Last Saturday Heine invited to a Boxing Week running session in his garden. I've been working on some new 'winter loads' whichI wanted to try out even if they were still WIP. I'll cover the loads them self in another blogpost when they're finally completed, but I wanted to capture some 'winterish' photos of them for that blogpost despite there was no snow yet. It had stopped raining and we had cold weather for some few days and it kind of looked a litte 'winterish'.
A lot of people attended to this 'Boxer Week' running session, both railway modellers and visitors:
Heeresfeldbahn
Whooops.... Sabotage?? It was just a frozen turnout, just like in real life
WDLR
I've written on this blog before that I've got fewest photos of my WDLR live steam locomotive under steam and videos while running than any other trains, due to it take so much attention running it. This day out both my sons were joining and driving a train each. This meant that I could finally capture some photos and videos of my WDLR while running:
A short brief...
...and the and then he was ready to run the live steam on his own.
Heine capturing me capturing the photo above
Other trains in service
This snow plow is scratch built by Arne
So is this snow rotary
This is an actual train combination from Rätische bahn in Switzerland
It looks like the 'Preisers' are enjoying them self
Gauge 1 (1:32 scale) by Märklin
It looks like Heine's de-icing train is leaking as there were no ice around that tank car.
It's really 'backbreaking' to run trains in the garden... - So a break to enjoy some coffee, mulled wine, cookies...
...and hotdogs was most welcome
This was the 22nd running-session in Heine's and Astrid's garden in 2025. I haven't been able to join them all, but there has also been other 10 running-sessions in other members gardens throughout the year.
Thank you for inviting us over Astrid and Heine and for your warm hospitality.
My wife posted some photos and videos from this great day out on social media and received feedbacks like "Where is this Magic Place"?
I know Mark The Man of Tin have an eye for spotting models and toy soldiers in Sci-fi movies and series. I have a similar interest finding model railways in movies and series. During the time upon Christmas, railways and model railways seems to gain some (limited) popularity amongst the public who are not railway modellers or even interested in model railways the rest of the year.
For this reason model railways and railways in general are more likely to be included in Christmas movies or tv-series. These 3 screenshots are from the Norwegian Netflix movie 'Another Happy Christmas' from 2020:
Another one is the tv-series 'Home For Christmas'season 3 (2025) which has recently been released on Netflix. This season is already the most popular series on Netflix in Norway and among top 10 most popular series and movies at Netflix in 8 other European countries. This season is also the tenth most popular non English language series Globally.
In this season model railways plays a minor backing role as the main character's father has developed a new hobby. Another interesting fun fact is that the model railway layout in this season is actually our friend and fellow MRC member Heine's private layout, which he lent out for some brief scenes to the Production. Here are some of Heine's photos from the takings:
And this is how it finally turned out on the screen. A lot of resources put into something that didn't make it more than a couple of minutes in the final cuts. I recommend you to have a look at this series at Netflix though as it is really 'feelgood' one.
I've also uploaded a short YouTube video from the museum:
The releasing of this tv-series is also a reminder that's Christmas is coming up, and therefore it was time for our model railway club's annual Christmas Party:
I actually had one modelling-project prior to this Christmas Party as a gift for Heine and Astrid. Like old Airfix figures, old garden furniture made of plastic also gets brittle. A small accident earlier this season inspired me to make a 'mini diorama' (in 1:22,5 scale) and finally replaced that chair...
-And 2 days later it was a Christmas gathering at the local branch of The Norwegian Railway Club (NJK) located at the old and disused Dilling Railway Station:
This model of Dilling station is located on a layout under construction in the very same building IRL.
I brought my Christmas layout for a final outing this season just to set the scene for this wonderful gathering:
Blog PostScript
'Elf on the shelf' is still a thing in our house in December due to our youngest son. This morning he created a really mayhem obviously inspired by Mark at Man of Tin's recent blog-post on railway sabotage...
When writing this the Forth Advent Sunday is behind us...
...and it's just a few days left to Christmas and the 1:1 world is catching up. - Like decorating the Christmas tree:
Linus are also sending his greetings and says you don't need much space to run G-scale trains indoors. He's also very facinated by running trains
I'm not sure if I'll have time to post any more updates on the blog before Christmas, so I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas! Because you are here and reading this you are the reason worth writing this blog in the first place. -Thank you!
.jpg "Garden railways in winter. Running G-scale trains in the winter. Boxing week running session. Heeresfeldbahn with loads for winter warfare.")
...and hotdogs was most welcome
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