Big Harz

1000mm gauge 'Combino Duo'
entering Nordhausen. Source: Wikipedia

Quedlinburg is the sort of name I could not come up with given a German dictionary, a thesaurus and three weeks to spare. Even if I could I doubt anyone would believe it. But last year Quedlinburg became the northernmost tip of an 8,5km extension of the Harzer Schmalspurbahn (HSB) in central Germany. Not only that, but this extension is along a standard gauge trackbed.

The narrow gauge used to meet the standard gauge at Gernrode, where the HSB have maintenance sheds and sidings, partly for their large fleet of steam locomotives that run all year round. After Gernrode the standard gauge skirted the northern side of the mountains, and eventually wound back to a junction in the town of Frose. In 2002 a bridge failed on the standard gauge line a short distance from Gernrode. Services from Quedlinburg ran as shuttles to Gernrode while the local government started a study to decide what to do about it. The study seems to have moved at the usual relaxed pace of government enquiries worldwide, and eventually decided that surprisingly, the narrow gauge should be extended to Quedlinburg.

Decision made, rebuilding began on18th April 2005. A metre gauge line was built which scythed through the standard gauge at Gernrode in a large ‘S’ to join the former standard gauge alignment, (you can find a track plan here) and by the 26th of June 2006 regular services were running along the line.

At Quedlinburg the station was rebuilt with the narrow gauge replacing standard on one platform. (Track Schematic) The HSB has regular steam services so there needs to be a run-around, and a siding was added ‘just in case’, but that was all. One signal box controls the lot. I imagine a similar situation at Wildberg on the Körschtalbahn. I’ll bore you about that another time.

This is good news, in that the narrow gauge is being used for a public service, and economically providing a link people may actually want to use, but I can’t help feeling that the HSB is preserving what was, rather then developing further. I’m sure steam brings in the tourists, especially the amazing Br 99.23 & 24 2-10-2 tank engines the HSB has, but compared with the modern, low-floor, wide access units they are “replacing”, how attractive do the railcars or loco-hauled stock with a narrow door and steps look, say, for a mum with a pushchair shopping in Quedlinburg?

Fortunately, there are signs of further improvement in the town of Nordhausen, at the southern end of the system. The town has had a metre gauge tram system since 1900, but the long-desired connection to the HSB was not completed until 2004. For vehicles, Siemens shoehorned an 8hp BMW car engine into a combnio, and made the ‘duo’ which shares the low floor and wide doors of its conventional electric cousins, but which switch to diesel on the country section and run as far as Ilfeld-Neanderklinik. There is nothing ‘heritage’ about the three new units, so I doubt the tourists will go for them, but they are just what you need to go shopping or take your bike home in the rain.

Hopefully they will one day be joined by several more units running over the rest of the 140km system and into Quedlinburg. They would also be ideal for the Körschtalbahn to run through trains to Spitzenwald. I wonder if I could make one in 7mm scale?

(For more general information in English, with a map of the Harz, Wikipedia has a page here)

Corporate Blue

I'm still moving a the speed of a geriatric tortiose but this weekend I finally managed to fix the couplings and get some paint on the bonnet.


The cab will either be bauxite or grey. I don't know which...

The story is that Meik and Jan, who represent the islands entire railway staff, kept sending requests to head office for ply and metal for rebuilding the loco shed, which were repeatedly ignored. The flimsy structure finally blew down in a storm last year, knocking a big hole in the cab of the one remaining serviceable loco.

Jan and Meik were told off for not repairing the shed and instructed to make a temporary cab from whatever was to hand, and that an insurance assessor would come as soon as possible to approve funds for permanent repairs.

Three months later head office sent an assessor to check that the shed really needed repairing, but his instructions didn’t mention the loco, so he refused to authorise a payment for it. When Meik picked up the ply and steel for the roof, he “accidentally” took a tin of primer and they built a temporary cab out of the two locos and some bits of sheet steel.

Six months later another assessor came. He reported that the locomotive cab was undamaged and cancelled the request for parts to rebuild it.

After I finished painting last night I realised that there's more than a hint of Corporate Blue there... Maybe I sould accept the inevitable and make a 1980's era British rail Narrow gauge 'Might have been': Welsh highland 3' gauge perhaps, or a connon carrier to Ullapool which has to be kept under Brirish Rail because it's an 'essential service'?

I need to get back to the Körschtalbahn brfore I have any more ideas.

The Takasaki Light Railway

In Takasaki we met with Matthew Foster his wife Hiromi-san and Rinka, his little girl. Matthew is the owner of the Takasaki Light Railway, the only 16mm gauge model railway in Japan. Matthew has used a heck of a lot of ingenuity in making the line as there are almost no parts or kits available locally. He built his railcars (like the one in the picture) from card and plywood with a motor from a radio controlled car kit. Unfortunately the railway is being rebuilt so a visit wasn’t possible but the family kindly invited us out for lunch instead.

Virtual Modelmaking

This week I did a Very Silly Thing: I signed up for the ‘Gnatterbox’ after lurking about for some time. This is a forum full of very good and very friendly model makers, all building minimum gauge models of various descriptions. The main focus is Gn16: G-scale models on 16,5mm track (Used by some misguided souls for 00/HO standard gauge modelling) but last week I found the 09 section (Same scale as the Körschtalbahn but with 9mm gauge track) and I was hooked. Even worse, Colin Peake has updated his “Shifting Sands” gallery, which is built in this scale/gauge, and is beautifully modelled and detailed and pretty small too. Now I keep thinking about the 9mm gauge chassis I’ve got lurking in a drawer at home, and it occurs to me that it wouldn’t cost much to get a few Black Dog Mining wagons, and I could just transfer figures across from my main project when I want to... I’m sure a small shunting layout won’t take up much space…

Reading Matter.

Now and again I have a good trawl through the Internet in the hope of finding some interesting model railway related websites, and this time I stumbled on a couple of very interesting sites. First on the list is the well known 7mm scale Narrow Gauge “Teetering by the Well” by Dave Balcombe, which is quite well known in 7mm circles and should have been on my links section ages ago, especially as Dave has been very encouraging about my own beginners efforts. The site is well written and entertaining: worth a visit even if it isn’t your “area of interest”.

I noticed the site belonging to David Mallot primarily because of the “.de” at the end of his web address, denoting a German domain, but stayed just because of the quality of his tiny 2mm finescale model, "Chapel Wharf". His aim was to show that “a small layout can be interesting to operate” his model is a bare 95 x 19 cm (38 x 7 1/2 inches) when in use and can fold down to fit in a 50x40x15mm carrying case. Staying with the ‘small’ theme, have a look at Bob Blackcloud’s micro layouts, which are many and various so I’m not going to try and describe them. Just have a look…

Finally a mention of John Teal, of the RJR branchline, (In the links section) who has sadly abandoned 7mm scale/0n30 and now runs something called “00” on his track. Never mind, it remains an interesting small scale garden layout, and the LMS train on his homepage does look pretty good. It will also be interesting to see how the transformation takes place...

(Update: I realised the link to Bob Blackcloud's layouts was broken. Should be fixed now...)

New Links

Web 2.0. is great, even for non-technical people like me who live in the prehistoric world of DC control and think “Chips” are something to be ordered with cod. I don't even have to know what I'm doing. Yesterday, for example, I added three new sites to the blogroll, without supressing a desire to shove the keyboard into the screen...

The first addition was the Dutton Bay Tramway, which is quite well known as an exhibition layout and has recently moved to a permanent home. I was sold on this one as soon as I saw the fleet of large diesels gracing the homepage.

Also from Australia is The Shelley Railway Company, a H0n30 model which by the looks of the current project will be hosting some big and very finely detailed trains fairly soon. (The line has its own gallery here, as part of the Australian Narrow Gauge Web Exhibition.)

Back in the Motherland, the Rhyd Ddu Railway blog has regular and entertaining updates from Colin Lea is on his model of the Welsh Highland railway, some good links, and interesting thoughts about model making in general. Thanks to Stephen at Fairlight Works for passing the last two along.

I’ll keep adding links as and when I find them or when kind people pass them to me, so if anyone reading this has a model, let me know the link and I'll have a look... I'm also getting the sidebar more organised so it’s quicker to find what’s where.

After all, it’s so easy to do...

Going Postal

The "container question" continues. Whilst I'm not planning to make a collection like that on Nick Gurney's intermodal model, I think there may be more than one running on the KÖB, and I'm too cheap to get another kit, so I've been looking at tanktainers, swapbodies and roll-on containers and anything with flat sides until I resolve the "Corrugation issue"

And my goodness but there's a lot of possibilities. I may bore you with those another time, but this week I wasted my precious minutes creating a postal container based on those used by the Rhaetian Bahn. For those who aren't familiar with this company, it is a metre gauge line in Switzerland which doesn't seem to have heard that narrow gauge trains are old and can't carry big things. Amongst other heavy duty wagons including cement carriers, bogie tankers, roll-on container carriers and some very nice side-panel vans, they clearly have a contract with the Swiss postal service, and carry post in a fleet of swapbodies (If that’s the word for a lot of yellow boxes), which are designed to be accessible from road or rail. I first found these on the very comprehensive Schewizer Schmalspurbahn gallery where they are shown on well wagons, although I don’t know if this is for clearance or ease of access. The Railfan Europe site shows these and other similar swapbodies on normal four wheel wagons, which would be useful for my tiny layout.

Anyway, the drawing shows the general idea, please compare with the pictures of the real thing and let me know what you think. What would a UPS version look like?