might not be here so if someone could clarify I would be most grateful) the previous proposals announced under the previous government allowed for only an interchange at St Pancreas as opposed to direct running to the continent. From my point of view as a traveller that breaks the journey and would encourage me to fly to avoid the ordeal of interchanging in London. I am pleased to see that the line wont be too far from me (at the moment but who knows where I will be living soon) so maybe in 16 years we will hear the sounds of fantastic high speed trains down the road!

About 3 weeks ago I got married. It was a great day for me in what has not been the best of years. The Honeymoon was very enjoyable. I lost count of how many times we used rail based travel (which is truly a great thing!!!). So I thought I would share my (not very good quality) photo's. Starting at St Pancreas I was greeted by 3 Eurostars: We travelled to Brussels and caught the tram from Brussels Midi to Die Brocke. It was not the best journey with heavy suitcases and a packed tram. Still we got there. Anyway due to how busy it was I didn't get any pictures of the tram! However we did go to Amsterdam on the Thalys the next day and that was great. It was truly a spectacular international rail service. I cannot wait until Britain gets its own proper domestic high speed service like this. Here are a few pictures of the different Thalys trains at Brussels Midi: In Amsterdam I enjoyed being in the city again, although crossing the street there is somewhat frustrating having to look for cyclists, cars, trams then cars again and finally cyclists. I did quite enjoy seeing the British tourists who had been smoking the Ganje get almost knocked down on sveral occaissions. Here are a few of some of the trams, first a Combino and second I am not sure of the make of the older ones but I would guess at Tatra or something along those lines. Just a guess though. If anyone wants to correct me I would be glad: The next day we left Brussels to go to Edingen, where I was told is a truly spectacular model shop. There certainly was a great model shop there. Jocadis was well stocked and the staff were EXTREMELY helpful and spoke good English. They had plenty of SNCF in N Gauge for me. I made a few large purchases and had to be on my way. I will post more about these when I have time. Here is the train we came back from Edingen on: Reminded me of the 310's in the West Midlands. Very squeeky and old but fantastic and full of charactor. I was very glad to ride on one of these. The next day was fantastic fun. We caught the Metro to Montgomery: Then the Number 44 Track to Turveren (can't spell that one properly I suspect!) to go to the Congo museum: (this tram was the one that left before us, our tram was the same type though!). On our way back along the line 44 we stopped off at the Tram Museum which lies in Majestic Parkland in the Brussels suburbs. It was closed but I had a good look around and took some pictures: And here is one of the part of the depot that is still operational. Those trams were very nice to ride on: Whilst in Brussels I did visit Dream Collection which was a nice model shop. It was quite well stocked and well priced. I purchased a number of items from them as well, their French N Gauge was pretty good for a shop of that size! They also had models of the trams running through the centre of Brussels, although these were in HO and a bit out of my price range: Also on the last day a Bristol VR bus pulled up on the street outside our hotel. What an interesting surprise: I hope you enjoyed reading. Stephen

I do love a good G scale layout. I hope to one day have a G scale garden layout myself (or perhaps an even larger gauge!!!). I look forward to seeing your models and track plans.

Thats a really interesting set of pictures, thank you for sharing them. It certainly seemed like a proper adventure journey!

I suspect someone else produced the vehicle. I have been thinking about it this afternoon and the name Hoedll or something like that rings a bell. They make modern image european trams in N (very expensive for the Hiroshima type ones I think it was about £300 if they had them in stock...). Thinking even harder I remembered I had actually seen some of these in the flesh and remembered that they were ok but not a patch on the Japanese models, they had a lot of printed detail as opposed to moulded details. Mind you I am trying to remember from about 2 years ago when I saw them. I think they do models of the Combino type tram as well. Not sure if that is the same family of trams as the Hiroshima ones?

It must have been a different tram. I have found a picture of the tram in the background of the picture at the top of this page: http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/ET/ETintro.htm It does look very similar.

Thanks for posting this, its very useful. I was not aware that Modemo were the manufacturers of the Hiroshima tram. Has this been released yet? I only ask because I am sure I have seen pictures of this tram on some modular tram layouts in the USA including one picture (that I can no longer find!) of someone who had decided to put together the central sections of 3 or 4 of these trams to make an extremely long version of the tram. It looked quite impressive.

Thanks for putting in the time to make this very useful guide. I used the chassis of the Skynet shunter for my DU65 Draisine (which required a very small chassis). Due to its charactoristics of running a bit quickly and being a bit tricky over the insulfrog points I had to weigh it down as much as possible. The good news is that I can just about get a reasonable speed out of it but it can be still tempremental. One piece of advice I would give for anyone buying a smaller wheelbase chassis/shunter is to ensure it is always kept very clean and lubricated (although some of the Japense mechanisms are frictionless so this is not an issue!). I look forward to reading more about the other kinds of chassis as it looks like I will be regularly purchasing Japense chassis to motorise kits and bodys of French trains I am making. I am currently obtaining a Kato chassis like Will J is using for the PPM so that I can motorise a X5600 railcar body I purchased.

Nice work with the weeds, it looks very natural. I am glad you did not have to rip up all the good work.

I like the fact that you have got a continuous run on both levels. Are you going DCC? What about turnout control? This looks like it will be a very smart layout. I will be keeping an eye on your progress.

Today I worked on extending the short Kato chassis so that it would look more prototypical in length under the body of my X 5800. The Kato chassis was about 2cm too short but luckily only one bogie was powered. Therefore I removed the non powered bogie and fashioned an extension from Plasticard (including the downward pin for the Bogie to sit in) and hey presto. An extended chassis. From this to this I tried many different angles and set ups on the camera and this was the best that came out. Its not very clear but you see it is now longer. The Plasticard on the top keeps the body level when it is resting on top. The brass wire keep the contact with the pick ups so that it is still effective over pointwork and the like. It is pretty reliable considering I am not the best micro engineer. Having moaned about making 3 different cabs for the X5800 unit last weekend I decided after posting my blog to have yet another attempt. It was not perfect but it certainly looked a lot better than the Balsa Wood effort. When it has the Plasticard supports glued into place it should look reasonable (even if my clumsy fingers have meant that the glass looks frosted!). This picture shows the cab in situ. As well as the X5800 I have been working on converting a Farish Bogie wagon into a non powered chassis for a spare X3800 body I have. It required extending as the chassis was too short. I don't have any pictures of this as it is still drying but once it is done I shall post some more. And finally I received the body of an X5600 that I purchased off Ebay last week. I intend to have a go at getting a working chassis in there and fixing it up so that it is all well and good (the cab was broken off before the sale). To celebrate the growing collection of X units I thought some pictures were in order. Sorry about the blurryness of them. Although I am now usiung a better camera the light is not the best and I am finding it difficult to get the time when the light is good. I was considering naming this post the X Factor but I do not really want to go there with that kind of joke. The X Files is a far better show!!! Thanks for reading, if you have any questions about any of the projects then please let me know. Stephen