Trains 'n' Boats

It's about time to move from 1:1 scale military logistics into miniature military logistics again. I've been re-painting some LGB wagons this winter, so they would look more in place behind my large scale German Heeresfeldbahn Diesel or British War Department Light Railway steam engine. On these links you can read more about these repainting and remodeling projects:

• A simple conversion gone complicated
• More flatcar conversions
• Making more rollingstock for my Heeresfeldbahn and WDLR garden trains
• Give and Take - Combining 2 LGB wagons

Even if I have more wagons in the pipeline, it was about to take these out of my workshop and take them for a test run. Coincidentally Heine invited to a spring 'kick off' running session in his garden. Here are some impressions of our day out:

Here are all the 'new' wagons behind my German Heeresfeldbahn Diesel:

...And here are all the very same wagons behind my British WDLR engine. I guess they work good behind both of them:

Here are some of the other trains on the line this day:

We also improvised a small 'Steam Gala' and Heine and I fired up a live steam locomotive each. It's not very often Heine has time to run his own trains when he arranges running session in his garden, so it was very nice that he took the time to run his 'Silver Lady':

Heine's 'Silver Lady':

Here are some 'Close Ups':

My 'new' low sided gondolas was also the perfect size to carry my contribution of bags of coffee to todays 'pot luck':

Thanks Astrid and Heine for inviting us over for another great day out in your lovely garden.

Some Boats

These days it's also a 'kick off' for the RC-boat hobby as the ice is about to melt away from lakes. So the day after the day out at Heine's, I visited a RC and model boat show at the 'Oslo Fjord Museum':

Naval ships are always among my favorite RC-boats:

And especially Norwegian ones like these Fast missile/torpedo attack crafts:

Hauk (Hawk) - Class Missile and Torpedo Fast Attack boat

Storm Class Gun and Missile Fast Attack Boat

Tjeld Class Torpedo Launch. This Norwegian design was so successful that they were bought by US Navy for service in Vietnam. Some claim they had Norwegian crew members too. 

There were most civilian RC boats exhibited:

Same ship, but in 2 different scales. Both models are radio controlled though:

Some of the radio controlled ships did not have electro motors, but had real (live) steam engines:

Norwegian paddlesteamer 'Skibladner'. My Grand Uncle was Chief on this ship a period

There was also a stand with speedboats. These are propelled by RC plane fuel engines and are extremely fast (and noisy!).

There were also a couple of 3D-printed boats on show. STL-files for these 2 ships can either be bought or found for free online:

At Oslofjord Museum they also exhibit real leisure and sport boats. Among them was this 'Loppe' ('Flea'):

...and this is a 1:15 scale model of the same boat:

There were also some static plastic model ships from kits on display:

The German Cruiser Blücher was sunk by Norwegian Coastal artillery in 9th of April 1940. The wreck is located in the Oslofjord not so far away from this museum. A movie of this battle recently premiered in Norway, and can now be streamed.

1:72 scale kits of VOSPER boats by Tamiya and Airfix:

There was a small basin to run models in too. It was not so large so I guess small scale and slow models would work best:

When visiting museums I usually check out their museum shops (for models). This did not have any plastic kits, but had several craft kits from Billing Boats however: