New steam locomotive for the Garden Railway

The new locomotive

Finally after all the Covid-restrictions we're, for the time being, allowed to take up normal activities again. Due to the Covid-19 I hadn't been to any Model Railway Exhibitions for about 2 years, either in Norway or abroad. So when there was a small Model Railway Exhibition held in Norway last week I just had to go. It was very nice to meet fellow modellers again. On this exhibition I also found a G-scale Steam locomotive from LGB that I've wanted for a while, but haven't seen in many stores, so I ended up buying it.

Like most LGB-stuff in G-scale it's narrow gauge, and it's made as an even lighter narrow gauge standard as it is a "Feldbahn". A prototypical Feldbahn would be made to 600mm gauge in real life, but LGB has made it go with their 45mm gauge tracks, so the model has a slightly broader gauge than the prototype. The LGB rolling stock in the "Feldbahn-series" is very short and will fit my very small garden railway well.

The model is very well made and looks good, and it runs superbly. I noticed that the cab is open, and you can see all the details in it, except for the crew (!). Usually LGB includes a engine driver in their models, but obviously not here where the cab is so open. On the label on the box there is a picture of the loco with an engine driver, but when I searched the internet for this model I found both models with and without the driver.

The Crew

It seemed obvious what I had to do; I had to add some crew, at least an engine driver. Before I went ahead and ordered one from LGB I wanted to see if I could find any suitable figures to print in our 3D-printer. At Thingiverse I found two I figured they could be used for an engine driver and a fireman; Man With Cap (1:32 scale) and a figure from the German Africa Corps (1:72 scale). I scaled both the figures to about G-scale, and mirrored the Man With Cap in the slicer, so I could have a conductor as well from the same figure. They were printed on "standard" resolution at our Flashforge Finder to save time, and to see if they looked good enough. After some painting with cheap acrylics from the craft shop, I think they did. They are viewed at a distance anyway.

You can still see the layer-lines from the FDM-printer, but I think they turned out surprisingly well keeping in mind that these are printed in standard resolution. So well, that I didn't consider to print them in a higher and more time consuming resolution    

The train

Fitted in the cab of the locomotive I think they look good enough. Instead of only having one engine driver if he was to be included or not originally, I now have an engine driver, a fireman and a conductor.