A 'Blitz Excursion' to Sweden - Part 1: Ohsabanan

Last summer I went on a short, but very eventful, trip on my motorcycle to Finland and Sweden to visit military museums, public model railways and heritage railways. If you missed it you can find the blogposts here:

• Day 1: The Finnish Air Force Museum 
• Day 2: The Finnish Tank Museum and The Finnish Railway Museum 
• Day 3: The House of Model Railways and The Swedish Tank Museum 
• Day 4: Miniature Kingdom and the Swedish Air Force Museum 
• Day 5: Risten - Lakvik heritage railway

I did actually plan a couple of more 'stops' and places of interests to visit on my way home on day 5, and possible a 'day 6'. -But it was late in the summer season and several of the places I had in mind was either closed for weekdays or the season, so I didn'tget to visit them.

This week I have some days off from work, so I decided to make a quick mini excursion to Sweden to visit some of the places I missed last summer. I hope you will join this virtual trip, and I'll update the blog as soon as it's possible regarding time and Internet connection the following days. -And if the weather permits. So to get started I had to move out by (very) early dawn. I traveled light to travel fast; not much luggage). I think my wife was wondering why I was up that early:

Some 450km later I arrived today's destination; Ohsabanan, or the Ohsa Narrow Gauge Heritage Railway. The railway itself is made to 600mm gauge and runs 14,5km between the industrial place of Ohsa and the village of Bor, where it connected with the standard gauge railway. Some inclines on the line is up to 4%. Ohsabanan was constructed in 1910 and was in service until 1967. It opened as a heritage railway in 1970 and has since then operated heritage trains on the whole line.

A typical Swedish 'mid summer stake' at Ohsa railway station. The dry brownish colors reminds us that's mid summer is over, and we are slowly moving towards the winter again

There are a lot of inspiration to find when coming to paint and weather G-scale rollingstock:

So, why was this one of my places of interests? They have military narrow gauge locomotives like several Simplex':

Some German counterparts:

But my main reason to visit Ohsabanan is that they have 2 ex-German WW1 Heeresfeldbahn Brigadeloks in running condition. Some 2500 was manufactured, and after WW1 several was sold off to other civilian railways as surplus:

Too bad  none of the Brigadeloks were running this day. The replacement was also made in Germany in 1944, and saw service in East Prussia:

The 'terminus' is at the village of Bor, and it's time to turn the train and have a cup of coffee:

And then it was time to head back to Ohs again. Tender first:

This is a 'modelling blog' after all, and in the ticket office at Ohs I found this non operational H0e-display:

Before leaving Ohs it was time for 'fika' (Swedish for coffee and something to eat). This was another Swedish specialty; Köttbullsmacka (bread with meatballs):

Now it was time to find somewhere to sleep for the night. This is not the hotel where I am staying, but I was passing the 'Old West' theme park, High Chaparral on my way and stopped just to take a couple of photos. They also operates a narrow gauge steam railway made to look 'American' and on a large loop. I didn't go inside the park this time though. 

It's about time to make plans for tomorrow, so please visit my blog again for updates.

Back to the beginning

The title has nothing to do with the recent benefit concert and final live performance of both Black Sabbath or the late Ozzy Osbourne. Having recently posted a blogpost on probably the worst toy soldiers, I'll now make a short post of some toy soldiers I'm most found of and where it all began.

This blogpost is actually a short stroll down the 'memory lane' to me. Our oldest son are moving house for the second time, and we're packing down some of his things at home. Among his old military toys, I recognized some even. older toys that I handed over to him as a kid. Of course he got more and newer toys and soldiers and so on when growing up, but these are the actual old ones from my own childhood which I later passed over to him when he was a kid. The 'collection' is not complete anymore, and some few bits and pieces are missing (or hidden among his other toys) after facing combat for 2 generations. It's a little like the "Toy Story" saga; The Army Men are getting ever fewer for every movie when Andy grows older. Unlike 'Andy' my oldest son didn't just have 2 soldiers back. I'm kind of surprised there were so much left of this old stuff. 

These are my original Airfix 1:32 soldiers from I was a kid. The American Infantry was the very first set I got from my parents. The kids in my neighborhood used to bring their soldiers out and we had large battles outside togheter. When playing on my own it was mostly Germans vs. Americans. The Land Rover and boat was Britains and the 'match firing' spring operated Gun was a cheap knock-off of a Britains original. The spring was not very powerful anymore. Does that happen to the originals too? What's left of that wall is from an old Timpo set.

Among his toy cars and vehicles I also found some of my old Corgi and Matchbox models. They were not all there, but almost. Surprisingly the rocket launcher from Matchbox is only missing one rocket. 

There were also a large but very mixed collection of old Airfix, Matchbox, Esci and a lot of knock-offs in 1:72 or 1:76 scale (which I didn't take time to sort and set up for photos).

Blog PostScript(s)

• I eventually located the original American officer and a 'brother in arms' in a box with Cowboys and Indians (which is another collection from my childhood and handed over to my oldest son when he was a kid). They G.I.s are now reunited with whats left of their small unit:

I have no hope of finding his German officer colleague however, as he went missing in action on a battlefield outside Tønsberg in the late 70ies. 

So this is it! This is actually how it all started for me. I think he's been treating my his old toys well, and hope that he eventually will pass them over to his own children one day. These have created good memories! 

• By request, this is how I look like by the way. The photo was taken during the large NATO exercise in Norway last winter "Nordic Response '24":

Click for larger image

• Last minute update; A few days ago my blog reached a 'milestone' and passed 100 000 visitors since I established it in the autumn of 2019. I'm grateful for every one of you visiting it, reading and commenting here.
  -Thank you!
• Anyone who knows what happened to the Sound Officers Call blog??

Military trains fighting hot weather the danger of "Sun Kink"

Heine, whom is a member of our Model Railway Club, does not only have an awesome Garden Railway, but his and his wife's lovely garden is also on the local 'Garden Society's' 'Garden circuit'. Last Sunday Heine & Astrid invited the to an 'Open Garden' arrangement, and our MRC-members were invited to run trains, to fully show off this spectacular garden. It was also an opportunity to promote model railways to garden enthusiast. It's been a heatwave in Norway lately, and perfect weather to do outdoor hobby activities, so I brought a couple of my military trains and attended the 'Open Garden':

A lot of people were visiting the garden this Sunday afternoon:

The trains are getting ready for service in the fiddleyard:

First out was my German Heeresfeldbahn with a short, but well armed, rake:

Then I was getting my British War Department livesteam locomotive from Roundhouse ready to haul a supply train. There is simply no ON or  OFF button on a livesteam locomotive and you have to heat it up to make pressure. It takes a little longer time:

Here is a YouTube video showing both my German  Heeresfeldbahn train and British W^D train in action at Heine's Garden Railway last weekend:

As there were several kids visiting the gardens this day, there was also a service by 'Thomas the Tank Engine'. Being a standard gauge model running on 45mm gauge, he must be about Gauge 1, and that should be about the same size used for the Thomas models used in the TV-series:

This is a rare sight. This model by Piko comes with only one center car, and they don't make a lot of other center cars to get separate. One member in our club finally managed to find one:

He has both the 'Old' and 'New' version of this train set. A very nice model indeed:

Heine was also running a rake of beer and fuel:

A Swiss passenger train by another member:

And some members had also brought their new acquisitions:

Astrid & Heine are very hospitable, and served coffee, pastries and waffles to their guests:

This was a perfect day out to run trains in the garden!

It even looked like my German troopers in one of the cars enjoyed their day out too!

Thank you for inviting us and for your warm hospitality Astrid & Heine!