Merkur passenger service

The night express was running through the train room this night. Now the nights are getting longer and colder, the lighted coaches are a wonderful sight in the train room. Awesome metal coarse scale trains!

Last run of the season

Last Sunday, the local heritage railroad company MBS ran the last trains for the season. It was a quiet autumn day. The sun just gave sufficient heat to vapourise the fog away and to reveal the red leaves. From a distance the steady white plume of smoke of the small black Swiss steamer could already be discerned and whistle broke the silence in sleepy Haaksbergen.

The newly placed pedestrian bridge from 1888 fits nicely in the scenery.

In the open engine house, a small rail bus is standing idle. This German pig's snout is shining beautifully. The proud volunteer kindly speaks of his double engine. It has to be double clutched to change gears. A skill that not many of us have acquired. And of the new upholstery with old fabric from an old English textile mill.

The Swiss steamer passes the Austrian coaches and is hooked on with the cab reversed, ready for the short leg to Boekelo.

In Boekelo there is plenty of warm coffee in the engine house, which helps to warm the cold fingers.

Within the engine house, many finished and restored coaches can be enjoyed, as well as the many restoration projects for the near future. And just to be clear: no trespassing! The small black steamer is a mighty engine.

Big Hector

Last Saturday, we visited the toy train swap meeting in Houten. This proved to be an excellent location to find myself a present; big Hector. In other words, Merkur's 9171 diesel electric locomotive T458 of the CSD. The model is available in s few different liveries, a blue-white one can also be found on the web. The originals were built in the sixties in Czechoslovakia, but their design crudely resembles diesel electric switchers running in other countries. Personally, I find it perfect for running Lionel tinplate rolling stock with. But I am sure others will disagree.

The model train has two engines, directional lightening and a sound generator, which generates a diesel rumble and additionally produces horn blasts at random intervals. It is a relative strong engine and it can pull a longer string of railroad cars. I received the engine with Merkur couplers, which I swapped for Bing style hook couplers. This is quiet easy, especially in case the skirts are loosened (but do not completely unscrew them, since you will need much more time to screw them back on again) and tilted to enlarge the room for unscrewing the retaining nylon metal nut.

Several web-videos show the original engine and one striking feature is different, to resemble the original even better, a smoke generator needs to be installed, which is able to belch out tar black smoke during operation. Furthermore, the original Hector in the blue-white livery has a red star on the front, as a scar from the past. Personally I am a bit allergic to red stars, so I am quiet pleased with star-less Hector in red and grey.

Lego NS train

Yesterday, the weather forecaster expected some heavy showers, but instead we got a beautiful sunny day. So, it was an excellent day for running some trains in the garden. A younger member of the family decided that we were going to run some self-built Lego trains. The engine is styled according to the Dutch NS 1600 rectifier serie. The motor and the control unit were taken from a standard Lego 7939 train set. Which was completely distroyed in the process of making this NS train, obviously.

To make this ride a bit more interesting,we laid the tracks through some wood stumbs to give it an undutch canyon-like experience.

The passenger coach is also styled in NS livery, although perhaps a bit short for the real thing, still a stunning beauty. The trucks (bogies if you are British) were purchased at a German Lego swap meeting.

Personally I was quiet pleased with this contribution.

One of the main benefits of Lego trains, is that they come and go. A few months ago, a small switcher was built with the same bricks. But this 'sik' (NS 300 series) has also disappeared  in the process of constructing the NS 1600.

Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum

A few days ago we visited the largest German train museum. It is situated in the 'Ruhrgebiet' and lies in between Essen, Wattenscheid, Bochum and the river Ruhr.Once you leave the motorway 40, you will drive through residential areas for 15 minutes and then finally a few hairpin bends and you are in the Ruhr-valley in front of the entrance of the train museum.

It is a large terrain and used to be the steam depot of the German railroad in Bochum, including turntable and semicircular engine house. It has also two large rectangular engine houses, a station building. It is a rather different train museum than the Dutch Spoorwegmuseum. Since this train museum displays trains and has not be changed-over into 'an experience and children-playground'.

Not just a few trains, but loads of them to be more precise.

It is fairly difficult to make good photo's in the engine house, since the sun light brightly shines through the upper windows and make the trains reflect in all directions.

Several types of rail buses were displayed. Here a regular bus on train trucks as it operated in the fifties and sixties on remote branch lines.

But also the earlier pig's face from the twenties and thirties.

And some regular passenger coaches for the high speed trains of that era.

Luckily you can enter a few steamer cabins and respect the jungle of valves and pressure displays.

They have several steam engines that are tested and railroad-worthy, which are used for occasional trips. But they also have many steamers and coaches in urgent demand of restoration.

The oldest train car on display is a closed goods car from the 1850's. They estimated the age on several marks on the iron work. The wood side panels and the roof is in dilapidated condition, but it shows how small these early boxcars were.

Here an example of positive discrimination for women; a separate coach department on the high speed coach for women. Why? Smokers and non-smokers as division I understand. Prudery, curiosity or simply a way to avoid harassment? One wonders.

Here the logo of the Royal Prussian railroad company, hand painted on the side of a passenger coach. They needed a few well-trained painters back them to do all the coaches...

A general advice for all persons that try performing on stage without talent. Still relevant in the age of 'the Voice', etc.

And then there was the German crocodile E94 an impressive beauty.

In the end there were too many trains to be photographed. I reckon that they will spend the coming century to restore the rest of the trains that need TLC. There were many nice details to be seen, like the following shots:

In the wealth of train cars that require restoration, they choose to restore a train car that was used by Hitler. This came as a shock. The train car was beautiful restored and shined brightly. The swastika and eagle were prominently visible on the side of the car. Although they explained the historic significance of this train car, I would have preferred to let this car rot and instead restore the orient express sleeping car for instance. Although this is our shared history, it is still discomforting.

Lightening the Merkur combined luggage passenger coach

The green passenger coach 9330 and restaurant coach 9331 were already lit. So only the combined luggage passenger coach 9751 still had to be equipped with some internal lights.

Merkur sells two types of interiors for 42 cm (17 inch) long coaches.The 8961 for regular coaches and the 8962 for dining cars. The latter comes with grey tables. Only the 8962 is suitable, but needs a small modification. Two seats need to cut of, to avoid them of obstructing the sliding doors.

After all the screws were loosened to allow the side panel to tilt, the seats would fit in.

Then all the screws and nuts could be tightened again.

The LED strips of Hufing Tronic were glued to the roof and the leads were soldered.

Two blue paper strips were attached with sticky tape to the blue roof line to create a ridge to avoid light shining under the roof slit.The self-made electrical pick-ups were connected and soldered on and then we could let it run.

These passenger coaches are great and just make me happy to see them shine.

Marx lights

Marx was a great American toy company. They were specialised in mass-produced toys with lots of play-value. Although the name amuses me in the sense that it was a toy-manufacturer in a country were McCarthy lived. The geezer that hunted anybody down that only vaguely smelled like a communist. But that is forgotten by most, as is the wall, etc. But some pretty good toys remain. Funny when you think of it; toys out-live ideologies.  Anyway, for some unclear reasons, some great Marx toy train accessories became available on my local market and I was fortunate to get a hold on three items. And since these items were not manufactured by Märklin or Lionel, they were cheap and value for money.

I already wired a Marx 416 Floodlight tower from 1938. The patina on the reflectors was so aged (black) that it hardly functioned as a reflector, so I gave it a thorough rub and polish. Since, these were mass-produced I do not mind anyway about patina.

The Marx 436 Searchlight tower is a truly tall structure and once wired on, it lights up the room as a true searchlight should. Unfortunately the glass lens has a crack, but perhaps I can find a replacement somewhere.

And then the Marx 404 automatic block signal with a lever to control the lights and a rheostat to control the light strength. Pretty damn old as well and hence very welcome indeed.

Spring swap meeting in Zutphen

Last weekend we had our local toy train swap meeting in Zutphen. They even placed bill boards in my street, so I had to go. It is basically a large sport hall, filled with toy trains and toy train enthusiasts.

On top of that, I made an appointment to run a few colourful Lionel trains on Sunday morning on the Merkur layout of Blik en Speelgoed.

So I unpacked my Lionel B&O train and let it run. Obviously the horn made a lasting impression on a few unwary youngsters.

It was nice to let the Lionel trains to blend in on the Merkur layout.

Later we changed back to DC operation and ran a few Merkur trains. This green tank engine is one of my favorites. The new red German rectifier switcher was also present. It was also really nicely made.

There was a nicely made American layout in half zero, which caught my attention. Nice folks with beautiful trains.

For the rest there was the usual trade from the usual suspects. Well hidden we found a few treasures.

Here a wind-up scale zero tinplate train from the fifties, probably commissioned by the German toy trade house Vedes. Anyway, I made myself happy with Marx search light tower and a Merkur lamp post. All in all a beautiful Sunday morning indeed.