Hummelfjellbanen revisited

This is how ChatGPT interpreted one of the following photos from the day out at Svenn Robert's and Hildegunn's Garden Railway. Guess which one?

August last year Svenn Robert and Hildegunn invited to the Grand Opening of their Garden Railway, Hummelfjellbanen. This year they invited to another running session weekend, and a small group from our Model Railway Club attended. This is about to become an annual late summer gathering bringing together people from different model- and garden railway societies in Norway. Hummelfjell Garden Railway is located 'up north' close to the middle parts of Norway and are therefore a kind of center point for railway modellers from different parts of the country.

Since we were going to a mountain village when the summer is about to end and Svenn Robert is a Citroën mechanic, I brought a train loaded with propper vehicles:

Here are some photos and video of our great day(s) out:

Svenn Robert's Fiddleyard is well executed

As usual barbecue, coffee, cakes and a lot of fun:

It's a prototype for everything:

Thank you Svenn Robert and Hildegunn for inviting us and for your warm hospitality. 

The date for next year is already decided and reserved. I hope even more Garden Railway modellers will attend next year. 

Running Trains

Well, this will be another blogpost about running trains again. It's still summer and beautiful weather for outdoor activites here in Norway. Too nice for indoor workbench activities anyway.  

Erik, who is a member in our Model Railway Club, invited the other members to a running-session in his garden on one of our weekly club nights. I haven't been running my trains very much on his Garden Railway, as I've coincidentally often been working when he have been inviting to days out. So I didn't want to miss this great opportunity and another possibility to run my quite new not so 'warlike' military train again.

It's not so easy to capture an overall image of Erik's Garden Railway layout as it runs through dense vegetation on 2 sides of his house. "Welcome to the Jungle":

I usually make a 'Cab view' video of m friends' Garden Railways, but I realized that I hadn't been that often at Erik's Garden Railway to make such a video from his Garden Railway. -Well, not until now:

After running trains for a while it was time for a (coffee-) break...

...some BBQ...

...- and Jette's (Erik's wife) famous and delicious pastry/ coffee-cake:

The heading image in this blogpost is not from Erik's awesome layout however. This summer we took our youngest son on a family vacation to Sweden, where we were visiting the 'Old West' theme park High Chaparral (which had 60th anniversary this year):

I really like 'Old West' as scenarios for small skirmish tabletop games, and there are a lot of inspiration to find in this park for such games as they have a lot of 'action shows'  and 'shootouts'. Some of them with famous 'western characters' from television and cartoons like Zorro and Lucky Luke (and the Daltons):

What really caught my attention this time and I wanted to share in this blogpost is the railway they operate. It's a real steam train operated railway going in a quite large circuit (3km) between the 'Main City' and 'Old Mexico'. It's a 750mm gauge narrow gauge and they have several ex-polish Class Px29 and Px48 which have been 'Americanized to different degrees. Some with new funnels and added Pilots. They have had different liveries through the years. Usually they operates 2 engines each day, and on the 'journey' to 'Old Mexico' the trains get robbed. As a funfact there are just a couple of Class Px29 left in Poland.

Class Px29

Class Px48

I didn't take so many photos of the trains, and no video. But I found some historic photos online and videos on YouTube to give you an idea:

Thank you Erik and Jette for inviting us and their hospitality and delicious coffe-cake!