Small Steps

Current progress is slow, frustratingly so, but I’ve at least managed to paint the wagons so they look a bit more like the real thing. I’ve managed to get a bit of weathering and texture on a couple as well, but they are crying out for some rust to be added at some point.

As there is unlikely to be any progress on the box file this week the MFO staff say they'll try and get the couplings fitted and the Körschtalbahn wood wagon finished. Don’t hold your breath...

Storage Problems

With Westerooge falling behind schedule the test track at the Maschinenfabrik Ostfildern is getting severely cluttered at the moment, so the staff are having to adopt new storage methods to fit everything in.

The High Tech MFO spray shop

Newly installed painting equipment at MFO.
Heady stuff, especially before someone opened a window...

The Maschienenfabrik Ostfildern is proud to announce the opening of a new high-tech eco-friendly spray booth, made entirely of recycled materials found lying around the workbench. The wagon seen resting on the paint stand (found after a long search in the wood bin) is the high-capacity wood wagon being built for the Körschtalbahn. This has waited for about two months for the MFO staff to finally get organised, and had to be dusted before it was painted…

The stock for Westerooge is also primed and ready for painting up into their future work-worn state, so construction could finally commence.

Meik said it was the wrong shade of grey.

The wagons on Monday evening.
The MFO say they 'got a bit more done'
since then and promise to post pictures
as soon as possible...

Complete Mess

Meik was getting on my case about fixing the mess van so I finally got it together yesterday. When tested on the normal chassis the it showed a tendency to dive nose first into the track when moving which spilt Meik’s coffee. After Meik calmed down the chassis was duly lengthened, and a test run was accomplished without further damage.

The roof is made from the same deluxe materials as the walls, namely cereal packet card although it does have an overlay of recycled printer paper. I figured Meik wouldn’t want to mess about with an arched roof, so I made it pitched, and added shutters to protect the windows when the van is stored outdoors. These two measures make it look like a garden shed on wheels, but there we go.

Rear view of the van while Meik was shunting.

I’m wondering about having red and white warning signs on the corners like a lot of German work vehicles do, so I tried it out using the Gimp:

And then, as I was using the Gimp in any case, I couldn't resist one for the British ‘modern image’ enthusiasts…

Making a Mess

The smaller island and Hallig railways all seem to have at least one stores/mess van in some form or another: when working away from the main depot it’s possibly the only form of shelter for a long way, and on Minsener Oog it's the only way from ship to shore.

Naturally the Westerooge line needed its own version, and true to prototype it is made up of scrounged materials, in this case low quality cardboard which started life as a cornflake packet, but which proved pretty strong when two sheets were glued firmly together. The main superstructure was built from this with ‘metal’ strapping from sketch paper.





The walls need painting so they look a bit more like real wood, and the windows will need shutters for protection against the elements. I thought I’d finished the outside but looking at the photo I’ve forgotten a couple of corner pieces.

The inside is complete though. Meik was insistent that there had to be a stove and a decent table inside.

The table cloth is a bit askew, possibly Jan left in a hurry. He seems to have left his coat hanging by the door as well. Hopefully he'll remember it before he goes home on the boat tonight

Complete Loco

I've not posted for a while- mostly because I had some dental work done with a general anaesthetic, which put me off modelmaking for a bit. However, I was able to get the Westerooge diesel finished enough to be presentable...

Rear view showing rudimentary controls and Meik peering out of the window


Front view again, showing the other side. This view hides a couple of bodges, but it doesn't do the glazing any favours. At least the glazing itself is clean though.

I've also found that the self-removing paint problem I've been having is probably because of the primer I've used up to now, which is a brush-on Acrylic. Apparently I need a spray primer so I'll be looking for a car respray shop. There must be some in Germany, but as I don't own a car I've never looked before.

In the meantime I'll be working on building some some wagons for Jan and Meik to move materials and the generator around whilst repairing and maintaining the sea defences, and hopefully a small mess coach where they can retreat when caught on the wrong end of the causeway in a storm...

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 Works...

Time is very short in this season, but I’ve managed to build the cab on the little Westerooge diesel. I’m trying to use lots of different methods in this project to see what works, so I made the cab as a home-made riveted job to protect Jan and Meik from the elements. Jan is already complaining at the gaps around the door…



To supplement this I’ve been working on a background for taking pictures of locomotives and stock made by the “Maschinenfabrik Ostfildern”, partly to learn how to make printed backgrounds and buildings, but also so that I’m able to keep doing some model making. This is a (heavily scaled down) version:


I figure that I can make this into a back wall, with the end turned so the track goes in front of the wall, and through the blue door, and maybe even set the track into concrete. At the very least it’ll make a nice display for the shelf by my desk…

Getting Ambitious.

The Maschienenfabrik Ostfildern have been working on the third wood wagon. This is going to be slightly different from the first batch with deeper side frames and wider uprights to give the impression of an altogether heavier unit. This one will also be less flexible with an open frame designed to take wood or pipes but not the containers. I figure the KÖB will have a fairly heavy wood traffic so some more specialised wagons could be justified.

This marks a new first, because I’m basing the model on a standard gauge wagon, rather than a narrow gauge, and I’m modelling a prototype I’ve been able to photograph myself rather than one off the internet. Here’s a (battered) example of the original, awaiting departure from Breisach in behind a MaK B-B unit owned by the Südwest Eisenbahngesellschaft (SWEG) on a damp day in January this year.


I cut most of the pieces for the wagon on Saturday afternoon. I debated making the frame from sections, but eventually I went for making the whole lot from one piece, on the basis it would hopefully be a bit stronger, as it is fairly thin: 0.5mm plasticard. Because of this, I made the bracing pieces deliberately heavy-duty to compensate.

By the time we had to get ready to go out for the evening -there was a festival in the local town and the boys wanted to see fire-eaters and other mesmerising things- the wagon looked like this:

Then today, I took a deep breath and made the usually fatal step of trying to stick it together.
Remarkably, it worked, mostly.


I had a couple of “Did you spot the deliberate mistake?” moments, notably when I realised one of the cross-beams was right where the bogies (trucks) were supposed to go, but a bit of cutting made the beam high enough that it didn’t foul the wheels and all was well…

If things go on like this I may reach 8 wagons within the year…

I really have to build the layout now.

[Update: Tues 11th. I have now corrected most of the typos and put the correct code in for the pictures, so now whan you click on them you get a bigger version instead of the Photobucket front page. Sorry about that.]

Wood (and other things) wagon

The Maschienenfabrik Ostfildern has managed to gear up production and is now finishing two wagons for wood and other items. They now promise that they will be working on the van soon, and the third wood wagon will be started as soon as the bits are delivered. The couplings are still a minor difficulty, but I’m looking for some softer wire to make loops with.

The wagons started out as a rough copy of these, but I quickly realised that my skill is at a level where I will have to content myself with a more generic design. I’m not too worried though: it’s likely the KÖB would have a variety of designs in its stock list, and the wagons can take a roll-on container like the RHB prototype, (although it's under scale length so it can only take one at a time). Besides, after the long saga of the first van, it came as rather a shock to find myself finishing so soon after I started. Now I’m already beginning to get dangerously ambitious: getting stuff together for the third wood wagon and sketching out the design for the second van. I’m also thinking of a set of roll-on containers for the and even having thoughts of an eventual well wagon for swap-bodies, or maybe a coach…

[Update: Finally got the link in... Sorry about that...]