Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Last December I posted a blogpost about of an article about a friend and fellow MRC member Heine's Garden Railway which was published in Allt om Hobby, the biggest hobby magazine in the Nordic countries. It also covered some photos and information about my military garden trains. Allt om Hobby is a Swedish magazine and published in Swedish which is not a problem to read within the Nordic countries. But I didn't expect the majority of the readers to this blog to run to their local newsagents to buy a copy though.

But now recently Allt om Hobby published the whole article for free on their website. This gives you all an opportunity whereever you live and whatever language you speak to visit and read the article if you'd like to. Depending on your browser, the website for the article can easily be translated from Swedish into whatever language you prefer. I've translated it into English in my 'Google browser', which worked great! So here is the link to the:

Link: Free article in Allt om Hobby about Heine's Garden Railway

Photo by Joakim Sannagård/ Allt om Hobby

Enjoy!

More Flat-Car conversions

Last year I bought a lot of 2 used flat-cars. I actually bought it the just to get one of the flat-cars, the upper one in the following photo looking like a heavy duty one. The lower one just came with the deal and I have several similar of this type in my collection already:

Heavy Duty Flat-Car

In my fleet of Flat-Cars I wanted some of them to stand out, and this one looked like a larger 'heavy duty' Flat-Car for heavier loads. It also looked almost ready as is and would need minimal efforts and changes to be ready for military service in a rake in some of my G-scale military trains:

This is actually an American Standard Gauge Flat-Car by Accucraft, which also runs on 45mm gauge. I wanted to make it look more like a narrow gauge car so I 3D printed and added buffers to the buffer beams. To the buffers I added hooks for the 3 link couplings for my WDLR train:

The bogies were of an American type and had American knuckle-couplers attached to them. As I don't use this type of couplings on my rolling stock I just tried to replace them with LGB ones, but they didn't fit very well on these bogies. So I replaced the American bogies with LGB ones which had original LGB couplings attached. The LGB bogie (lightly weathered) to the left, and the original American one I replaced to the right:

The floor was given a blackwash followed by a drybrush, and I washed the wagon sides to make the rivets looks rusty:

The other Flat-Car in the job lot

I have several similar Flat-Cars of this type already, but it followed the purchase. This was brown and had American lettering:

It didn't have any buffers usually found on narrow gauge rolling stock, so I 3D-printed some from a free stl-file found on Thingeverse:

To make it fit my other military rolling stock I just spray-painted it grey in a slightly other shade than the similar Flat-Cars and painted the floor:

Salvaged from spare box

This is strictly not a pure 'Flat-Car' as it has more similarities to stake-wagons. It was included in a job lot I bought a couple of years ago. I couldn't use it as it was so heavily used that it's axle-slots had become oval and the wheels didn't spin properly and the wagon wouldn't roll anymore. I didn't buy the job lot for this wagon in the first place, so it was sent to my spare box for future projects. 

While working on some of my other military 'wagon projects' I got some Miliput left over and I decided to stuff it into the oval axle-slots to see if I could repair them. When it was completely cured and hard I drilled new holes for the axles. This seemed to work, as the wagon and wheels were running freely again now. Then it was given a coat of grey paint, had the floor painted and finally given a blackwash and drybrushed:

I didn't make any loads which I fixed to these cars as I want to be able to swap out different loads on them.

A simple conversion gone complicated

Last year I bought dozens of used and cheap LGB-wagons on online auctions in Norway. They were starting to pile up in my hobby room, so I decided to start converting them so they eventually would look like something that could belong to and be hauled behind my large scale Heeresfeldbahn and War Department Light Railway (WDLR) locomotives.

I decided to start with an already grey low board wagon with nice German markings and lettering on it (which I wanted to keep). It would probably just need a blackwash to be ready for service:

I immediately noticed that this car had several unsightly holes in it's floor:

Off course I could just cover them by making another false floor like I've done on similar wagons, but then they would still be visible if the loads or floor was removed. -So I decided to fill them with Miliput:

When turning this wagon around it was just like turning to the dark side of the moon. I've only seen one side of it on the online auction, but when I turned it and saw the backside, it was literally a 'backside' (!) I dont know what the previous owner had done to this wagon, but along the 'backside' both the buffer beams were cut off, and so was the bars on the side holding the planks together and the shunter's steps were missing. I got it really cheap though and I guess you get what you pay for:

This was not going to be the very simple conversion as I thought as this was going to need a little more than a simple blackwash. Firstly I needed to make new buffer beams for both ends. I found a free STL-file for a similar chassis on Thingiverse which I converted and 3D-printed 2 new buffer beams:

-And 2 more steps:

Then I decided to trim off the bars on the intact side, to match the cut-offs on the 'backside'. I have so many identical wagons of this type so it will simply just add some slight variation among them:

Then I painted the floor, weathered the chassis, reassembled the whole ting and finally gave it that coat of blackwash:

I think it's ready for service now:

I guess the next pull from the 'pile of project wagons' will need less remodelling than this one.

First running session in 2026

Heine invited us over to join the first running session in 2026 in his garden at the same time we got the first snow. It was not vey much snow at the time but very cold and windy (which made it even colder). - A 'Siberian Cold Front'. I was really eager to try out my recent military 'winter train loads' under the conditions I made them for in the first place, so it was just to dress warmly for the cold weather and take my German Heeresfeldbahn loaded for winter warfare for another outing.

It was 'blue' temperature + wind = wind chill. This made the temperature actually closer to -15°C🌡❄️ 

To clear the track Heine used multiple locomotives with regular snow plow, rotary snow plow and his anti-icing tank car:

Despite all these efforts it was really challenging conditions to run trains on a day like this. After clearing the snow from the tracks and de-icing them, the tracks just turned icey again almost immediately. It was primarily not the snow, but the low temperatures causing  trouble this day with ice piling up inside the tracks turning rock hard. Not all trains made it to the tracks this day. For my military train it's 'Räder Muss Rollen für den Sieg' - no matter the weather:

Soon my German military Heeresfeldbahn also discovered seriously challenges running under these conditions, and the short rake became too heavy to pull. I eventually needed to uncouple some wagons to be able to keep the train running. The Aerosan transport got highest priority:

Lovely train. Too bad it didn't make it today:

Neither did this:

This very strange combination with double traction and a de-icing tank car between the locomotives actually managed:

Heine also took one of his WIP 3d-printed cars out for a run. Due to being 3D-printed it's very light and doesn't take to much to pull through the snow and ice:

With weather like this the presence of the brazier was most welcome. Usually the snow and ice melts below it, but not this day:

And it could be used to BBQ some hotdogs:

You know it's cold outside when even the coffee freezes over:

There were not so many trains running this day as there usually are on days out at Heine's. Despite the very cold weather and challenging running conditions we all agreed that it was another great day out:

Thank you Heine for inviting us over for this seasonal 'kick off' and your warm hospitality.

Blog PostScript 

It's typically, but after this very cold day out it started to snow again. A lot! Like in many other European countries I belive. 

So now it was just to unload a couple of my wagons again so I could finally takes photos of them under the right conditions:

Heine was even out at night trying out his rotary snow plow. I guess there will be no delays at that line during the morning traffic:

It's awesome with all this snow. -Not only for running trains outside, but it's also interesting conditions for outside wargaming. I think I'll need to prepare a wargame or two in the snow. Please follow for updates.