Stuck.

I'm stuck. It's inevitable when working in a different country where things aren't always the same as you are used to: Sometimes there is an annoying delay while you hunt for bits. This time, the bits in question are electrical -an area I'm not too confident in. I've found a shop on the internet that sells what I'm after: plugs, and slider switches, which is a step forward in that I know what to ask for, (Thanks to Zabdiel for the Wiki tip) but lack of knowledge makes me a bit cautious about forking out €20 in one go, which is the minimum for an online purchase. I'm searching for a local electrical shop where I can have a good look at the components first.

Which is a bit frustrating, so let's talk about something more interesting. I've got a train ticket to go to a model railway and toy exhibition with Eldest Son this weekend, where I'll hopefully be able to meet Alexander Rainer, a German member of the Gnatterbox, who will be exhibiting an model railway in a shoe box. He wants me to take my mess car along for a visit. I just hope it fits on his model.

Meanwhile I'm still hoping to get this model done by May, after which we will go to visit my family in the UK. After we come back, I've got another idea for a project, which is just a few sketches and a vague idea at the moment. I'll give more details as I know them. It is another attempt at the Körschtalbahn, although Sägewerk Pfeifle will have to wait still longer until my boys desist from climbing up the furniture.

Success…

Gotcha... A trio of DD51's showing three livery variations in Yokkaichi.

Yokkaichi is not a pretty place: it’s a port city where oil tankers offload, and seems to be largely composed of refineries. What it does have is a large yard where you are very likely to see DD51’s. I can see that this won’t make the tourists flock to the place, but I appreciate it. I had the time and realised that my Japan Railways pass was still valid, so middle son and I went off for an adventure. The station is surrounded by the yard, which forms the exchange point for the port freight, and an intermodal terminal for Japan Railfreight’s mini containers. It also has a wagon repair depot and a permanent way shed. Funnily enough it reminds me of Bescot Yard in the UK, where I spent many hours as an impressionable youth.

I got pictures of several DD51’s and a couple of DE10 C-B locomotives as well. Thank goodness for Digital cameras… I confess to getting a bit carried away, but I had been looking for these locos for a while and as we fly out tomorrow it was probably my last chance. The people on the platform seemed bewildered by me wandering up and down the platform taking pictures of grubby engines. The one thing I missed was a blue and white industrial shunter, probably from the Ise Railway, which had been hidden behind a train of tanks. I was at the other end of the platform when the train pulled out and just saw it disappearing under a distant bridge.

Never mind. I can always come back next time.

Mindful that most people don't share my affliction, I've only included two images from the mass I took. #1029 stands ready for its next duty.

An added bonus was a decent shot of c-b DE 10 #1512 showing the unusual wheel arrangement.
I wonder why JR don't name their engines?

Halfway Point

I’m about halfway through this time in Japan, and I’m starting to twitch. I really want to get back to building models.

I’m filling the gap a bit by reading the current issue of “Narrow Lines”, the bi-monthly issue of the 7mm Narrow gauge Association, and “Model Railways on a Budget”, which was written a long time ago by C.J. Freezer. Some of the ideas may seem a bit ‘dated’ like the suggestion to use Post Office relays (Remember those?), but to be fair that’s not a fault of the book –it was published 20 years ago after all. It remains a useful item for those of us who have to really consider every expenditure and besides I’m a bit of a dinosaur with technology and naturally warm to suggestions like using bicycle spokes for point control.

I picked up my copy in a second hand bookshop on the Wensleydale Railway in the UK for an appropriately miserly four pounds. I don’t know if a similar book has been printed since- it would bee an excellent idea, and a good antidote to the style I see frequently in Germany, where everything is available off the shelf and model making is known as the rich man’s hobby. I was able to start again because I had just enough knowledge to keep my costs down, but anyone walking into my local model shop in Stuttgart would get the impression that you need to mortgage the house and have a handy spare barn to make a decent layout -which cannot be good for the future of the pastime. Hopefully there will still be a few of us bodgers who follow the less well travelled paths and are willing to compromise on perfection in order to have our ‘own” railway at an affordable price. Bicycle spokes and all…

Perhaps there is a “Low cost model making conspiracy”. Come to think of it, “Model Railways on a Budget” is a small red book. Is there a subliminal message here?

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...