Since I had to bring my own garden railway to a closure I really appreciate that members in my MRC regularly invites to running sessions on their garden railways. It is a really social happening and get-together as well.
My friend has a really large garden railway and it is fully scenic:
For me this was also an opportunity to take my new 'railway ferry' for a run as a local Heeresfeldbahn freight for the Sturmpionere:
Following are some few impressions from our running session:
I also brought my W^D livesteam locomotive (by Roundhouse) and let it haul the 'Combat Engineer Ferry'
Trains & Coffee:
This is from an earlier running-session, but catch the author in a familiar position documenting one of our running sessions:
Thank you Gylmer for inviting us to run on your awesome garden railway and for your hospitality.
This modelling project did not actually start with a boat or ferry model, but with a railway wagon. It seems like 'Murphy's Law of Combat' also strikes when coming to modelling military railways. The LGB starter set I used for making my Heeresfeldbahn was originally a starter set for a German narrow gauge railway from the Frisian island of Wangerooge. It was a nice livery, but it didn't seem that LGB had much other rollingstock from that island railway except for those in the starter set itself. So the decision to repaint it and make it into a Heeresfeldbahn was easy. During a weekend trip to the German town of Kiel last autumn, I visited a small model railway shop there; Scharly's Lokshop. It deals mainly with second hand items, and in the shop I saw a very beautiful LGB model of an open goods-wagon from, off course, Wangerooge (!). If I'd knew that LGB had made more models from this particular railway, I would have considered not to convert the starter set in the first place. -But that was just too late now, so I ended up buying the Wangerooge-wagon anyway, just to repaint it grey so it would fit the rest of my 'ex Wangerooge Heeresfeldbahn-livery'.
The Prototype
Since it was an open wagon, it would improve the look if some load could be added to it. While I was searching for paint-schemes and information about the Sturmboot 39 in connection with modelling them as a load for my G-scale Heeresfeldbahn, I discovered that these Sturmboots also were used to power German military pioner ferries - Flosssackfähre, which were made up of a couple of large inflatable rubber dinghies - Grosser Flosssack 34, with wooden beams and deck between them. They could carry infantry, motorcycles and small PKWs.
Boxart from Dragons very nice kit of such a ferry. Too bad for me it's only made to 1:35 scale, as I needed one in 1:19 scale
The Model
I made the Sturmboot 39 originally as a homage for my son who had recently done his service in the Norwegian Coast Guard, where he was operating fast patrol boats.
Now he is studying to become a 'First Mate', and last summer he took a summer-job as a 'Mariner' at a ferry in Northern Norway to finance his studies. This inspired me to make those Sturmboot 39s into the propelling part of a (pioner-) ferry; a 'Flosssackfähre' by adding the rubber dinghies and wooden beams and decking as train loads in my new wagon.
I found a free STL-file of a Grosser Flosssack 34 at Wargaming3d, which I resized to 1:19 scale. The process form 3D-printer til ready for painting can be seen in the April Workbench update. Since the originals are made in rubber, I decided to use the real thing and cote mine with black rubber as well. I used some black plasticote spray found at a car accessories shop. This worked very well to cover the layer lines in the print too (which were printed in a medium resolution).
Now I found out that this wouldn't fit the ex-Wangerooge wagon after all, so I purchased another flat-wagon of the same type as was in my LGB starter set and I used for the Sturmboot 39s in the first place, to use for the 2 newly printed Flosssack 34s.
Since it was looking the same (all black) I painted it slightly different...
...and got fancy and downloaded and 3D-printed a brakeman's cabin to add to it.
Bringing the painted flatcar, brakeman's cabin and the 2 Grosser Flosssack 34s together:
Then I could use the ex-Wangerooge wagon for the wooden beams and decking needed to make the ferry complete. First I had to mock up the ferry it self so I knew how many pieces of wood and in which lengths was needed to be cut to complete it...
...-and then it had to be stacked and loaded to the wagon. I chose to make a removable floor to the wagon to attach the load according to my last blog post, so I can choose to use the wagon for other loads if I wish.
Together with my earlier 'Sturmoot 39', the 2 rubber dinghies and the wooden beams and decking makes up a complete Flosssacfähre.
When the complete German military pioner ferry of the Flosssachfähre-type are loaded onto railaway wagons it looks like this:
And loaded on the train 'the ferry' doesn't look so much like a ferry anymore (unless you've seen the prototype). But it shows that's possible to model a large scale car ferry and load it onto a narrow gauge train in a prototypical way.
First run on a 'day out' (in a friend's garden as my own garden railway is temporary out of service) transporting a group of Sturmpioneren:
This 'military load doesn't look so offensive, neither does any of my other loads on my Heeresfeldbahn. Initially I optet for more offensive loads like armoured cars and fighting vehicles, but I've not seen pictures of such so I think my loads seems credible for a narrow gauge railway.
My Garden Railway is perhaps the 'smallest large-scale' garden railway in Norway. Usually by this time of year it get prepared and ready for the season, but not this year. It's been operative since 2016, but now it's reached the 'end of the line', and it's time to shut it down...
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Due to required drainage work around our house, digging to change the old drainage-pipes are needed. Some of those pipes are unfortunately located in the ground below the garden railway, so it's going for a closure and the rails needs to be lifted.
It provided great fun and good times for the whole family through it's years in service. Here is a throwback:
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Click photo for larger image
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Some of the Troops did not age well since they were deployed in 2019. I guess they are considered Veterans now.
Click photo for larger image
Click photo for larger image
It's not the end of the hobby and the interests for model- and garden railways though, and I'll keep on modelling military trains in large scale.
I guess I'll just have to run my trains at my friends' Garden Railways in the meanwhile until the drainage-work here is completed and I can start rebuilding some garden railway here again.
When some doors closes, another's opens; so we'll see what kind of 'layout' in the garden the future brings. This will give space for something new eventually
I've been finishing off some few small projects that's been on my workbench for a while, and they will show up in an update later this month. This month I'm also involved in a 'modelling project' that's not on workbench it self, which I will describe closer in a blog-post on friday...
It's a battle to get time for doing my hobby-things right now as daily life is quite busy. But in busy times I find panting miniature quite therapeutic, and it's been a while since I've been painting miniatures. So I found some figures I've been laying around for a while and started to prepare them so I eventually can start painting them. I thinks it's nicer to game with painted miniatures rather than those without.
Being China-copies they were made with small bases which made them wobbly. I've 3D-printed some bases when making the 'Ape Army' and had som spares which I superglued onto these figures.
I made minor changes to a couple of them by trimming a hat down, and adding some 'green stuff'. This is the very first time I've been using green stuff.
.jpg "Garden railway. Running G-scale trains in the garden. LGB Military train. G-scale military train")
.jpg "Garden railway. Running G-scale trains in the garden. LGB Military train. G-scale military train")
