A 'Blitz Excursion' to Sweden - Part 1: Ohsabanan

Last summer I went on a short, but very eventful, trip on my motorcycle to Finland and Sweden to visit military museums, public model railways and heritage railways. If you missed it you can find the blogposts here:

• Day 1: The Finnish Air Force Museum 
• Day 2: The Finnish Tank Museum and The Finnish Railway Museum 
• Day 3: The House of Model Railways and The Swedish Tank Museum 
• Day 4: Miniature Kingdom and the Swedish Air Force Museum 
• Day 5: Risten - Lakvik heritage railway

I did actually plan a couple of more 'stops' and places of interests to visit on my way home on day 5, and possible a 'day 6'. -But it was late in the summer season and several of the places I had in mind was either closed for weekdays or the season, so I didn'tget to visit them.

This week I have some days off from work, so I decided to make a quick mini excursion to Sweden to visit some of the places I missed last summer. I hope you will join this virtual trip, and I'll update the blog as soon as it's possible regarding time and Internet connection the following days. -And if the weather permits. So to get started I had to move out by (very) early dawn. I traveled light to travel fast; not much luggage). I think my wife was wondering why I was up that early:

Some 450km later I arrived today's destination; Ohsabanan, or the Ohsa Narrow Gauge Heritage Railway. The railway itself is made to 600mm gauge and runs 14,5km between the industrial place of Ohsa and the village of Bor, where it connected with the standard gauge railway. Some inclines on the line is up to 4%. Ohsabanan was constructed in 1910 and was in service until 1967. It opened as a heritage railway in 1970 and has since then operated heritage trains on the whole line.

A typical Swedish 'mid summer stake' at Ohsa railway station. The dry brownish colors reminds us that's mid summer is over, and we are slowly moving towards the winter again

There are a lot of inspiration to find when coming to paint and weather G-scale rollingstock:

So, why was this one of my places of interests? They have military narrow gauge locomotives like several Simplex':

Some German counterparts:

But my main reason to visit Ohsabanan is that they have 2 ex-German WW1 Heeresfeldbahn Brigadeloks in running condition. Some 2500 was manufactured, and after WW1 several was sold off to other civilian railways as surplus:

Too bad  none of the Brigadeloks were running this day. The replacement was also made in Germany in 1944, and saw service in East Prussia:

The 'terminus' is at the village of Bor, and it's time to turn the train and have a cup of coffee:

And then it was time to head back to Ohs again. Tender first:

This is a 'modelling blog' after all, and in the ticket office at Ohs I found this non operational H0e-display:

Before leaving Ohs it was time for 'fika' (Swedish for coffee and something to eat). This was another Swedish specialty; Köttbullsmacka (bread with meatballs):

Now it was time to find somewhere to sleep for the night. This is not the hotel where I am staying, but I was passing the 'Old West' theme park, High Chaparral on my way and stopped just to take a couple of photos. They also operates a narrow gauge steam railway made to look 'American' and on a large loop. I didn't go inside the park this time though. 

It's about time to make plans for tomorrow, so please visit my blog again for updates.