The Model, Military or Railway tour of '24 - The Epilogue

It's about 4 weeks since I went on a week and 2600 km tour with my motorcycle visiting air force museums, tank museums, heritage railways and exhibited model railways in Finland and Sweden. If you didn't follow the blogger posts from my trip, I'll add some links to them 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 

It would be nice to finish off and visit the Norwegian equivalents to them all, but in Norway there is no own Tank or Armored Vehicles Museum. The Norwegian Defence Museum just stock it's collection of vehicles in a store not open to the public. So when there was arranged a military vehicles exhibition in the old camp of the Tank Corps last weekend,  I decided to go. Last time this was arranged in 2019, The Norwegian Armed Forces Museum opened their stores and exhibited their hughe vehicle collection. It was sunny and a nice day for a ride again....

Tankfest '24

When I arrived Trandum camp I was very disappointed. The Armed Forces Museum had just brought out and exhibit some very few of their own vehicles.  The rest of the 'exhibition' was just various military associations displaying thei private military vehicles...

A 'found' reunion with an old acquaintance from my own service

This is a modelling blog, so here is a couple of models too:

A 1:6 scale (RC) Leopard 2 tank in the livery of it's service with the Norwegian Army

A drive able 'model' of a Tiger 1, based upon half a chassis of BV206 tracked vehicle. This is not a model for the 'Rivet Counters'

Not too impressive this time, so I'll ad some photos from the Tankfest '19 instead, as this was far more interesting:

Perhaps Michael at Wargaming with 54mm Toy Soldiers can find some inspiration from these Jeeps when super detailing them?

Luckily the Norwegian Air Force Museum is located just right by this camp, so I decided to go there instead. 

The Air Force Museum at Gardermoen

The Norwegian Air Force Museum did not start off in very impressive premises nor collection:

A 1:72 scale model of the original Air force Museum from 'back in the days'

Today they're located in a brand new building and have a large collection of aircrafts and models related to Norway. They have recently started to display some few vehicles from the Museum of the Armed Force's collection too.

Let's take a look at some of their models too:

Several German aircrafts was left behind after WW2 and entered service in the Royal Norwegian Air Force 

A larger diorama of the base of the Norwegian squadron based on Iceland during WW2 for maritime operations. One of their missions was allied Convoy protection 

Norwegian pilots did not only serve in Norwegian squadrons, but also served in British squadrons during WW2

They also have an own re-make of a old larger diorama that used to be exhibited on the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum in Oslo, which was kind of inspiring me to go into model making when I was a kid. The diorama shows a lot of different scenes from a WW2 forwarded airfield on the continent:

These markings were based upon Norwegian pre-war markings, but were not approved during WW2. 

Ground forces on the firing range...

...and during basic training.

This is a model of 'Little Norway' which was training facilities in Canada for the Norwegian Air Force during WW2.

Too bad I forgot to take photos from the Museum Shop this time as they have several kits there, mostly of aircrafts, but some Cobi armored vehicles as well. I bought a couple of 'pencil sharpeners', as they looked about appropriate for wargaming with my miniatures. The figure is for reference only:

So this is how far it's possible to find the Norwegian equivalents to those museums I visited in Finland and Sweden, and I'll guess this concludes my travelling reports this summer. I hope other military modellers, railway modellers and perhaps also wargamers found something interesting in them, or wanting to go seeing some of these places.

The Model, Military or Railway tour of '24 - Part 5

The weather had finally changed to the better, and there were good conditions for riding motorcycle again. Staying in Linköping overnight, I had a good starting-point to visit an old narrow gauged heritage railway located just some 35km outside of the town. I have a soft spot for narrow gauge railways. This has a gauge of 600m.

Risten - Lakvik Museum Railway 

This heritage railway is run by a group of most friendly and helpful enthusiasts, so they took me on a tour through their engine shed.

There they had a German steamlocomotive in running condition with WW2 battle damage (chimney shoot off, patches in the roof to seal of bullet holes and shrapnel markings on the suspension):

There was one other engine in the shed that really caught my interest. This is a original German military HF130C of the same type I made from a LGB-model. This locomotive had been used at an industrial railway since 1948. I did not know that the engine in these locomotives are identical to German submarine engines.

There were even an old disused model railway stowed away in the shed:

They did not have any 'museum-shop' except for an excellent café:

And that was actually the one thing on today's to-do list. While heading west wards I passed this:

More than 2600km ,a new rear tyre and several experiences later it's perhaps time to start thinking about returning home as it will take another day just driving home again. Besides I think my youngest son misses me:

I hope those of you who have followed me on this tour had a good time and enjoyed yourself. Thank you for reading, and especially thanks to those of you who commented! 

On Monday there will be another update on this blog again, but on a completely different subject.

Please follow. 

The Model, Military or Railway tour of '24 - Part 4

Those museums and places I like to visit closes 'early' in Sweden,  so if you like to visit more than one such place a day, some careful planning is necessary due to distances and travelling time. Let's see how many I have time for today.  Først one is:

Miniature Kingdom 

This is a large commercially built model railway display located in Kungsör. It is pretty new as well.

It shows different regions in Sweden with a lot of key elements and cameos. This 'Sweden in Miniature' is also built to a very high standard and the scenery is not 'overloaded' with details. And it's not too many trains running at the time to 'disturb' that impression.

And in model:

Stockholm:

The heritage narrow gauge railway at Mariefred:

Famous Swedes:

And some military presence:

Boden fortress

They are expanding with new construction stages. Perhaps this will reveal what to expect?

They have collected a couple of layouts that's been appearing in movies or tv-series.

They also have a layout for kids to operate.

A small and simple layout contained key elements from the city where I spent last night, Eskilstuna

Many of the layouts buildings are built after the Swedish originals and are 3D-printed in parts (with a FDM-printer).

They even had a table that would probably be interesting for the wargamers.

The shop was small though...

So time to move again to see if I have time for the next attraction today (which I had).

The Swedish Air Force Museum 

Sweden had the world's 4th biggest air force during the cold war, and have so many aircrafts to exhibit so they don't need to display many models. It was very interesting though as this museum has several aircrafts which the only sample left is exhibited here.

Gloster Gladiator was also used by the Norwegian air force.

...the 'Storch' too...

One cabinet of models:

And some at the entance:

Interesting that Sweden used Saab Tunnan jets in UN service during the Congo Crisis. On the ground you can see a couple of the KP-cars from my previous post yesterday:

I'm quite not sure which 'craft' this is:

Actually it's a Futoro

The shop was interesting too...

Their Café was to high standards, and a nice place to spend some time while waiting for the rain to stop. -Which it didn't...

Tomorrow's plan is very weather dependant...