Räder müssen Rollen für den Sieg! - And a completion of the 'season'

Once someone commented on one of my photos on Facebook that "This LGB-stock costs an arm and a leg". -And, yes it can pretty expensive if you're going to buy everything brand new from the shop. As I have a "budget approach" to wargaming, I also try to have a "budget approach" to my military garden railways. Like, I usually don't buy much brand new stuff, as I'm going to repaint them to suit my military theme anyway. Therefore I usually buy a lot of my rolling stock second hand if I can find it at reasonable prices at exhibitions in Norway or abroad.

This summer several interactive auctions was held on a Norwegian Facebook group for Garden Railways, as someone was drastically downsizing their collection. As lot of different items was offered through the whole summer, a "bidding war" arose as this was a possibility to potentially acquire LGB rolling-stock very cheap. I noticed that some of these items was 'very well used', and I managed to haul some of them to my collection though:

To make it a little bit more comprehensible, here is the 'lot' item by item:

I like the design of this 'U Class' and I also have a couple of models of it in H0e scale. I got this LGB model so cheap that I couldn't afford not to buy it. The locomotive is analogue, and does not have a military service as far as I know. Please share in the comment-section if you have any information about the Class U locomotives service during WW1 or WW2.  I'm not quite sure if I'm going for a civilian train here yet, or if I shall 'militarize' it some how? Ideas are welcome in the comment section. After a clean it runs quite well (video in the bottom of this post). It was even fitted with an analogue smoke generator:

These couple of wagons was actually fitted with analogue (steam-) sound circuit boards to my surprise. I didn't make it work and may have a look at it. I didn't actually know they were sound fitted and didn't buy them for that reason in the first place, but it was a nice 'bonus':

This one will defiantly need a repaint:

I have some of these open cars, but this one with the Brake man's cabin was new to me:

And another one of the same wagon, but without the Brake man's cabin. It had really nice markings and almost the same color of the rest of my rollingstock. It looks almost ready to run:

Another flatcar (which I didn't really need, but I bought it as it came in the same lot as the car in the next photo which I really wanted):

-This was an Accucraft model, and larger than the flatcar above. The couplings, like the car itself, are American and need to be replaced:

Since I have no own garden railway at the time, I put up a temporary oval (larger than the layout I had in the garden) just to run some trains and try them out:

It's said that LGB might be very expensive, but I'm quite happy getting all these items for about £ 404 or USD $ 545 with shipping. 

I already have a similar model of the locomotive, but in H0e scale:

It seems like Linus enjoyed to run trains on the terrace as well:

Well, it looks like I got enough items, along those I got from this swap meeting and some even 'older' ones, to keep me occupied for a long, long time. I plan to give the rollingstock a finish so I can run them in rakes behind both my German Heeresfeldbahn locomotive or my British War Department locomotive without looking too out of place. After running the same trains on several outings this summer, I'm looking forward to be able to haul something 'new' to add variation. Please follow my blog for updates.

A completion of the 'season'

To complete the Garden Railway running season,  Heine invited to 'Pizza & Beer', and people could also bring their trains for a late afternoon/ evening/night running-session. I didn't bring any this time as I've experienced that my grey trains (with few lights) practically gets invisible in the dusk. Here are some impressions:

It looks like someone was spending the night in Heine's driveway:

Well, it's only completion of the 'Summer running season' as the autumn and winter seasons are about to begin. We tries to run trains in the garden(s) through the whole year. By the time of writing this, I know some of our members already have started  the 'autumn running season' with a couple of outings already. My vacation is over and I can't always attend to them all as I usually work 'unsocial hours'.