Season’s First Run in the Garden: Embracing Winter’s Chill and the Fascination of Military Trains in Snow

It's never too early to kick off the 'Garden Railway season', besides it's fascinating to watch trains run in snow. One of the members in our  model railway club recently invited to the first running-session for 2025 in his garden. It was about -8°C so the tracks was a little icey, so due to weight and inclines on the line no long rakes were running. I brought a short WW2 German Heeresfeldbahn train with a winter theme. Here are some impressions from our first and a little cold day out in the snow:

Heine had already cleared the line for snow, so my new snow plow was just for 'decoration'. 

A friend's Br 80 'Standard Gauge' German steam locomotive

My military Narrow Gauge (NG) train pass the Standard Gauge train in the loop. They share the same gauge of 45mm in model, so their scale is different. The Narrow Gauge model is 1:19 and the Standard Gauge about 1:29

Another friend scratch built this maintenance of way trolley. It has a lot of functions and is a masterpiece!

It was heavy traffic on the line, so the passing loops became handy

Both models from Rätische Bahn in Switzerland.

Same type of Diesel as above but this time in a German DB livery. 

There was even one live steam locomotive in action today. It has a vertical boiler and is a peculiar thing.

An Austrian locomotive ready to hit the snow.

My NG Heeresfeldbahn with a short rake

It was cold and it was nice to stand by the brazier when the trains were running by (you can't almost even see it). 

"Hot dog" and "Hot dogs". Tyra also liked to stay close to the brazier... (I wonder why)

My "train" is loaded with...

About a year ago I made some winter themed loads for my German Heeresfeldbahn. I added a couple of reindeers in one load to pull the sleight in another load (as such eqipages were used by German forces on the Eastern Front during WW2). I bought the reindeers in a toy shop as they looked good. When putting them in a rail car it didn't look right. -They were too big. In compassion they were about the size of a moose, and in reality reindeers are a lot smaller. Later I found another reindeer from Schleich in another toy store and it looked smaller, and I replaced it with my 'giants'. - Only to find out that despite being a little bit smaller, it was still too big for a reindeer ræthis scale. So this year I 3D-printed a reindeer about the right size for my trains:

The original 'reindeer-mooses' top left, was replaced with the one at top right. It looked a little better, but it was still too large. The one I 3D-printed is actually a Christmas decoration, but I think it looks better than it's larger counterparts.

I've read somewhere that Jägermeister was popular and common among German soldiers on the Eastern Front due to not only being alcoholic off course, but also for it's herbs (which were supposed to be good for health). Last year I made some crates which could hold small bottles of Jägermeister, as it would kind of fit the theme of my German WW2 winter-train. I usually gives my friend a gift for letting us running trains on his garden railway (27 meetings just last year). -So today my train finally, after som circuits on his garden railway, arrived the destination with this valuable load to it's recipient: 

Thank you for inviting us to run trains on your garden railway and for your hospitality, Heine!!

A December Workbench Update - Preparing for winter and Christmas + A Wargame in a Matchbox test-play

Despite that I've postponed  some modelling project to attend to the 'Wargame in a Wee Matchbox Challenge', there are still some few other projects I needed to complete this month. This months Workbench update is characterized by that winter is here, and we're soon up for Christmas. 

The first project out this month started as a couple of photos on a 'WWII German Railway Facebook Group' I follow, featuring snowplows on German Heeresfeldbahn Narrow gauge locomotives of the same type as I've converted.last year (HF130c):

These photos made me want to add something similar on my own locomotive for our Garden Railway running sessions this winter, so I set off to resize and 3D-print some suitable files I found on Thingiverse:

I wanted to see if I could find any more information and photos of these snowplows in a German Heeresfeldbahns book I have, but there I also found drawings of other wagons and snowplows used by the German Heeresfeldbahn during WWII:

A couple of these wagons resembled one that I got in a lot with some other LGB-wagons I bought a long time ago:

Fitted with one of the snowplows I've made for the locomotive, it was loosely starting to look like one of the Herresfeldbahn snowplows in the book:

And it looked even better when painted:

This wagon is pretty light so to be able to move some snow, some weights were added and 'camouflaged':

In the same box l found another small stake-wagon from the same lot, which I haven't used in any of my military trains yet. I didn't buy the lot for any of these wagons, as there were other more interesting items in the lot. Therefore It's just been laying around for a while:

I think it looked almost OK for my use, just a little 'too clean'. I did not do a very elaborate weathering job on this one, just a simple black and brown wash:

I added some passengers and a braizer to keep them warm I made last winter:

One of the LGB wagons I bought at Faszination Modellbau has already made it to the workbench:

I added the (military) sleigh I made last year as a load, as it looks more appropriate on this car than the previous one:

I've wanted some kind of storage looking like wagon-loads to keep, for instance, my Piko remote controller for my locomotive when not in use or when it's parked in the fiddleyard. These crates has removable lids, so I 3D-printed 3 of them:

Last December I made a small H0e/009/H0n30 'Pizza-layout' in just 6 evenings as a Christmas decoration. Since I didn't spend much time creating it, I didn't feel it was quite finished. Even of it's very small size I think it needed more Spruces, so I tried to see how it would look like if I 3D-printed some actually made as wargaming terrain and cover it with snow. OK I think, so now I've doubled the number of trees at the layout (and you can't even notice).

This is not a 'military layout', nor is there any 'military trains' on it. But among all the (new) trees there are some military presence:

I also made and added another snowman (from one of my favorite Christmas shorts) for the layout this year:

He is made to 1:87th scale with a height of 19mm. Who claims small scale miniatures can't be made with fillametn/FDM printers??

I've also got a lighted Christmastree for the layout this year:

Not all the workbench- and modelling projects this month are of the too serious kind...

Finally completing all these 'projects' took a load off my workbench. It's still not a completely clean desk, but it's a start

And another important thing on my workbench this month is this little box (and what to fill it with or not). I've joined the 'Wargame in a Matchbox Challenge', and will cover this project in it's own blogger-posts except for this little 'Wargame in a Matchbox WIP'.

Inspired by the recent Man of TIN blog and Duchy of Tradgardland posts on Little Wars, I was kind of inspired to give my 'cannon approach' one more try with wargaming by firing objects on the opponents. The last one didn't fit so this time I reduced the size and 3D-printed another 'cannon' (merely just a barrel) so it would fit a matchbox along some troops and cannonballs:

The reduced size made the 'cannon' fragile and it malfunctioned, and completely broke down after a few shots. This was obviously not the way to go.

I'm OK that this approach didn't work nevertheless as I've already decided and working on (and are heavy into) another take on this challenge. It need to be completed and test-played before I can present anything, but I guess a (final) update shortly will follow.

I'm not sure how many who are into this challenge now, but it's very interesting and motivating to follow the 'Wargame in a Wee Matchbox Challenge' on other blogs. So far I'm familiar with these:

• The Duchy of Tradgardland
• Man of TIN blog
• Grid based wargaming
• Wargame Hermit: Solo Wargaming
• Deathzap
• Projects and Procrastination

Those not already there, are now added to the links to other blogs in the menu bar to the right. If you know about anymore bloggers participating in the Challenge, please post a link to them in the comment-section.

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Many of this months workbench-projects has already had it's first outings as I initially wrote in this post; it's winter and soon Christmas and our Model Railway Club was invited to join a 'Christmas market' a local museum.Thais was also a perfect time for this 'mini exhibit' as the International Model Railway Day was at the 2nd December.

My Pizza layout

Another H0e layout by another member of our Model Railway Club

A H0 standard gauge Norwegian layout by another member in our MRC

The Garden Railway temporary train display

Nearly all this wagons or loads has been covered in this month's workbench update

Edit 01.01.2025: Added another link to a 'Wargame in a Wee Matchbox Challenge' entry.