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...

Transports of delight.

The van is coming together: the bogies are now properly fixed, the “bodge” referred to last week having been replaced by self-tapping screws (thank you Chris Krupa and Steve Bennet for pointing out the obvious solution), the ends are approximately vertical and properly attached, and the sides will be built over the next week. Remarkably the DG couplings are not only glued on, but also seem to work.

The only problem in this happy tale is that the sun abruptly went AWOL this morning, and it is now overcast and dull. This means I can’t make any photos of the model, so you'll just have to trust me until such a time as the sun returns and I can get some real pictures. (Note to self: get a daylight bulb...) I’m not really upset about this as it meant the sun shone for my eldest son's 5th birthday yesterday and he was able to ride his new bike for hours.

Besides, a friend sent me a link to this video last week, showing some narrow gauge in Poland using transporter wagons. After watching this 5 minute video I'd gone from being clueless on how transporters were used, to knowing enough information to model my own. There would have to be a couple of differences (Standard gauge wagons would need to be moved by locomotive, for example) but at least the mechanics are clear, and never mind that the loco has clanky bits. I believe this operation lasted until quite recently, when the lack of investment caught up with the line and the traffic went to the roads.



In search of diseasels I came across another Polish narrow gauge line. Now I don’t know a great deal about Polish lines, but they certainly manage to have a fair bit of variety. Here they manage to include another steam loco, one of the ubiquitous LxD2’s from Romania which were the standard large diseasel in Eastern Europe on a heavy freight, and a not to bad looking rail car.

I will leave you to enjoy this, while I go and look for a daylight bulb on Ebay…

Organised Modelmaking

Yesterday Stephan (My eldest son) and I spent the afternoon bashing nails into wood and produced “Daddy’s Modelling tools box” My modelmaking tools were languishing in old ice cream boxes and my wife was quite reasonably getting fed up of it cluttering our office/bedroom. It was this or be banished to the outer darkness of the cold utility room whenever I wanted to build anything.

Of course it was fun to build it with Stephan and he was really excited to be "Helping Daddy".

The funny coloured box on top is the ISO container, hopefully in the process of being painted into Hapag-Lloyd Orange, or an approximation thereof.

I organised all my bits last night and this morning Stephan insisted that I go through it with him, and show him the contents of each drawer (of "our box") in turn.