Season’s First Run in the Garden: Embracing Winter’s Chill and the Fascination of Military Trains in Snow

It's never too early to kick off the 'Garden Railway season', besides it's fascinating to watch trains run in snow. One of the members in our  model railway club recently invited to the first running-session for 2025 in his garden. It was about -8°C so the tracks was a little icey, so due to weight and inclines on the line no long rakes were running. I brought a short WW2 German Heeresfeldbahn train with a winter theme. Here are some impressions from our first and a little cold day out in the snow:

Heine had already cleared the line for snow, so my new snow plow was just for 'decoration'. 

A friend's Br 80 'Standard Gauge' German steam locomotive

My military Narrow Gauge (NG) train pass the Standard Gauge train in the loop. They share the same gauge of 45mm in model, so their scale is different. The Narrow Gauge model is 1:19 and the Standard Gauge about 1:29

Another friend scratch built this maintenance of way trolley. It has a lot of functions and is a masterpiece!

It was heavy traffic on the line, so the passing loops became handy

Both models from Rätische Bahn in Switzerland.

Same type of Diesel as above but this time in a German DB livery. 

There was even one live steam locomotive in action today. It has a vertical boiler and is a peculiar thing.

An Austrian locomotive ready to hit the snow.

My NG Heeresfeldbahn with a short rake

It was cold and it was nice to stand by the brazier when the trains were running by (you can't almost even see it). 

"Hot dog" and "Hot dogs". Tyra also liked to stay close to the brazier... (I wonder why)

My "train" is loaded with...

About a year ago I made some winter themed loads for my German Heeresfeldbahn. I added a couple of reindeers in one load to pull the sleight in another load (as such eqipages were used by German forces on the Eastern Front during WW2). I bought the reindeers in a toy shop as they looked good. When putting them in a rail car it didn't look right. -They were too big. In compassion they were about the size of a moose, and in reality reindeers are a lot smaller. Later I found another reindeer from Schleich in another toy store and it looked smaller, and I replaced it with my 'giants'. - Only to find out that despite being a little bit smaller, it was still too big for a reindeer ræthis scale. So this year I 3D-printed a reindeer about the right size for my trains:

The original 'reindeer-mooses' top left, was replaced with the one at top right. It looked a little better, but it was still too large. The one I 3D-printed is actually a Christmas decoration, but I think it looks better than it's larger counterparts.

I've read somewhere that Jägermeister was popular and common among German soldiers on the Eastern Front due to not only being alcoholic off course, but also for it's herbs (which were supposed to be good for health). Last year I made some crates which could hold small bottles of Jägermeister, as it would kind of fit the theme of my German WW2 winter-train. I usually gives my friend a gift for letting us running trains on his garden railway (27 meetings just last year). -So today my train finally, after som circuits on his garden railway, arrived the destination with this valuable load to it's recipient: 

Thank you for inviting us to run trains on your garden railway and for your hospitality, Heine!!