25th Anniversary

Last Sunday our Model Railway Club, Gleng Modelljenbane klubb, turned 25 years.
It started quite coincidentally back in 2001 when someone asked on one of Norway's very first internet forums for model railways if there were any other railway modellers in or around the town of Sarpsborg in Østfold county. Some few responded, and even if I didn't live in Sarpsborg I'd recently moved to the county to the neighbor city, Moss, just about 30 km away. At the model railway forum we decided to meet for an informal meeting and a BBQ in a recreation area called Glengshølen between Sarpsborg railway station and a lake. After this very nice meeting we decided to meet again, and the name was given due to the place we met. This is how I coincidentally became one of the 7 founding members of Gleng Model Railway Klubb.

I'm the 3rd from the left with a blue caps

We started as a 'Round Robin Club' the first years and alternated by hosting meetings at each others. It was very social gatherings. Modelling vice we had very different preferences regarding scale and prototypes and it was difficult to agree on any least common denominator to build something together.

Later we was able to hire a very small place, actually nothing more than a room. Here we were asked to build a small classic and nostalgic H0 Märklin winter layout which should be used as a Christmas window display in shop in Sarpsborg. The only catch was that it must be completed in only 4 days (!). Finally something we could agree on as the guidelines was given by the client. We managed to complete it within the short time limit, and you can read more about the process and see photos of it on this link.

The winter layout was seen by others and soon our club was requested again to undertake another layout construction. This time we were asked by the local Lions Club to make a layout for public display with coin-inserts for making the trains run to give the Lions Club an additional income. Great! This was another layout we could make together as the premises was given by others. Lions Club are into charity ant the layout was constructed pro bono. On this link you can find tons of photos from the construction as well as more information about this layout. After being displayed at several local shopping malls for almost 6 years our club was offered to buy the layout back for a very symbolic sum as the Lions Club didn't need it anymore. The locomotives had been running for 100s of km and making thousands of quids for Lions Club. Now it's retired to our new club-house.

Our Model Railway Club has since then moved house a couple of times, and are located close to Sarpsborg Railway Station at the present. There we have finally started to build a Club-layout in H0 scale for both AC and DC. Our number of members has increased to about 30 and many of them are also heavily into Garden Railways, and several of them have layouts in their gardens which they hosts days out for the other members. Members in our Model Railway Club are also active travelers as we usually go on at least one trip to visit some of the bigger model (-railway) exhibitions abroad annually. 

If you want to know more about Gleng Model Railway Club, you can find more information and photos on:

• Gleng Web page
• Gleng Facebook Page

The Birthday Party

Through the last 25 years we have usually celebrated 'our Birthdays' by Barbecuing in Glengshølen where we initially met and established this society. This year Heine, who is also another founding member, suggested we could BBQ in his garden so we could run trains at the same time. -What a splendid idea! 

I prepared 2 wagon loads for this anniversary. One load of (3D-printed) "25" and one load with the 'What-if Airfix set'. To the latter I added a BBQ since Maudlin Jack Tar suggested so in the comment-section on that blogpost and it is so typical for our days out:

Here are some impressions of our 'jubilee running session' on the longest and brightest day; Summer Solstice:

When we first agreed to meet at the model railway forum back in 2001 none of us knew each other, so to have something to 'recognise' and identify each other when we first met in real life we decided to bring a 'yellow banana wagon' (in any scale) as literally everyone has one. So today's most original train was this one by Gylmer. Not only did he bring 'yellow G-scale banana wagons', but he also has a car load of H0 scale banana wagons like those most of us brought back in 2001:

Here is a YouTube-video showing the trains 'in action':

No Birthday Party without hotdogs and cakes!

Some of you might have noticed the flag on the table, which was there as this was also the day of Forest Finns. Congratulations! 

This is also a useful reminder that we've been married for 25 years this year as well.
Better not forget that one...

This is also my 200th blogpost since I started blogging in 2019. I know that's still less than some writes in a year, but I had quite modest ambitions when starting this blog in the first place. Thanks for reading!

MOW/PWM-Train Part 2

Earlier this year I converted a LGB hatched gondola into a 'Maintenance of Way' wagon, or Permanent Way Maintenance in British terms, so my Heeresfeldbahn are able to perform emergency repairs on the line, which seems plausible for railways operating under combat conditions where railways are targetet for sabotage actions and aerial bombings etc. It had a lot of tools and sand to carry out repairs and maintenance on The Permanent Way:

What my Permanent Way Department actually lacked was some extra rails and sleepers to replace (battle-) damaged tracks. So I decided to add a load with some extra rails and sleepers to my Permanent Way Department. The sleepers and tracks were sourced from free STL-files on the Internet, 3D-printed and painted:

Instead of permanently load one of my wagons with the sleepers and rails or make a new one for this purpose, I decided to make it as a replaceable load to fit standard sized LGB-wagons. No needs for dedicated wagons for different loads. So a new 'fake' wagon floor was 3D-printed to fit and painted:

Then the 3D-printed  rails and sleepers were fitted to the new floor:

Since I was going to fit this load on a standard sized LGB wagon already in my inventory, I used the opportunity to weather another recent remodeling project which I wasn't quite satisfied with:

Then the load was fitted to the wagon:

Togheter with the hatched gondola with tools and sand, these two wagons will give my military G-scale trains capacity to perform maintenance and emergency repairs on the right of way, and I think their generic approach will make them usable behind both my German Heeresfeldbahn and British WDLR engines. 

Remodelling a Permanent Way Department wagon

Last year I  bought a couple of really cheap wagons during a combined garden railway running session and swap meet. One of them was this closed gondola made by LGB. I liked it's design as it would stand out in my rakes and I thought it looked really nice with it's (working) hatches to keep it's cargo dry. I've seen wagons like these described as permanent way department tool wagons, sand wagons or salt wagons. In Norway a similar design was used as poudrette wagons. LGB also makes one of these models labeled for carrying soap. I'm not sure what it's made specific for except to carry bulk goods that needed to be protected from rain and bad weather somehow. I decided to use mine as maintenance of way wagon loaded with both sand and some few tools for emergency repairs, which seems plausible for railways operating under combat conditions. 

At first glance it looked grey and nice and something that would fit my grey-ish military G-scale rakes. At closer inspection it was clearly that the grey paint was applied poorly, too thick, built up in thick layers and was starting to flaking and the orange original color underneath was starting to show through several places. The wagon numbers was made with a vintage Dymo label maker.

Besides, despite all the hatches could open the wagon was not painted inside (where it was still all orange):

The inside of the wagon revealed that the previous owner probably had used this car for real sand loads:

This is how the wagon looked originally by LGB before being painted by the previous owner:

Some remodelling seemed necessary to bring this back to a what it was obviously intended to be; a grey 'Maintenance of Way' wagon. First I stripped as much of the old paint I could by soaking it in rubbing alcohol for a couple of days. The thick paint was really stubborn and it didn't have the effect I wanted:

Something more powerful was needed, so I soaked it in braking fluid:

It was so effective that it even removed the factory paintings and lettering underneath that thick coat of paint. Braking fluid seems to react with plastic and heavily stains it:

Then it was given a new coat of grey:

Since wagons like this has been used for tools and sand loads, I also 3D-printed some small details like different tools and 'sand inlays' I sourced from different free stl-files found online:

Some of the tools are from an old game my wife had as I kid, which I managed to salvage before it ended in the bin:

Then it was finally time to reassemble the wagon and paint it along with all the details: 

Still with a hint of 'orange'

Then it was time to bring everything together:

The sand inlays had a really thigh fit and I experienced some paint chippings when pushing them in. I usually do my painting this size with rattle cans and didn't have any matching colors to touch up the chippings. Then I remembered I'd read a tip by Mike at his Bunkermeister blog, which I decided to try out myself. -And viola; paint chippings fixed!

Taking a grey wagon and repaint it to grey and hide all the detailing inside doesn't call for the most spectacular before and after photo:

My wife was really thrilled when she saw how I'd used her old childhood game in this project. 

This weekend I'm up for a wargame, so next blogpost will probably be a battle report or a wargame review. Perhaps trying out the 'advanced Call of Plastic' by Adam L Dobbyn? Please follow this blog and get notification when there are updates. 

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Blog PostScript

Maudlin Jack Tar mentioned in the comment-section that the 'picking up tools'-game I've used also had a British equivalent. I found that there was a game named Jack Straws, which you still can buy replacement tools for. It looks like this old British version has the exactly same box-photo as the Norwegian one: