More Christmas 2011 - books and inspiration

One of the blogs that I follow is the Elly, James & Keith Light Railway which is a new Garden railway, although much further advanced than mine and with it's main proponent, James, having a substantial background in railway modelling it seems, and not afraid to take to take the hacksaw and paintbrush to LGB stuff.

One of the books he mentioned was European Narrow Gauge Steam by Trevor Rowe which looked very interesting (and which would be in English).

Full of black and white photographs from the late 60's and early 70's.  Vol 1 - which James mentioned is Germany and Austria but Volume 2 had Holland and Switzerland in, so a trip to Amazon.co.uk netted one second hand and one new for a good price.  I've yet to detail my trip to Hoorn in Holland and the Dutch Steam tram museum, but suffice to say that I now have a soft spot for Dutch narrow gauge railways.   All sorts of nice inspiration such as the following picture of a Tram engine hauling colliery dump trucks in Belgium:

Finally, a Christmas present that I wasn't expecting.  It's local so interesting and one of the nice things about buildings is that often enough has survived to put the photograph and modern day reality together.  Only had a quick dip into this so far and one to put in the car as I travel around.  

Christmas 2011 - Part 1 - Indoor running and expansion

Well, I didn't get to lay some track outside but I did get to put a circle around the Christmas tree to keep the Co-director happy.

The panning and movement on the part of the camera director requires a bit of skill, but I think you follow the drift.  And this was running on Christmas day. 

In the run up to Christmas there were all sorts of presents to me - including this from Ebay - brand new at less than 50% of the RRP (and what other people were selling for) price, and one that in absolute terms put it into 'boys toy" category rather than expensive novelty:

Radio control crawler crane.  OK, so it's overscale but I tend to think of it as one of those 'giant' cranes etc that one sees on industrial excavation works and quarries.  It will load chick peas (to represent gravel/rocks - it comes with a few plastic rocks) into the dump truck.   The operator wants to get a bit more skill up though before any home videos to avoid the laughter.

Here is a much more sophisticated video..

Chris

An idea is born - IMB or IB

One of the things on the railway has always been the modelling aspect alongside the operations of it.  OK, so G scale and the demands of the the garden mean that some aspects of traditional railway modelling just don't take place.  

Aside from Projekt X (the Stainz respray) I already have a couple of other items off Ebay (a Piko Caboose and a Bachmann Coach, as well as an LGB speisewagon) that will ultimately go under the hacksaw and spray can.   A locomotive from a chassis is a long way in the future at the moment, and I would start with one of the kits out there.

Most real life railway stock seems to carry all sort of owners marks and numbers etc - some of which I understand.  Iscatalbahn was struggling from a lack of corporate identity though.  Just putting a letter "I" on the side of things seemed a bit lame.

Whilst researching sounds available from manufacturers that might suit the locos I have as I get them chipped then I've been looking at pictures of the real locos to match size and configuration.  One of the possibilities is the Dampflokomotive der Härtsfeldbahn from Dietz  - at the The Härtsfeld-Museumsbahn and particular Dampflokomotive 12 .  

Looking around the site as one is prone to do, I came across a ballast wagon with the initials HMB for H(artsfeld) M(useem) B(ahn) in big black letters on the side.

So, Iscatalbahn can become IMB, or IB....  
Simple and obvious really...

And since a blog, like a good book should have pictures, then here is a short video (not mine) of locomotive number 12  from You tube...

Back to Rolling Stock

Enough of real train back to model trains.  

Weekend before last I took a bit of the train set up to the Midlands so that one of my hosts could see a little bit what all this fuss about DCC was about and the G scale thing (he has a HO/OO scale work in the progress in his garage).  

Part of that involved seeing how fast the loco would go - which the R1 curves I took up with me weren't really up to.  What did come out though was the instability of the HLW wagon at speed.  I've read about the light weight of the Chinese trucks/coaches from ranges like Newquida and how they can sometimes have problems over reverse curves etc.  

Well, the LGB tipper weighs in at 220 g and the HLW wagon at 160 (as does the HLW tipper which isn't pictured).   Guess it could be time to start considering putting some lead beneath the chassis to increase the weight and lower the centre of gravity, or some model loads.  

Even more on Maintenance of Way

Ann went for a walk on Sunday down the side of the estuary here and they were doing work on the track.  She had her camera with her for birds or nice estuary pictures but took the following picture of a digger on rails apparently towing some sort of truck with bits and pieces in it.

More on Maintenance of Way

Ann - who hasn't seen all of the stuff together but has seen it arrive in bits - made the comment that I had more support vehicles than some real railways.  The snowplow was an ebay bargain, and Ann now wants track down and snow to be able to play with it: the bottom of the blade is adjustable to get minimum clearance and putting weight (a brick is often used) in the truck bed is good if used for actual snow clearance.  

Having the two ore truck was inspired by the video of the Nicki Frank S:

The Nicki Frank S - ideally in a blue version - is the tender engine that I'm saving up for, but given the costs then it could be a long time.   I suspect that other non 0-4-0 tender locos will come along.  

The cable reel cars were one of the few items I have bought new as the small ones didn't seem to come up on ebay, and the searchlight wagon was a German ebay bargain.  There's bits of glue left where a couple of figures have been mounted, and some railings are broken but it was substantially cheaper than anything I've seen here in England.  The yellow wagon in front of the crane is to be used as a crane support wagon - ropes, taurpaulins, spare jibs etc.  I also have some flashing lights to fit to the snowplow once I've made a frame.  .  

Technically its not Trainspotting if there's no trains and I'm not standing around ?

One of the interesting things about having the railway has been reading about how real railways operate.  I've got some more of the Industries along the tracks books but have also become fascinated by the whole "Maintenance of Way" thing.  It has answered my question about what the big long yellow machines are that I see in station sidings - which is tamper machines tied in with re-ballasting track.

Well, one lunchtime recently I was walking to W.H. Smiths on the lane between the park and Central station when I came across track being lifted at central station, and diggers and bulldozers adapted to run on both tracks/wheels and railway track.

Not ideal pictures, and they were taken on my mobile phone but useful for inspiration.

Subsequent looking on ebay has come up with the following two videos...  (The first one is the speeded up 20 second version for those with short attention spans - search for Cat 319D should bring up the six minute original).  Could be a good party piece to do with a radio control digger at model shows... 

Now who wants to build the following in G scale ?   The Llanfair and Welshpool have a baby tamper machine from South African gold mines.