Running Trains

Well, this will be another blogpost about running trains again. It's still summer and beautiful weather for outdoor activites here in Norway. Too nice for indoor workbench activities anyway.  

Erik, who is a member in our Model Railway Club, invited the other members to a running-session in his garden on one of our weekly club nights. I haven't been running my trains very much on his Garden Railway, as I've coincidentally often been working when he have been inviting to days out. So I didn't want to miss this great opportunity and another possibility to run my quite new not so 'warlike' military train again.

It's not so easy to capture an overall image of Erik's Garden Railway layout as it runs through dense vegetation on 2 sides of his house. "Welcome to the Jungle":

I usually make a 'Cab view' video of m friends' Garden Railways, but I realized that I hadn't been that often at Erik's Garden Railway to make such a video from his Garden Railway. -Well, not until now:

After running trains for a while it was time for a (coffee-) break...

...some BBQ...

...- and Jette's (Erik's wife) famous and delicious pastry/ coffee-cake:

The heading image in this blogpost is not from Erik's awesome layout however. This summer we took our youngest son on a family vacation to Sweden, where we were visiting the 'Old West' theme park High Chaparral (which had 60th anniversary this year):

I really like 'Old West' as scenarios for small skirmish tabletop games, and there are a lot of inspiration to find in this park for such games as they have a lot of 'action shows'  and 'shootouts'. Some of them with famous 'western characters' from television and cartoons like Zorro and Lucky Luke (and the Daltons):

What really caught my attention this time and I wanted to share in this blogpost is the railway they operate. It's a real steam train operated railway going in a quite large circuit (3km) between the 'Main City' and 'Old Mexico'. It's a 750mm gauge narrow gauge and they have several ex-polish Class Px29 and Px48 which have been 'Americanized to different degrees. Some with new funnels and added Pilots. They have had different liveries through the years. Usually they operates 2 engines each day, and on the 'journey' to 'Old Mexico' the trains get robbed. As a funfact there are just a couple of Class Px29 left in Poland.

Class Px29

Class Px48

I didn't take so many photos of the trains, and no video. But I found some historic photos online and videos on YouTube to give you an idea:

Thank you Erik and Jette for inviting us and their hospitality and delicious coffe-cake!

MOW/PWM-Train Part 3 - Making a Crane Wagon on a budget, followed by another 'Day Out'

Earlier this spring I've converted a couple of LGB-wagons for Maintenance of Way and Permanent Way Maintenance uses.

You can read more about these conversions on these two links:

• Remodelling a Permanent Way Department wagon
• MOW/PWM-Train Part 2

To help the maintenance crew getting sleepers and rails on and off their wagons I thought it might be helpful to add a small crane to this Maintenance rake and get a complete Maintenance of Way/ Permanent Way Department train. I found free STL-files to 3D-print for a complete Crane Wagon on Thingiverse. Even if it was made to Standard Gauge in 'Gauge 1' (1:32) it still had the same gauge (45mm) as my narrow gauge 16mm (1:19) military trains, and could be printed and used as is:

I already have several similar looking G-scale wagons primarily from LGB, and didn't actually need to add another one to my growing fleet at this point. Besides this was a Gauge 1 wagon with standard gauge buffers which would look a little too small and odd for my 16mm narrow gauge. Therefore I decided to just make the crane on a removable false floor just like I did with the rails and  sleeper load so I could add it to an existing wagon when needed. I have too many wagons to run them all at once anyway, as my engines can't pull that many. To make the crane base fit my standard-sized LGB-wagons and making it less like 'Gauge 1', I increased the size about 30% before printing it. 132,64% of original size to be exactly if you are going to follow this description and make one for your self.

Than all the 3D-printed parts was assembled and painted. The stones for the countherweight I found at an island at our cost during a day out with my family.

This can be fitted into any 'standard sized' LGB-wagons to temporarily turn them into a crane wagon:

Togheter with the 2 earlier mentioned MOW/ PWM wagons I can now make up a short Maintenance of Way/ Permanent Way Maintenance train:

Another 'Day Out' at Heine's Garden Railway

When I finished this project fellow model railway club member Heine coincidentally suggested that we could take our weekly club-evening in his garden for a running session as the weather was good. This was my first chance to run all my MOW/PWM wagons together as a complete Maintenance of Way/ Permanent Way Maintenance train:

These smal rail-buses were also used to haul local goods on Branch lines

This maintenance of way train rake is perhaps not so 'warlike', but I imagine that military railway operators use many of the same kind of cars as civilians. Besides, now my military trains are able to repair any (battle-) damaged tracks if it gets blown up by partisans or aerial bombings.