A 'Blitz excursion' to Sweden - Part 4: Big and Small Narrow Gauge

Due to few models on the blog yesterday, I thought I should compensate for it today, as my route homewards coincidentally just passed by Southern Sweden's largest Hobby shop; Habo Hobby:

They're not only into model railways in all kinds of different scales and gauges, but also into everything technical hobbies in general.

They are even into Tabletop gaming as they are a GW retailer:

I guess they must be into mailorders as Habo is not a very large place. With their broad offers in different hobbies, this was a shop right up my alley. Their prices are reasonable too. So did I find anything interesting enough to bring home? -Sure! Now I had to 'pay the price' for the decision to  travel light and fast; I didn't have room for much on my motorcycle. But I found items so interesting that not buying them was not an option. Place for them on my bike or not. I just had to impovise, adapt and overcome. Let's hope The Mrs. is not reading about my 'hoarding' on the blog. I found the new Kato Unitrack in H0e or 009 (9mm gauge) as a 'set' and some 'out of production' MiniTrains track in same scale and gauge. None of these can be found in Norway. Perhaps I'll do a blogpost on the Kato tracks, as actually is the same s their N-gauge Unitrack except for that they have sleepers made for H0 or 009 scale. So this was the 'small narrow gauge' in the blogpost title:

The 'big narrow gauge' (according to the title) did I find i the town where I was going to spend the night; Skara. Which is also one of the oldest towns in Sweden. Back in the days Skara had a station for 5 different railway lines in 891mm (3 Swedish feet), making it to one of Europe's largest narrow gauge stations. Another coincidence today; I'm staying at the old 'Railway hotel' by the old railway station with just a short walk to a preserved line where Skara-Lundsbrunn järnvägar are operating a heritage railway:

This preserved railway passes a private house with the 'largest garden railway' I've ever seen. It's a 600mm narrow gauge line, and the owner runs small industrial locomotives and rolling stock on it. Too bad there was not traffic today:

The weather forecast and clouds outside suggests that's it's soon about time to head back home again. Thank you to all of you that have followed me on this 4 days (virtual) excursion to Sweden.

Blog PostScript 

The weather forecast was right for once, and I was kind of 'lucky' on my final day of the excursion, as I were driving just a head of the rain. Well, until I came to the Norwegian/Swedish border that was. Then the rain caught up on me, but I didn't mind as it was only 45 minutes left before I was home (after almost 1400km)

On my final day I passed this interesting place where a Standard Gauge branch line to Strömstad is running parallel to the 600mm heritage railway of Munkedal. 

Thanks for following this virtual excursion. 

A 'Blitz Excursion' to Sweden - Part 2: Ljungby Miniature World

Today's destination was Minivärden i Ljungby or the Ljungby Miniature World:

Ljungby Miniature World are created upon a donation to Ljungby city given by a late local doctor under the condition that it would be exhibited to the public. The donation was the doctor's private model railway from 1953. So this very old style layout is the first you see when you enter the premises. It's not built to today high standards, but keeping in mind that his "Landet Somewhere (The Country Somewhere)" was built back in the days when modelling supplies were not as readily available as today it certainly has it's charm. To be a doctor I think the builder included surprisingly many 'alcoholic' industries on his layout:

It was fun to see that the doctor had (scratch-) built his own house, in which this old layout was located in the cellar:

The model builders at Ljungby has also started to create a narrow gauge layout in H0 on their own, based upon the different narrow gauge lines in this county, Småland.  The layout is set to a 50ies style as all the lines ate closed now. This layout is built to a very high standard, and everything is scratchbuilt:

They are not quite finished with their 'Småland in miniature' layout quite yet, and they are expanding it. -So this is a reason to revisit this layout in the future:

They had also made some simple layouts visiting kids could operate:

The effort to move and display the doctor's original 50ies layout, had collected a lot of different local modellers, who was into all kind of different models. This was represented with own displays showing a big range and diversity in modelling to the public. More trains collections in differentscales and makes...

...but also military modelling and dioramas...

There was also a big collection of diecast cars. This Tintin collection...

...made me think of several of some the readers of this blog. It's made to 1:43,5 scale:

The "car collection" also included unique scratchbuilt gas-station dioramas in 1:24 scale. All of them former prototypes from Ljungby, but all are gone now. This is actually one of the two such collections in Sweden:

Even more military modelling and dioramas. Even a whole section was devoted to this:

Columbus "discovering" America:

Battle of Hastings:

Stalingrad diorama:

Battle of Narva year 1700  recreate with Prince August 40mm tin soldiers:

A battle from the AWI:

This diorama is made by 'flats', and the opposing forces are just painted on the background (!):

More flats, Swedes vs. Danes medievals:

I think this submarine was 3D-printed:

They also had a own sections for models made with Meccano:

And a own section for Lego:

This 1:1 scale model made by Lego reminded me that it was time to "fika" again:

Their Café and 'specialty' is very recommendable:

This is their shop, where you can by very cheap second hand items:

Their map of visitors is very interesting. I wo understand if the one from England is a viewer of this blog? I placed my 'dot' and it was time to move on. If you have a 'dot' on the map, please let me know in the comment-section:

I think this must be one of Ljungby's biggest tourist attractions, as Ljungby is a small, quiet and very lovely town in southern Sweden. If you are in the area I recommend you to pay Minivärden I Ljungby a visit, and place a dot on your home location. It's run by a bunch of friendly modellers, who will gladly tell about their approach to the modelling hobby.

Please stay tuned as it seems like the weather forecast for tomorrow permits a motorcycle ride and another destination...