I had a splendid day out with my military G-scale trains in the snow today. The weather conditions were challenging with low temperatures, snow and ice causing slippery tracks and less than perfect running conditions. It was a bumpy ride.
- Probably just like the real thing. I think this was most likely this year's last running session:
A blog on my model railways, model railroads, wargames, military modelling, and other thing related to scale modelling
Saturday, December 30, 2023
Military G-scale trains fighting ice and snow
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Making supply-trains for winter warfare
There hasn't been so much time for hobbies like wargaming and model railways as I'd like to lately, and therefore it's been 'all quiet on the blogger-front' for a while. When I was invited by friend and his wife to join their annual 'winter/season/Christmas drive-in running session' in their garden, I decided to use my modelling time to prepare my military garden trains for winter warfare and giving them a season-theme due to the occasion.
...so then there was time to finish up, and pack everything together. The weather was perfect for a winter running-session. Thank you Astrid and Heine for your hospitality, great time and letting us run trains in your beautiful garden.
Friday, September 15, 2023
Connecting military units of opposing forces
As some of you may already have noticed I've converted some LGB rolling stock into a Heeresfeldbahn rake. All these LGB-wagons are fitted with the original LGB couplings.
I'm also a proud owner of a British Roundhouse 16mm scale Livesteam locomotive in a military W^D livery (a 50 year gift from my beloved wife and kids), which also runs on 45mm gauge track. It's fitted with it's original chain-link-couplings, and I want to keep it that way. I plan to build own rollingstock to this from kits, but at the same time I want to be able to connect it to my military LGB wagons (with the LGB couplings), so some modification was needed.
I had a very plastic, brownish and toy-looking LGB wagon which I converted with different couplings in each ends; LGB coupling in one end, and a chain-link-coupling in the other. With this I would be able to connect the 'LGB rake' to my Livesteam locomotive if I wanted to.
The LGB-loop to the right work as a buffer to the lower buffer on the 16mm locomotive. It means it will be able to couple it to other LGB-stuff in both ends as well if desired. |
The wagon it self had large DR (Deutsche Reichbahn) markings and looked very plastic and bright as well. To run behind both British and German locomotives I think it needed a more general look to it, so I simply sprayed it with grey car primer, picked out some few boards in another color and gave it a heavy black-wash.
Since it's open it would be nice to load it with some cargo. I had some very bright colored toylike LGB oil barrels (don't trow anything away) I simply repainted and removed the stickers. I also put in a couple of 3D-printed crates I've used for painting samples.
Friday, August 25, 2023
From a LGB Starter Set to a 16mm-scale Heeresfeldbahn
It's been summer in Norway and not much time for wargaming or other indoor activities. The summers usually are quite short here so the time is mostly spent outside. Fortunately some aspects of military modelling are made for outdoor purposes. Some years ago I was in a model railway shop in the city where parents live, and I was at that time not into big-scale modelling or G-scale trains. -But in that shop I saw a very nice Starter Set from LGB in IIm/1:22,5/ G scale which depict a island train from the Frisian island of Wangerooge. It was a price worthy and high quality starter set and not the 'toy like' and 'sub quality' often found in such sets. The benefits of buying a Starter Set is that you get everything you need to be up and running for a reasonable price. What really caught my attention about it was the locomotive which was of the very same type which was originally built for the German Army during WWII to improve their logistics on the Eastern Front. The locomotive was a Heeresfeldbahn HF130C, which about 350 was built. After WWII many of these locomotives was decommissioned and saw mixed service on different civilian narrow gauge railways in several countries. Obviously also on the railway at Wangerooge. -And suddenly I was the happy owner of a new Starter Set and into large scale garden railway modelling.
LGB has never built a model of the HF130C-locomotive in it's original military livery, and an idea was born to revert it into it's original livery and use. In the Starter Set there were also 3 goods-wagons; a tanker-, a flatbed- and a boxcar. All of them would be very credible as German military wagons in a 'Heeresfeldbahn'-train with a new paintjob. I was also inspired to do a model of a German military narrow gauge as there was a such nearby where I live during WWII. -It served a small airfield with gravel, and probably also munitions and fuel. An old idea was about to come into fruition. The good thing with writing a blog, is that it helps pushing old modelling projects.
It's surprisingly few photos of this locomotive during it's military service due to some 350 was built |
I discovered that the locomotive is made to 1:19th scale despite of LGB's general 1:22,5-scale. This really makes the locomotive to 16mm scale and not the ordinary LGB IIm scale. This makes it run well togheter with my 16mm Roundhouse Billy in WD-livery. The wagons in the starter set are closer to 1:22,5 scale though.
Besides a new paintjobs, I decided to further detail the rollingstock by adding some load and details to them. First I wanted to add typical military loads like tanks and big cannons, but keeping in mind this is a narrow gauge railway I don't think they could carry so big or heavy loads. I could 'downgrade' the loads to armored vehicles and such, but think they might still be too heavy for such light rails. Besides I have not seen any photos of such carloads on any Heeresfeldbahn either in books or in WWII footage. What I've seen in photos it seems like such narrow gauge railways mostly carry general cargo and supplies and sometimes troops. I also wanted my military loads to have a slightly more 'general' appearance so the wagons would't look too completely out of place if I wanted to run them behind my British 16mm scale W^D livesteam locomotive every now and then. I discovered that there weren't many WWII German objects in 1:19th scale to be found, except for some very expensive ones in 1:18 scale. I searched Thingiverse for propper items and resized them to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed them on my aged FlashForge Finder (I think it's time to upgrade my 3D-printer soon). I've found the online Scale Converter by Scale Modelers World very useful in this matter. Even though converting different STL-files to exact 1:19 scale, they don't seems to be in same 'scale' sometimes (even if they are by measures).
After fitting the locomotive with RC reciver and battery, there wasn't much space left in it for other things in it. To add a little further interests to the train I placed a battery operated sound capsule with diesel sound from Train-Tech to the boxcar. The sound is not so loud, and not so annoying that sound equipped locos often are (to all others but the one driving them).
This is how the starterset from LGB turned out after a 'revision', and how it could have looked like from the beginning. They have the models for making it, so I hope they will use them for making some sort of a military train in the future. There are several military modellers and wargamers who also are into model railways, and this would be a good entry.
It looks like it's approved by Linus too |
I've converted the Starter Set into a very basic German 'military train', and to further expand my Heeresfeldbahn I have collected some more goodswagons from LGB, and due to they are very colorfull and toylike they will need some repainting and perhaps detailing.
3 other members in my Model Railway Club also has LGB models which has a military origin from WWII German Heeresfeldbahns, namely the steamlocomotive HF110C. They're not to LGB's general 1:22,5 scale either, as they actually are closer to 1:20 scale and 16mm than IIm. 2 of them are in civilian liveries, but one is in a freelanced German military livery. I'm looking forward to my MRC's coming running sessions, which we arranges at each other's garden railways through the whole year. It seems like they will have some military presence now...
My LGB starterset used to fit in my 30L panniers, which was practical when visiting friends. With somewhat more fragile models I think I need a bigger pannier (even if I have a Honda NC750X with a frunk).
Dedicated to Jørgen and Linus
Sunday, April 2, 2023
Military modelling in the garden
To me military modelling is more than just wargaming. I'm also very interested in model railways in different scales and gauges, and the benefit is that model railroading can easily be combined with military modelling.
After a long winter which is slowly turning to spring, it's more tempting to do outdoor activities again. This weekend a good friend of mine invited to 'open house' and encouraged people to bring along their own (Garden-) trains to run them on his awesome Garden railway.
I hastily put together an improvised short military supply train to bring along.
It looks like Thomas the Little Tank Engine is lurking in the background |
The Engine is a 'militarized' 'Billy' from Roundhouse, made to run on 45mm track. |
The little Jeep is a 1:18 scale model I found on a Model railway exhibition |
The cars or wagons are by LGB. Probably going to repaint them. |
Sunday, October 24, 2021
New steam locomotive for the Garden Railway
The new locomotive
The Crew
The train
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Even more about protective covering......
Wargaming
Outside you can easily add cover, and the scenery looks good. |
Tabletop gaming
As many of you using your soldiers for wargaming inside already may be familiar with, is that 'Tabletop (war-) gaming' is ,by it's nature, pretty flat. It's limited how hilly scenery that can be created on a tabletop, and easily stored away when not in use. To add some interest and challenges to the otherwise flat tabletop, some kind of covering to prevent being seen or hit by enemy fire is most useful and needed. Suitable covering can be improvised and made by easily, cheap and accessible things that you have to hand, and can be virtually anything. Or you can use items more adapted for your army men.
Playsets
The fences, sandbags, ruin and the czech hedgehogs were obtained from the two playsets in the background and painted. |
When I tested my own "homebrew" rules (Once upon a dice in the West), I covered the table and books with a suitable sandcoored cloth. The fences, cactuses, trees and a wagon were from old playsets. The building and well is from my old 'toybox' and were made in Western Germany by Vero back in the 70ies. The figures are Britains Deetail and are from my old toybox as well. |
Two buildings fromAirfix' 1:32 scale range. They've been around since my childhood and I'm found of them even if they have very thin walls for such buildings in such a scale. I'll let them giver my troopers a cover-save. |
Plastic kit manufactures
All these kits are 1:35 accessories from Italeri. Kits are usually more fragile and expensive than the other options in this post, but these I found very cheap at a second-hand market. I've not come around to repaint that shed in the midle back yet, and I also plan to build that well soon. |
DIY
The rock-formations are made by cut and painted blue styrofoam pieces, and glued to old CD-discs I'm done watching. The light and moss are Christmas-decorations from the craftshop modified to suit my purpose. The burnout marker I built from a discripton from The Terrainturor on Youtube: |
DIY with paper
DIY in plastic
Here is a selection of what I've been printing so far. I'm not completly done yet for my 54mm wargaming, and have a model printing while I'm writing this. |
The models on the top row are multiple files printed separatly and joined in the end. The wreck on the bottom row was to large for my printer when I scaled it up to about 1:35 scale, so I just "cut" the file in 4 and printed them separatly. It was very easy. |
And it's still some filament on the roll, I can use for smaller models. |
Patience is needed! The barrels to the left took 7 hours and 5 minutes to print. The L-shaped sandbagposition down at the right, just over 5 hours, and the 1. floor of a larger building to the top right about 12 hours and 13 minutes (!) Due to the heat involved you can't just leave it over night or do it while at work... |
Conclusion
Here is a selection of other useful items I've printed either for using or testing. I've always wanted a dicetower, and this one is quite large and heavy and have 4 bafflers inside. The two small buildings on the left of the tower are H0 scale (1:87) for my odel railway. So are those two figures closest to them as well. The buildings turned out fine, but the figures was just too small to look good with our simple printer. The Stormtrooper to the left of them are printed to different scales as a test. The largest one is 54mm and the smallest is 1:87. In the middle from left to right is 28mm and a 1:72 scale version. I actually think that the 28mm version looks the best of them. At the very back is G-scale figures (1:22,5 scale) for my garden railway, and printed to look our little family. I'm the one to the left. To the right in the picture is a couple of 54mm figures and test prints of weapons so I can customize regular Army Men. The two weapons at the top are actually "Lego"-guns, but they look just right when scaled to correct size. I wrote about them in my previous post. |
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