Swiss Museum of Transportation

The Model Railway Club in which I'm a member usually goes on an annual tour abroad to visit some of the larger model shows in Europe combined with visiting public model railway layouts or real railways of interests. This year's tour started in Switzerland, and as we were not far away from Luzern we went to see The Swiss Museum of Transportation there. It is really large and covers everything within transportation being aviation, maritime, road transport and railways. Some of my fellow members got to see the prototypes for their Garden Trains there (as many of them are collecting Swiss narrow gauge models). I wonder if there is a place to visit if I want to see the prototypes of my (military) Garden Trains?

Railways

First we went to see the railway hall:

It's a really big difference in size between Standard Gauge (left) and Narrow Gauge (right). I actually have a H0e/H09 model from Liliput of the locomotive to the right, but it's very old and won't run properly 

The museum has a lot of 'hands on activities' for kids. This one reminded me of a Inglenook Sidings shunting puzzle

One of the largest model railway layouts in Switzerland is located at this museum. It's a 31,5 meters long and 3,5 meters wide H0 model of the Gotthard Railway. The original layout was old, but it was refurbished, rearranged and reopened as it appears now in 2024. I will add a video of this layout later in this blogpost: 

The helix connecting the layout to the fiddle yard:

The fiddle yard is located behind the layout and in i'ts lower parts. The train rakes stored there are prototypical for Swiss railways:

Aviation

After seing the railway hall we went over to see the aviation and space hall:

Even if they had a lot of real aircrafts there, they also have a lot of models, which caught my eye:

Due to it's nature and topography, Switzerland is made for helicopters:

Some more models. These are radio-controlled. The Swiss Airforce didn't operate many B-17 bombers during WW2, but being a neutral country Switzerland seized different aircrafts landing there due to air combat and bombing raids in Europe:

Luzern is not far away from the Bodensee, which was a takeoff location for Zeppeliners. In the video below there is a glimpse of the passenger compartment of this model:

In the Space department I found this collection of old toys:

Maritime

Here are some very few impressions of the maritime exhibition. Switzerland has operated a lot of different ferries on their lakes and rivers:

Road transport

The hall dedicated to road transport was completely covered by old road signs. This was also covered in a episode of Grand Tour (not the building, but it's content):

Inside there were racks the visitors could operate to bring down a selection of cars and have a closer look at them:

 

Old and new racecars:

Due to it's nature and topography there has also been a lot of cableways and cable cars in Switzerland. Here is a selection of the smaller ones:

I've also made a YouTube video to give a better impression of this magnificent museum:

A visit to this museum is really recommendable, and you'll going to need a whole day to see it all.

After this, my travel group went on to see another pretty new attraction in Switzerland. Please stay tuned...

Model Railway Exhibition in Mysen

The last year has seen the end of some of the regular Model Railway shows in the southeastern parts of Norway unfortunately. We were delighted to hear that one of the smaller ones upgraded this year, and became the largest Model Railway in this part of the country. The excitement was even bigger when our Model Railway Club, Gleng Modelljernbaneklubb, was invited to exhibit. So I packed some few things to exhibit:

...which might be challenging enough when you drives a Micra, where space is a premium:

But we finally got there:

Gleng MRC's Exhibition stand

Our club was given generously 15 meters of floor and these are images from our exhibition stand:

One of the (running) buses on Heine's winter-layout this weekend was a scratch-built body on a Faller-Car-System chassis. One of our members used to drive the original in his career:

Other layouts 

Our exhibition stand was located next to the Fana Model Railway Club one. They are from Bergen in the western parts of Norway and had brought their large portable G-scale layout on which we were invited to run our trains:

This tram-layout in H0 scale based on the trams in Oslo is one of my favorites. I used to work in the same street as in the left side (just outside the layout edge) in the 90ies:

No sooner said than done; I met Kjell late this summer and then he was talking about perhaps making a small 16mm gauge/ Sm32 shunting layout after moving houses and having to dismantle his lovely garden railway. I was quite surprised to see that he had almost completed his plans and layout already. He says that's more to be done to it:

The Model Railway Association of Norway brought their G-scale layout which kids could operate by them selves:

A nostalgic H0 Märklin layout built like a layout from the 50ies, with rollingstock matching that era:

A coupe of other 'nostalgic' layouts:

Maxitrak; If you can find place for it AND afford it. Surprisingly the seller says he has several customers in Norway:

Norwegian rollingstock are not common i N-scale, but I saw this Norwegian shunter on a N-scale layout:

A (operating) Lego layout showing some of the oldest to some of the very newest locomotives in Lego:

Another layout even the younger kids could operate:

Some impressions from the trading stalls

...-Where I found this Tri-ang in TT scale (?). Very interesting model and very cheap. Nice size, and I was tempted. I didn't buy it though as it would just be another 'rabbit hole'. I hope some of my British readers find this nostalgic:

At this point I needed a break:

It was a great show with a good variety in scales, prototypes and level of costs. The images in this blogpost doesn't justify the impressions of this exhibition so I've made a YouTube-video as well (with running trains):

This is some of the crew from the Gleng Exhibition Stand. It's been a pleasure exhibiting with them. The next time we'll gather the team is next week when we'll go on our annual tour abroad. This time we'll go to Germany and Switzerland to visit another big train show and some layouts. Follow the blog for coming updates:

So, did I buy anything on this show? Well, this one I couldn't resist. It's a LGB G-scale locomotive and made for the German Military Heeresfeldbahn in the first place. Just like the originally 'LGB Wangerooge start set' that got me into this nook of G-scale. This one is based on the HF110C. Eventually in the future I'll probably convert this one into it's original scheme and service again: