Good(s) shed stories

The wind outside is howling and I just put some of the finishing touches on the goods shed. Since it would not fit were I originally had intended it to go I moved it over to the opposite site of the station. There it will sit for a while. Maybe I may re-organize the track layout a bit to make it fit or cut part of the overhang off .

A lot of fiddly work with this card board kit, and I had to add down spouts and rain troughs,
not included in the kit, for the price it should have been included by Lenz.

Ooops, the arrow head got a kink in it, nothing like a photograph to see ones mistakes.

The boxes you can see in the doorway are scratch build using scale wood around a wood cube.

I have been working on the railroad

It is a dark and windy night outside, and I am just relaxing and working on my layout. The Krakow station from Lenz is now finished and I am test fitting it at the moment on the layout.

There is still some more work to be done. I also received the long awaited DCC Lenz turnouts from Addie.
I had to do a site swap with the freight shed and the Raiffeisen warehouse. I am contemplating moving the loco shed to the foreground. I was able to pick up an old kit at the September Railroad show in Victoria.

 I started work on the freight shed. It is laser cut from card stock and takes some time to put together to make it work. Especially the roof trusses are nice to have, but can hardly been seen when the roof goes on.

Kits and other updates

I has been a while since I last added something to my blog. Time and work interfered and I got carried away working on the layout. I started work on the Kalkwagen Kit, but a part took of and I am now waiting to get a replacement. It is  a very well designed kit and when it is finished it will fit in to the box for storage.

I also added the picture backdrops and started adding some ballast, dry for now. Two kits, one for the station building and for the goods shed also have arrived and I am currently working on getting them build.

First kit bashed wagon

I found a G10 refrigerated car from POLA on Ebay. Unfortunately, it does not have the matching coupling system from Lenz and the under carriage detailing is not up to par.
However, I liked the car (it gives me an excuse to endulge in my favorite bevy) and so I found a kit from Addie described here: ?Addie adapted G10 chassis It is an altered chassis that is sold for scratch builder and Kit bashers. It has been adapted so that it fits under the Pola G10, a popular conversion.

I filed the lugs of the beer reefer car and glued it on the chassis from Addie/Lenz. Added the steps and half an hour later it was finished, weathering and some more details I have to order, yet to come.

The cars sit it the fiddle yard that is now all wired and working ok.

V 100 has arrived!!

The new locomotive from Lenz (new for me) has arrived from Addie. The engine is big but beautiful. It is heavy and I love the detailing on it, it has some neat sound effects like the announcement in German that the train is departing. The sound is loud and I am trying to change the CV. In the little room I have it resonates quite a bit and is annoying after a while.
It is pure joy to run, it creeps along when set on the shunting setting, F5, and pulls all the cars I have no problem.

I am so hoping that the V36 will be arriving soon too and am still waiting for the remainder of the DCC controlled switches to finish the track laying.

Bring in the clouds

It has been a while since I posted the last time. Since then I have painted the backdrop with a sky and stenciled in some clouds using a stencil I had. The front of the layout also got a coat of black paint so that the eye can focus on the main attraction, the railroad.

This is how the other side of the main station yard looks like:

I also laid down all the track in the yard and in the fiddle yard as well. Unfortunatly, the DCC controled Right hand switches from Lenz are on backorder and have not yet arrived from the factory at the dealers.

It starts looking more and more like a layout. I painted all the walls black so as to make it quite different from the layout. The track in the front is the programing track and the next job will be to hook it and the rest of the wiring up. I currently have only one pair of wires connected to the layout from the Lenz controller, but have decieded to add a few more as to make sure there is current to all track when ballasting and painting is done.

The new digital turnouts from Lenz have arrived

I recieved only half of my ordered turnouts but have put them down temporary on to the pink foam desert. They work great and the light in the turnout indicators is an added bonus. I also got the double slip switch, but this was only available in manual configuration and I will have to add switch motors to it, or, if it becomes available within a reasonable time, exchange it for a digitized version. It works great and is a real space saver.

Kaelble truck

When I visited the Baggermodelle office at http://www.baggermodelle.net/ in Berne ( I am the translator for this must see magazin, I recieved a phantastic gift of this truck. In the past Deutsche Bundesbahn used a truck like this with a Culemeyer road roller to transport freight cars to factories without a track connection to the main line.
see a picture at http://www.hs-merseburg.de/~nosske/EpocheII/zg/e2z_wcsr.html

the original advertising prospectus for the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

and from a different angle

Just a beautiful model. I have become a collector of diecast trucks and cars, to match the period I am modelling, the time between 1950 to 1962. This gives me a lot of leeway and some wonderfull models to collect, these give life to the layout.

New Thunder box has arrived

Just a great addition to my fleet!

Just before my trip to Switzerland the new Thunderbox or Donnerbuechse from Lenz arrived in the parcel from Addie Modelle. I love the detail and the quality. It has a decoder build in and lights inside the passenger compartment and also outside above the doors.

PInk foam desert and fiddle yard

Getting on with construction

It has been a while and I made some progress, however I am still waiting for more track and switches to arrive. I have been hooking up all the Lenz DCC boxes around the layout and discovered that I made the holes slightly larger then I wanted. I will have to wait until I am back from holidays to figure out a way to correct this. For now it is loads of fun plugging in the controler and then unplugging it and walking across the isle and re-plugging it at the station, while the train chugs along.
I cut and got the fiddle yard sliding piece of wood ready. It will run on two aluminium corner channels and just slide along.
It will need more work, but with the party on the weekend and me flying out on July 1st I doubt I can finish it on time.
SO, more waiting for the fall and the main construction season and then tracklaying will commence in earnest.

Here is the plan with some english descriptions. At the moment I am working on adding backdrop panels and pink foam sub road bed. Still waiting for my flex track and some more cars. Two of the dcc turnouts have arrived and are awaiting installing. Without the double slip at the yard throat I can not beginn track laying.
Then I will post some more pictures.

I spent the better part of an hour scraping the old cork of the plywood, to see if it could be salvaged. I now have some skin of my old knuckles. Facit: New Plywood tops with 1/2 inch pink foam as a subroad bed and then Woodlands Scenic Roadbed instead of the cork. I have been using this product on my N scale layout previously and it works like a charm.

I have permission from Mark Stutz to use his plan for my Layout. If you can speak German you can follow it on my links site under Schnellenkamp/Forum.
I will have to "tweek" it a bit since one wall of my layout does not have the window as shown in the plan.

In the beginning

May 17, 2010

I decided to abandon my On30 layout see above, and start allover again with my Lenz O scale set that arrived in the mail last week. I have been playing with it and it is fabulous and I am impressed by the quality and workmanship.

The remote uncoupling is a nice bonus feature.