From a LGB Starter Set to a 16mm-scale Heeresfeldbahn

It's been summer in Norway and not much time for wargaming or other indoor activities. The summers usually are quite short here so the time is mostly spent outside. Fortunately some aspects of military modelling are made for outdoor purposes. Some years ago I was in a model railway shop in the city where parents live, and I was at that time not into big-scale modelling or G-scale trains. -But in that shop I saw a very nice Starter Set from LGB in IIm/1:22,5/ G scale which depict a island train from the Frisian island of Wangerooge. It was a price worthy and high quality starter set and not the 'toy like' and 'sub quality' often found in such sets. The benefits of buying a Starter Set is that you get everything you need to be up and running for a reasonable price. What really caught my attention about it was the locomotive which was of the very same type which was originally built for the German Army during WWII to improve their logistics on the Eastern Front. The locomotive was a Heeresfeldbahn HF130C, which about 350 was built. After WWII many of these locomotives was decommissioned and saw mixed service on different civilian narrow gauge railways in several countries. Obviously also on the railway at Wangerooge. -And suddenly I was the happy owner of a new Starter Set and into large scale garden railway modelling.

LGB has never built a model of the HF130C-locomotive in it's original military livery, and an idea was born to revert it into it's original livery and use. In the Starter Set there were also 3 goods-wagons; a tanker-, a flatbed- and a boxcar. All of them would be very credible as German military wagons in a 'Heeresfeldbahn'-train with a new paintjob. I was also inspired to do a model of a German military narrow gauge as there was a such nearby where I live during WWII. -It served a small airfield with gravel, and probably also munitions and fuel. An old idea was about to come into fruition. The good thing with writing a blog, is that it helps pushing old modelling projects.

It's surprisingly few photos of this locomotive during it's military service due to some 350 was built

I discovered that the locomotive is made to 1:19th scale despite of LGB's general 1:22,5-scale. This really makes the locomotive to 16mm scale and not the ordinary LGB IIm scale. This makes it run well togheter with my 16mm Roundhouse Billy in WD-livery. The wagons in the starter set are closer to 1:22,5 scale though. 

Besides a new paintjobs, I decided to further detail the rollingstock by adding some load and details to them. First I wanted to add typical military loads like tanks and big cannons, but keeping in mind this is a narrow gauge railway I don't think they could carry so big or heavy loads. I could 'downgrade' the loads to armored vehicles and such, but think they might still be too heavy for such light rails. Besides I have not seen any photos of such carloads on any Heeresfeldbahn either in books or in WWII footage. What I've seen in photos it seems like such narrow gauge railways mostly carry general cargo and supplies and sometimes troops. I also wanted my military loads to have a slightly more 'general' appearance so the wagons would't look too completely out of place if I wanted to run them behind my British 16mm scale W^D livesteam locomotive every now and then. I discovered that there weren't many WWII German objects in 1:19th scale to be found, except for some very expensive ones in 1:18 scale. I searched Thingiverse for propper items and resized them to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed them on my aged FlashForge Finder (I think it's time to upgrade my 3D-printer soon). I've found the online Scale Converter by Scale Modelers World very useful in this matter. Even though converting different STL-files to exact 1:19 scale, they don't seems to be in same 'scale' sometimes (even if they are by measures). 

I haven't seen very many photos of these locomotives in military service, and certainly not in colors. I've seen some few color-photos of preserved ones in different military gray liveries, but as they are slightly different regarding colors and which part was colored which. I imagine that all these locomotives were not painted exactly to the same color codes. I've also read somewhere that German steamlocomotives operating near the front were painted in a very dark grey color during WWII. I went for a standard German color; Panzer Grey. I also replaced the under-scaled LGB-engine-driver with a 3D-printed one to the same scale as the locomotive; 1:19. While working on the loco I decided to go fancy here and add radio-control by Piko to it as well (as a lot of the other members in my MRC does). I think this must be the easiest and perhaps most inexpensive way to add RC to a garden train. 

This was the easiest wagon 'militarize', as it only got a new coat of paint, and new plates simply made by self-adhesive label stickers which can be printed from an ordinary inkjet:

Not much to repainting was needed on this wagon. My oldest son recently served 2 years in our naval forces in the Coast Guard, where he also operated fast patrol crafts. I wanted to make a homage to him and his service. As I suppose there were not many 'naval loads' on a Heeresfeldbahn (deep inland on the Easternfront), I had to look for some maritime items which were army related. I found the answer in the Sturmboot 39, and added some suitable loads to the 3 Sturm-boats as well; I guess the outboards are in the large crates and their machineguns are located in the smaller crates. I read somewhere that they carried 20L of fuel each , and added some Jerry cans as well:

Besides repainting and adding self adhesive label stickers, I replaced the disc-wheels with spoked ones to this wagon to make an appearance of an 'older' origin. I also improved the roof by adding 'tar paper' made with 'sport tape'. I'm not sure what kind of cargo the car is currently carry as it could be anything, so to add some interest to it I added some few military riders and their 'mascot' to it. The latter being a Jack Russell Terrier and a second homage in this train; This time to our beloved Linus.

After fitting the locomotive with RC reciver and battery, there wasn't much space left in it for other things in it. To add a little further interests to the train I placed a battery operated sound capsule with diesel sound from Train-Tech to the boxcar. The sound is not so loud, and not so annoying that sound equipped locos often are (to all others but the one driving them).

This is how  the starterset from LGB turned out after a 'revision', and how it could have looked like from the beginning. They have the models for making it, so I hope they will use them for making some sort of a military train in the future. There are several military modellers and wargamers who also are into model railways, and this would be a good entry.

It looks like it's approved by Linus too

I've converted the Starter Set into a very basic German 'military train', and to further expand my Heeresfeldbahn I have collected some more goodswagons from LGB, and due to they are very colorfull and toylike they will need some repainting and perhaps detailing.

3 other members in my Model Railway Club also has LGB models which has a military origin from WWII German Heeresfeldbahns, namely the steamlocomotive HF110C. They're not to LGB's general 1:22,5 scale either, as they actually are closer to 1:20 scale and 16mm than IIm. 2 of them are in civilian liveries, but one is in a freelanced German military livery. I'm looking forward to my MRC's coming running sessions, which we arranges at each other's garden railways through the whole year. It seems like they will have some military presence now...

My LGB starterset used to fit in my 30L panniers, which was practical when visiting friends. With somewhat more fragile models I think I need a bigger pannier (even if I have a Honda NC750X with a frunk).

Dedicated to Jørgen and Linus