Home For Christmas

I know Mark The Man of Tin have an eye for spotting models and toy soldiers in Sci-fi movies and series. I have a similar interest finding model railways in movies and series. During the time upon Christmas, railways and model railways seems to gain some (limited) popularity amongst the public who are not railway modellers or even interested in model railways the rest of the year.

For this reason model railways and railways in general are more likely to be included in Christmas movies or tv-series. These 3 screenshots are from the Norwegian Netflix movie 'Another Happy Christmas' from 2020:

Another one is the tv-series 'Home For Christmas' season 3 (2025) which has recently been released on Netflix. This season is already the most popular series on Netflix in Norway and among top 10 most popular series and movies at Netflix in 8 other European countries. This season is also the tenth most popular non English language series Globally. 

In this season model railways plays a minor backing role as the main character's father has developed a new hobby. Another interesting fun fact is that the model railway layout in this season is actually our friend and fellow MRC member Heine's private layout, which he lent out for some brief scenes to the Production. Here are some of Heine's photos from the takings:

And this is how it finally turned out on the screen. A lot of resources put into something that didn't make it more than a couple of minutes in the final cuts. I recommend you to have a look at this series at Netflix though as it is really 'feelgood' one.

This is the same layout Heine displayed at our 'mini exhibition' at the annual Christmas market at Borgarsyssel Museum:

I've also uploaded a short YouTube video from the museum:

The releasing of this tv-series is also a reminder that's Christmas is coming up, and therefore it was time for our model railway club's annual Christmas Party:

I actually had one modelling-project prior to this Christmas Party as a gift for Heine and Astrid. Like old Airfix figures, old garden furniture made of plastic also gets brittle. A small accident earlier this season inspired me to make a 'mini diorama' (in 1:22,5 scale) and finally replaced that chair...

-And 2 days later it was a Christmas gathering at the local branch of The Norwegian Railway Club (NJK) located at the old and disused Dilling Railway Station:

This model of Dilling station is located on a layout under construction in the very same building IRL.

I brought my Christmas layout for a final outing this season just to set the scene for this wonderful gathering:

Blog PostScript 

'Elf on the shelf' is still a thing in our house in December due to our youngest son. This morning he created a really mayhem obviously inspired by Mark at Man of Tin's recent blog-post on railway sabotage...

When writing  this the Forth Advent Sunday is behind us...

...and it's just a few days left to Christmas and the 1:1 world is catching up. - Like decorating the Christmas tree:

Linus are also sending his greetings and says you don't need much space to run G-scale trains indoors. He's also very facinated by running trains 

I'm not sure if I'll have time to post any more updates on the blog before Christmas, so I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas! Because you are here and reading this you are the reason worth writing this blog in the first place. -Thank you!

Best Wishes!

My Military Garden trains in the biggest Hobby Magazine in the Nordic Countries

Allt om Hobby is a Swedish Hobby magazine established in 1966 which covers every aspects of modelling hobbies including scale-, radio controlled- and railway modelling. Although being Swedish it's probably the biggest Hobby Magazine not only in Scandinavia but in the Nordic Countries as well with 6 annual issues, each with a print run of 4000 magazines + 3000 digital readers. This magazine is available at selected Newsagents in Norway.

Late this summer the editor of Allt om Hobby was visiting Heine, who is a member in out Model Railway Club, to write an article about his Garden Railway. So several members from our Model Railway Club was very early up a Monday morning in September to run trains and provide some traffic on Heines lovely garden railway for this article. Now the latest issue of Allt om Hobby is published, and in this issue is also a 8 page long article about Heine's Garden Railway on print:

I was very delighted and pleased to see that almost a page was used to cover my British and German Military Garden Trains:

The Main Character in this article, and well deserved too, was naturally Heine who has constructed this amazing garden railway, and keeps inviting us over for running sessions and are actively contributing to our active garden railway society. Heine continually keeps posting new photos from running sessions in his garden (and others alike) on his and on our MRC's Facebook groups. Both are 'open' groups and you are welcome to visit and follow them if you like continously updated photos of Garden Railways. I know he's planning a running-session this Sunday,  but I won't be able to join due to my work.

• Heine's Model Railways Facebook Group
• Gleng Model Railway Club Facebook Group

Despite the cover-photo and some of the other images in the article are suggesting otherwise, there is absolutely no snow here so far this winter (!). Actually it's mild and been raining more or less constantly since late November. So it's very uncertain at the moment when and if we'll be able to run trains in the snow this winter. -I'm dreaming of a White Christmas ❄️

Two Grand openings and a Closure

This year has seen the premier and opening of 2 new Garden Railways; Pletten Railway and Hummelfjell Banen (Ry). Unfortunately this year also saw closure of a local Garden Railway; The Pine Hill Railway (PHRy), or 'Furubakken Hagejernbane' in Norwegian. PHRy was constructed and made by friend and former member of our Model Railway Club, Kjell, and was unfortunately reaching the end of the line as he was moving houses earlier this year.

I was privileged to visit his awesome and fully Scenic Garden Railway with my Roundhouse Live Steam W^D 'Billy' a while ago. Even if PHRy was gauged to 32mm, this was no problem for my W^D 'Billy' which usually runs on 45mm gauge, as this locomotive very simply and quick can be re-gauged to either. Kjell was kindly lending me a 'rake' of his 32mm gauge wagons to pull around his lovely Garden Railway Layout. Here are some impressions of our great day out on The Pine Hill Railway:

Getting ready in the Fiddleyard:

Trains running on Kjell's layout:

My War Department engine working the line:

There was a lot of details and scratchbuilt buildings on the layout:

When reading this RHRy is unfortunately history. Thank you for inviting us and your hospitality Kjell.
I'm glad some 'PHRy-History' lives on in my military trains as I bought one of Kjell's scratch-built flat cars.

"Svingen" hits the press

Mj-Bladet (The Model Railway Magazine) is the only model railway magazine published in Norway. The publisher is MjF, The Norwegian Model Railway Association, and is issued 4 times a year. Members automatically receives the issueas as 'subscribers', but the magazine can be bought in model railway shops too. Today I received 'the Christmas issue' and was delighted to see that my small 'Christmas Pizza layout' made it to the cover:

Inside the magazine it's a 5 page article about how I made this micro layout in 6 evenings. The article it's a translated and updated version of my blog-post about it:

So if you're here because you followed the link in the article you are most welcome. I hope you'll find something interesting on this blog. 

There was also another very interesting article in this issue about a German WW2 H0 scale layout located to the Balkans. It's constructed as a exhibition layout, and I really hope to see it at a model railway exhibition. If I do, I'll make a blogpost on it.

'Svingen' micro/ Pizza layout was exhibited last weekend at the Christmas market at Borgarsyssel Museum in connection with The International Model Railway Day. Here are some updates photos and atmospheric videos of the layout:

Earlier this week my wife was tidying up some old stuff. She found a similar but smaller table she was not going to use anymore, which she handed over to me. Time will show what I'll eventually going to use it for. Please follow this blog and find out.

I enjoyed a cup of coffee while reading this interesting issue of Mj-Bladet and had a good time in my favorite chair.