Local Newspaper Captures a Perfect Day at the Garden Railway

Heine invited to another running session and a day out in his garden. The weather was lovely and I thought it was a great opportunity to take my new Maintenance of Way/ Permanent Way Maintenance wagons out for their first ride. Since it's been a while since it's last outing I also included my pioneer ferry load in this rake. Perhaps a train on it's way to repairing tracks over a bridge or river rossing or something? If you want to read more about them you can find more info on these links:

• MOW/ PWM wagon part 1
• MOW/ PWM wagon part 2
• Pioneer Ferry load

Heine's Harz Bahn. In 2022 several member from our model railway club visited the prototype in Werningerode:

"Traffic Jam"

Another member brought his new Live Steam locomotive by Roundhouse. It's an American class, but similar to the type used by early railways in Norway. The wagons are Norwegian though and are kits by Proinor.

"She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain..."

Another American train was running this day; A Standard Gauge by Aristocraft:

"Tyra The Supervisor"

Another LGB Steam engine by Heine. The prototype for this Mallet engine was actually made for the German Military Heeresfeldbahn:

A Swiss EMU from Bernina bahn by another member:

The same member also brought his Swiss 'Glacier Express'. He and other members from out mrc went on a ride with the prototype in 2012:

Here is a YouTube-video showing the trains in action:

It's really 'hard' to run trains in the garden so we needed a break. Later on we also bbq'd:

A journalist from a local newspaper had also heard about this garden railway, and wanted to come on this day out to make an article about it.

It's always interesting when 'outsiders' are going to report on niche hobbies like this, and what kind of view they are presenting. This turned out to be a nice and informative article about the Garden Railway hobby, and this is the finally result on print:

Link: Bymagasinet NÆR nr. 2/26

I'm going to the movie theater later today with my youngest son to see the premier of the new Toy Story 5 movie. I'm wondering if there are any Army Men left amongst Andy's old toys?? 

Another quick "LGB-project" - Followed by another day out

Time to pick another 'project' from the 'pile' of the used LGB-wagons I bought cheaply last year. This time it will just be a simple and quick project.

Contrary to all the other wagons I bought in this Lot, this was not heavily used or in a scruffy condition. Actually it was literally 'ready to run' as is. The only thing that was bothering me was actually the color. As I wanted a 'military look' to run it in a rake behind both my German Heeresfeldbahn diesel or British WDLR livesteam engine, I wanted a more 'greyish' look than this brown wagon. At the same time I wanted to try to keep as much as possible of it's original lettering and numbering as as it was crisp and nice (on this brown background). So to give it a solid coat of grey paint was out of the question. Instead I decided to try to give it repeatedly 'grey washes' with diluted acrylics finished by a 'black wash'. Now it's no way back... 

Frankly, this method didn't look so good after the first diluted coat. It didn't look too good after 2 second diluted coat of grey either, but I couldn't add a third coat as this would completely cover up the white lettering and numbers I wanted to shine through and keep. I decided to go directly to the blackwash, which I kept heavily diluted. It looked like it managed to make the grey stain less 'spotty':

At this point I also added tar paper made of sports-tape to the brakeman's roof to add some texture to it:

Then it was lightly drybrushed:

This project wasn't going to be so 'quick' as I expected, since the coats of paints were so thin they were flaking all the time when handling the wagon, and I had to keep covering up bare spots. This wagon would need several coats of matt varnish. I think the final result turned out just fine, and I managed what I opted for; making this originally brown wagon into a grey one and keep it's original numbering and lettering at the same time. -Keeping in mind that the grey background gives the white lettering less contrasts though.

I think this wagon is ready for service now...

- which turned out to be far sooner than expected. Just when I've applied the final coat of varnish, Heine suggested that we could spend the weekly model railway club meeting later this afternoon in his garden for a running-session and BBQ. So this wagon actually entered service before the varnish was dry.

Here are some impressions from our improvised club evening in Heine's garden:

This impressive Rätische Bahn Crocodile in 1:22,5 scale is 3D-printed in parts and assembled by one of our members:

The parcel van is also based on a prototype from RhB and 3D-printed and built by the same member:

It looks like my 'quick' LGB-project was approved by Tyra:

Army Men vs Zombies - Another Shelfie

Last October I posted a shelfie as I noticed a Army Men vs Zombies bucket of "soldiers" in a Swedish toy store located at the border not so far from where I live. It was clearly promoted in the shop due to Halloween was coming up. I did not buy a bucket because I think it was a bit too pricey and contained The Corps futuristic Army Men which I literally has buckets of already. Besides I think the zombies looked a bit too chuncky.

As it's often more economical to buy groceries in Sweden than in Norway and we don't actually live that far away from the border, we sometimes do our shopping there. When I was there yesterday I also stopped by a Swedish toy store to have a look as they often sell things there like Norwegian shops don't. -Like army men. And so it was this time as well.

In the shop I found another bucket of 'Army Men vs Zombies' at about half the price as the bucket I saw in October.

I

t's still labeled with 'Zombie Hunter' and contains the same futuristic Army Men and cartoonish Zombies as earlier:

This time I had a closer look at the chunky Zombies and it looks like the comes in a lot of different poses:

So, did I buy anyone this time?

The price was almost halved, but so was the content with less than half of the miniatures from the previous set. This time it was only 43 miniatures in the bucket, and it has a black plastic tubing in the midle to make the bucket look full of little figures. So priced at  £ 7,87 or $ 10,52 or € 9,11 this offer was actually worse than for similar figures last year. Didn't buy any then, didn't buy any now.

It would be nice to try out some 'Zombie games' sometime, but I think some really bad Army Men I bought a while ago can be turned into Zombies good enough for such a game.

MOW/PWM-Train Part 2

Earlier this year I converted a LGB hatched gondola into a 'Maintenance of Way' wagon, or Permanent Way Maintenance in British terms, so my Heeresfeldbahn are able to perform emergency repairs on the line, which seems plausible for railways operating under combat conditions where railways are targetet for sabotage actions and aerial bombings etc. It had a lot of tools and sand to carry out repairs and maintenance on The Permanent Way:

What my Permanent Way Department actually lacked was some extra rails and sleepers to replace (battle-) damaged tracks. So I decided to add a load with some extra rails and sleepers to my Permanent Way Department. The sleepers and tracks were sourced from free STL-files on the Internet, 3D-printed and painted:

Instead of permanently load one of my wagons with the sleepers and rails or make a new one for this purpose, I decided to make it as a replaceable load to fit standard sized LGB-wagons. No needs for dedicated wagons for different loads. So a new 'fake' wagon floor was 3D-printed to fit and painted:

Then the 3D-printed  rails and sleepers were fitted to the new floor:

Since I was going to fit this load on a standard sized LGB wagon already in my inventory, I used the opportunity to weather another recent remodeling project which I wasn't quite satisfied with:

Then the load was fitted to the wagon:

Togheter with the hatched gondola with tools and sand, these two wagons will give my military G-scale trains capacity to perform maintenance and emergency repairs on the right of way, and I think their generic approach will make them usable behind both my German Heeresfeldbahn and British WDLR engines.