Sinsheim 2008

To one used to British model railway exhibitions, the 'Faszination Modelbau' in Sinsheim is immense. It covers just about everything: model railways, trucks, diggers, planes, boats, racing cars, and tanks. Eldest Son and I were going to meet Alexander Rainer and see his 'Rittigsmühle' model, but it took 20 minutes for us to even find the model railway section, and even then finding a shoebox-sized layout in the huge hall proved difficult. Eventually we stumbled across it by accident while craning to see around the back of a well made N scale model:

Rittigsmühle: The new circular section with incline.

Track going off bottom right leads to the mill itself.

The Mill yard with Alexander's diesel shunting.

Wood delivery waits to be unloaded.

I'll admit I went a bit overboard with pictures- but It's been so long since I went to an exhibition, Alexander's scenery was really nice, and besides, I'd been invited to take my little diesel and mess van to do a guest turn, and despite them being far too big for the tunnels, I wanted to take pictures of them on a real railway as well. I've tried to keep down the pictures here, instead putting most of them in a new album on my fotopic gallery

My loco in the yard at Rittigsmühl,
pretending it is small enough to go through the archway.

The one place the diesel could run: on top of the incline.

Diesel in the trees.

The mess wagon spent the day exiled on here with the workman vainly trying to push it.

Of the other layouts, the majority seemed either to be in the 'Overgrown train set' style, with lots of automation but rabbit warren tunnels and carpet-like grass, or very, very big (although very beautiful) modular layouts based on German and American prototypes. Fortunately, around 'Rittigsmühle' there were a couple of other small models which not only looked as if they would fit into a normal house, but were also very well built and presented.

'Blockstelle Eselsbrücke'

One of these was 'Blockstelle Eselsbrücke' in 'N' gauge, which looked like you could hang it up in the living room. Maybe that's what the owners do when at home. It was backed by a massive sandstone cliff, with a double track main line running along the bottom, along which trains ran every few seconds.

Freight bursts out of the tunnel.

View of the slipway to the river. Another freight passes.

The cliff fronted by a double-track electrified main line is probably based on a famous section along the Rhine between Frankfurt and Köln, and like that line, trains ran past every few seconds. It was also carefully detailed without being overdone, with some German details like the cliff top viewpoint and the cross on an overhanging rock. The model had sound, but this was confined to a CD of birdsong playing on a continuous loop. Very nice. On second thoughts, I wouldn't hang it on the wall, I'd put it where the TV usually stands.

Weimar railcar on the Döppenauer Kreisbahn,
complete with the drivers bike.

The other layout I found myself repeatedly looking at was the 'Döppenauer Kreisbahn', a narrow gauge local government railway in 1950's West Germany. It took me a while to figure why it looks so open, but I think it was the way the track is angled to the front of the model, and the scene rises gradually towards the rear, rather like a stage in the older, grander theatres.

This model also had a lot of Cameo scenes, but what I really liked was the way the line and station was part of the landscape, and the separate scenes were linked by the railway. I guess I'm also biased because it had some nice big diesels as well...

Diesel-hauled train running into the station at Döppenau.

Freight yard at Döppenau

Of the larger layouts, my favourite was 'Balen', a visiting model from the Netherlands which included this Dutch street and fortress. The townscape had a boat running past through the canal.





Further along it had this realistic modern double junction, with a large construction site behind.



American outline models aren't really my thing, but this little scene caught my eye, and appealed to my dark sense of humour

One of those days...

I think I'm failing in my education of eldest son though. As we came into the hall for the first time, he saw these and fell in love, and all the rest of the time he kept asking me to take him back for another look:

Oil rig supply ship and fire launch on the boating lake.

All the way home he was talking about radio controlled boats.

I think a new project is coming soon...

No news then good news

Stuttgart-St. Pancras return tickets...

This blog has experienced a rather long silence, mostly because of time pressure from work and because Michi's sister and brother in law came with our two lovely little nieces. We’ve been showing them around Stuttgart for the bare five days they were able to be with us.

Today we dropped them off at Stuttgart main station on a train for Frankfurt, and at the same time we were able to finally get tickets so we can come to the UK by rail from May the 12th to June the 9th. We also have a ‘Britrail’ pass to travel within the country so hopefully we can get to a couple of places and see people, although the 7mmnga meeting in Burton won't be possible.

We've wanted to go by rail and the recent announcement by the local airport ("We need more money, so we're going to take more land and build another runway") made us only more determined not to fly. Besides, the airline industry is very creative imagining up extra ways to make life more miserable, like determining that you can only carry 100ml of water, shouting at you at every opportunity, and dreaming up lots of extra 'costs' so after you've booked your flight they add things like 'Airport Tax', 'Service charge', 'Administration charges', 'fuel surcharge', 'security costs', 'runway toll', and 'Mandatory Insurance'.

I may have got a bit confused with some of those costs as the list is very long and in very small print, but with these little extras and the overnight stop in a hotel because the plane lands in Manchester just before ten, and the taxi fare to and from the hotel, the train actually looks reasonable in comparison: it is definitely quicker door-to-door, and that at 10% of the emissions, much less noise, no massive runways, and no-one shouting at us about how much water we can carry.

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...

Underground Modelmaking

I made it to the Exhibition. I think they were a bit bemused by me taking pictures of the wagons and leaving out their superb scenery. I didn’t realise it but the model is big, permanent (as in “part of the building”) and based on the Rhätische Bahn between Bergun and Filisur.

Notice the 2 well wagons to the rear of the train. I finally discovered they are carrying containers and swap bodies of all kinds, especially heavy ones (The thinking seems to be that the centre of gravity is as low as possible). They often get tacked on the back of the next passenger train so that consignments can be delivered quickly when there isn’t freight on the way. I’ll be going back to visit soon so I’ll inflict more pictures on you then. Here's a few in the meantime with more on the Flickr gallery.

Krokodil in Filisur

Refrigerated Swapbody on spiral

I said it was big...

And yes, I will get around to posting pictures of the half-finished container soon…