ARS Technica

On a snowy mountain ridge in the Ardennes lies the small village of Losheim. The slow cold wind turns the wind mills slowly overhead. Which feet can be seen, the rest is obscured by fog. The over-snowed war graves on the ground can occasionally be seen in this cold and silent village. In the former custom offices of the Belgian-German border a strange mixture of a model train shop, museum and impressive railroad layout has emerged. You enter a model train shop, which is fairly impressive in size, gauges and accessories. Then you walk up a set of stairs, pass the tourniquet with your entrance ticket and you are in a toy train museum.

The exhibition has many interesting layouts and toy trains. Although my interest was focused on the prewar Fandor, Märklin, Bing and Krauss trains. But I did appreciate to learn from gauge TT Rokal and gauge S Bub and Stadtilm as well.

The West-German made toy train of Bub in scale S.

And the East-German made toy train of Stadtilm in scale S.

A beautiful gantry crane of Krauss toy trains.

And loads of prewar tin-plate train cars.

Sufficient cheerfully coloured cars to make you happy on such a cold winters day.

There is not just a few display cabinets, but rather many dozens. Obviously I restrained myself to prewar tinplate.

After the museum part with the old trains, there are multiple layouts. Fortunately most layouts and displays are meant for toy trains, but some local bloke went bazerk on modelling a Roman settlement, which is beyond prewar, in fact beyond pretrain. Then they have a small Laurel and Hardy cinema and many more operated toy train layouts.

Well, I took too many pictures, anyway, I reckon you get the message, whenever you are passing a mountain ridge between Belgium and Germany and you fancy seeing some toy trains, then you better stop at the Ardenner Culture Boulevard in Losheim to visit the ARS Technica. And no, I do not grasp the name of the facility either, but it is a nice display, for sure.

Tin-plate hopper

Last month on the 17th of December, we had the local swap model train meeting in Zutphen, which I crash-visited between several appointments, but that gave me just enough time to find a nice modern tin-plate hopper.

The hall was packed with toy trains, but the general atmosphere was a bit more optimistic than the last swap meeting in March. There was simply more trade. I obviously spend most of my time at the train table of Blik en Speelgoed.
Now I was looking for a tin-plate hopper for quiet some time. I had a Lionel 816 hopper on my wish list for a few years. But those that surfaced here in Europe, were either far beyond restoration or extremely over-valued. So, I was happy to see that Merkur released a full metal modern-tin plate hopper, no. 9416

It is a true modern European hopper (Facss type) and very well made for a full metal train car. Although the chutes cannot be opened, it is still a beauty, which runs and looks great. Finally the tin-plate has arrived. Although, I never practice new years resolutions, I do have figure out what will be next. Perhaps wiring some additional lamps and signals. One of the recent surprises is the re-erection of the Czech top train company named Tioka-Ikaria, which apparently is also planning to release a metal hopper car in the coming year. Well I am anxious to see what they will produce.

By the way, I was given four scratch-built scale 0 train cars a few months ago (they are in the middle of the pictures). They are interesting folk art objects. They are made from cheap wood (cigar boxes) and soldered metal wires. Given the type and grey colour of the paint, I would reckon that they were build in the late forties to early fifties of the last century. Somebody must have spend many evenings making those. The wheels are common bub wheels, which were most likely salvaged from wind-up cars. The couplers are Märklin type. They do not have buffers, as that would probably have been to complicated to self-fabricate in the shed. They have a special appeal to them, which is difficult to comprehend and explain. Anyway, I will sure that they will be kept in good running order for the coming decades.