Koenigstein starts coming together...

Hey everyone,

It has been a long time since the Carstenbahn One blog was updated.  I suspect there will be some additional updates in the near future as I step up some other projects, but today's post is about laying the benchwork and the track for the Koenigstein station, the end point on the branch line...

You can see the branch line coming in from the left.  This is the first of the three six-foot-by-three-foot tables supporting Koenigstein.  I spent last night getting all three boards installed.  The main line passes below.  In the shot you can see the KM-1 BR50.  In retrospect I should have moved it before I stared working on the table above it, lest something fall on it!

 here is a view from the 'end' of the station.  In the back of the picture you can see the branch line coming in from the left.  The track at the front right is the 'dead end' of the branch line.

Here is the two-stall steam locomotive shed, located in front of the incoming branch line.  It's the Marklin 1-scale model, 5617.  I repainted much of it.  I'll add a blog entry that talks more about that, but here is a picture of the original for comparison:

Below is what the original looked like in the 1980's.  Obviously neither shed is close to the original, so maybe at some point I'll attempt to scratch-build something, but for now I'll stick to the Marklin model.

Looking in the other direction on the layout you'll find the larger railcar shed and maintenance building for the diesel railcars that run to Koenigstein from Frankfurt.  In the 1980's this was a three-track shed, which has since been expanded to four tracks.  I used a modified version of the Piko locomotive shed and made a two-track version.

Again I'm kitbashing three of the Piko 63003 kits together to create this long shed. When completed it should be able to hold the longest train cars and locomotives I will ever own. I have a little more work to do to get this model finished.

Above is a shot of the current shed.  Again, it's a mch different design than mine, as was the 1970's version.  But sacrifices must be made...

Here is one last shot of the steam locomotive shed at the 'west' end of the station, if you use the orientation of the original.  A freight depot will sit next to the siding on the right.  Stay tuned as more of this comes together!

A new locomotive!

Many years ago a financial crisis in the Ramcke household forced me to sell my Marklin V200.  Last week it was replaced.  Below is a picture of this beauty making its way around Carstenbahn One.  In a month or so I should receive matching D-zug cars.  Woohoo!

"There she blows!"

“There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!” 
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Since as long as I can remember, there has been a Marklin 1-scale model that has eluded me.  Sure, I have seen it on occasion on eBay, but I have always been outbid, or the price was simply too high for me to be able to pay.  But I have always been on the lookout for this elusive boxcar, and like Captain Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick, I have chased it across oceans.  I'm happy to report that, finally, after ten years of searching, bidding, hoping and disappointment, the coveted 'Milka' boxcar is mine.

 

The Milka boxcar was only produced in 1989, and as a limited production model.  A good friend of mine in England who regularly attends the 'Wormser Spielzeugauktion' noticed this boxcar, along with two others, in untouched condition in the auction listings in July.  Since he was attending the auction already, I asked him to enter a bid on my behalf.  Sure enough, I won the lot.

Now, perched on the freight siding in the Hoechst station on Carstenbahn One, I finally have my Milka boxcar.

Is that it?  Is my car barn complete?  Can I now be satisfied with my collection of some twenty unique boxcars?  Oh, if only it were so.  For as Herman Melville puts it:

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” 

- Carsten

Ballasting part 2

Well, it has been a couple of weeks since I last posted.  In that time there has been significant work on the ballasting.  In fact, the main line is finished:

Right now the ballasted area looks very pristine and even, which is hardly realistic, but once I scrape away some ballast and make some bare spots and paths, add some brush and weeds, and weather the ballast a little it will look less like someone's zen garden and more like a railway right-of-way.

I had carefully taped over the switch mechanisms to avoid getting any ballast stuck in them.  Happily, all the mechanisms work perfectly.  Note the gray color of the Styrofoam above.  Although I still have a bunch of the black paint left, I felt a color that more closely matched the ballast would hide any gaps in coverage better.  It worked very, very well, and was well worth the $12 investment.   Also, in the photo above you can see a few sections where there is no ballast.  On the upper right edge of the photo there will be a train station, so no ballast was needed there, and between the tracks in the upper left of the photo I will be installing a station platform, so again, no ballast needed (or desired).

In the photo above you can see the relative size of the ballast to a 1:32 scale figure.  The scale of the ballast is too big- the rocks are roughly twice the size of what they should be.  However, from a reasonable distance, it's not as obvious that the scale is off.  Plus, the larger stones fill the gaps between the ties nicely, making them look more 'buried' in the ballast.

Finally, here is a picture of the Marklin semaphore signal with the mechanism sunk into the Styrofoam.  The opening will be covered by card stock (I literally will use an index card), which will be painted and flocked / ballasted.  When finished, it will be hard to see that it is there.  Btw that little hint of red across the track from the signal is a feeder wire for the automatic slow-down module that will be bringing my digital locomotives to a realistic stop.  This will be painted gray soon to hide it as well.

I plan ballast the branch line next, and will also hope to start some scenery construction.  Stay tuned!

Ballasting Part 1

To me, the most daunting part of the construction of the layout has been the ballasting.  This week I decided to face my 'Sword of Damocles' and take a stab at ballasting Carstenbahn One.  I initially purchased some paint and painted the styrofoam roadbed.  Fear not, friends, it wasn't nearly as orange as the camera makes it out to be!

 So the plan was to lay the track, add ballast, and then spray the whole thing with matte medium to hold the whole shebang in place.  Well, I decided to try a different method, one I eluded to in an earlier post, and one that served me well in H.O. scale, namely slopping on large amounts of paint, pressing the track into the wet paint, and simply spreading the ballast across everything.  Then, after the paint has dried, vacuuming up the excess ballast and only having ballast between the ties and around the track.

The ballast I used is called poultry grit, or chicken grit.  A 25lb bag can be found at Tractor Supply Company for $9, and I will probably need 3-4 bags for the entire layout.  This is probably the cheapest ballasting material you can find, and look very realistic, too.

I started by making a couple of test cases, both with the brown paint and also a batch of dark gray paint I also had plenty of:

I used the same technique as I have described - press the track into the wet paint, add ballast, wait for the paint to dry, and vacuum away the excess.  It's hard to tell in the pictures, but there really is a difference in color based on the base.  Of the 3 people who looked at the samples, all three agreed that the dark paint was the better choice.  So last night, with the help of my mother (bless her for her enthusiasm on this project!), we tackled the first half of the main line...

This is how the roadbed looks when the Styrofoam has been painted, the track has been laid, and ballast has been spread over everything.  In some cases, the track kept pulling up from the paint, and I had to weight the track down to keep it firmly pressed into the paint.  In the future I will have very narrow screws at the ready to screw down any track that tried to pull up.

Here is a picture of the outer-to-inner-track crossover under ballast.  As you can see, I have taped up the switch at the mechanism to avoid getting ballast trapped in the 'throat' of the switch.  I will know soon enough if it worked.  FYI the ballast in the lower picture is still a little damp, which is why it is a darker shade.

I plan to vacuum away the excess ballast in a couple of days and will post about the results, including some better pictures.

One last picture:  Here is the end of the station area, where I have cut out the Styrofoam to sink the signal mechanisms a little,  I believe this will look much better than having the large Marklin solenoids sticking up behind the signals...

Stay tuned for the ballasting finale!!

Roadbed for the Nebenbahn and some wiring gets done...

Hey all,

There has been more activity on Carstenbahn One thanks to rainy days and an attack of gout, which kept me indoors for much of the past two weeks.

I added some wood underneath the Koenigstein branch line, and have been able to run some trains up the hill.  The grade is quite manageable, and even a longer freight train can make it to the top with little difficulty.

I also started some of the wiring of the layout.  I learned about a 'bare copper' wiring technique from Tim Eckert of Eckert Engineering fame via a project he did for a client in California.  The idea is to run bare copper wires for all your power needs, then tap off those wherever you need juice.  Here are some photos of the design:

Sorry this image isn't sharp, but as you can see, there are three copper wires passing through eyelets and making their way around the layout.

In the image above you can see one end of the wires.  I used eyelets at the end, wrapped the wires around themselves, and ran some solder onto the twisted wires to hold them together.  FYI you don't want to make a loop on your power circuit.  Not sure why, but that's what I've been told...

Here's the other end of the wiring system near the control panel.  There are adjustable eyelets on this end to allow me to set and maintain decent tension.  Note the tabs of yellow, brown and red electrical tape.  These tabs, which are placed every few feet, remind me which wires carry which type of power.  Yellow is accessory power, red is digital track power, and brown is ground.  In the image above you can also see the dabs of solder that hold the wires together where they are twisted.

Opinion time!

There is a website for 1-scalers that provides frequent updates on new products, train shows, etc. that I visit about once a week.  It's www.spur1info.com, and even if you don't read a lot of German, the site owner takes excellent pictures and provides lots of updates on what's happening in the (mostly European) 1-scale community.  A recent post showed the following picture from a recent train show:

photo courtesy of www.spur1info.com

The article's author mentioned that he thought the layout shown in the image above was, well, "meh".  He's right. The structures shown are all commercially available kits, the trees only remotely resemble the real thing, the curves are too tight to be realistic, the rolling stock (and the crane) aren't weathered, the grass looks like it was spray painted, and the locomotive service facility is comically small and simple.

But I love this photo, and I am trying to understand why.

I think it speaks to the diversity of the hobby of model railroading, and how different model railroaders approach it.  Coming from an H.O.background, I found my enjoyment in watching trains proceed through scenery, and I replicated that in miniature as these pictures from my H.O. layout show:

So you can imagine how I feel when I see layouts like this:

Building a layout that ends within inches of the edge of the track roadbed is not the kind of layout I would ever want to build.  Now, 1-scale is a different creature, and the hillside that I built in H.O. shown in the first picture of my H.O. layout would be about four feet tall in 1-scale, and wouldn't fit in my SUV, so it's not a surprise that you don't see a lot of those on portable layouts like the Württemberg team's or the Wuppertal club's layout (above).  But I would never have any interest in those two layouts simply because the detail of the rolling stock, or the attention to trackside details like weathering the track and the bumpers, and replacing the plastic with real wood like the bumper on the right, have little appeal to me compared to seeing trains, in any scale, making their way through scenery.  And that even goes for scenery that may not be the most realistic.

So thank you, Marklin, for what is a decidedly pathetic layout that first introduced me to the possibilities of building something grandiose back in 2001 that caught my eye at the Modellbahnmesse.  If it hadn't been for this layout, one that makes even the picture at the top of this post look impressive, I may never have fallen in love with the King's Gauge...

- Carsten