Bridge and Light tower

Yesterday, I finished with cutting the X-beams for the bridge and nailing them down. Today, I filled a few gaps with wood filler and sanded the lot. So now the Ogle Winston Link Bridge is finished in crude. Guess I will have to contemplate the colours now.

Additionally, I soldered a few connecting wires to my Light Tower. For some reason I collected two rotating beacons; one metal of Lionel and one plastic from Marx. Both operate crappy; the light makes the beacon spin in a very uneven manner. So , I decided some time ago, to transform the Marx tower into a light tower. I used some scrap wood, paint, wires, sockets and lights and the first result is quiet all right. Looks a bit camp and that is just fine with me. Imagine that the core wooden barrel was a basket in which thin wooden cooking sticks were sold.

Cutting X-beams

Building a wooden bridge in scale zero is nice work, but you need real tools. Small doctor knives could work excellent with N scale, but here we need a small precision saw instead. Nevertheless, I have finished 2 cross-beams and still plenty to work on further.
Thought about what Frank suggested, and will name this bridge Ogle Winston Link when it is finished. That would be a tribute for a great photographer. Just have to get it done, Find a nice OWL poster and  print a small sign.

Dangerous crossing of a Lionel 289E over an unfinished bridge.

Building a bridge to ...

This weekend, I discovered that the Lionel 289E engine is a great engine to pull the Merkur coaches over the new track.

The video shows how smooth the Lionel 289E engine pulls the Merkur coaches 9751, 9330 and 9331.

Additionally I started with building the bridge to the other side (what else) and used the Lionel 817 caboose as the highest car in the rooster to measure the clearance.The bridge is still a bit rough, but it is a start.

New track for the layout

This Saturday, I went to Blik en Speelgoed to purchase some new Merkur tracks. The new track enabled me to remove the old half inner circle of Hornby-Meccano tracks and get some clean and level tracks in stead.

 Here you can see what I did with the Merkur switches; make a new switch yard.

 Plenty of new clean tracks, I would reckon.

Also the Weaver tank car that never fancied the Lionel 027 radius tracks, can now safely be placed on a side track without derailing it.

 In the middle of the larger table I used some my older Lionel 027 tubular tracks from the eighties to make a small yard.

 Here the Lionel 1668E crosses the temporary bridge.

Shake rattle and roll over new tubular tracks.
The moral of the last months; you can clean old tracks what you want, but you cannot get it level and straight, so in the end you will buy new tracks anyway.

Cleaning old track gives you black hands

This weekend we went to a local train swap meeting of MSC Achterhoek, which was larger than expected. I just purchased some small stuff; new color-coded wires and a rectifier.
In the evening, I repaired the 1668E, which had a loose wire between the E-unit and the electromotor. Well, it was still cotton insulated wire, so I cannot blame it for its age. Thus I replaced the wires with modern plastic insulated wires. It ran fine of the new Merkur tracks, but not on the inner half circle of old Hornby-Meccano tracks. The third rail pick-ups sparked and the trains did not ride steadily. Therefore, I tried too clean those old tracks, which a Dremel with a brass comb brush, followed by a rinse with tissue paper and alcohol, which rinsed off most of the black charry deposits. The top surface of the old rail now looked like a shiny mirror and my hands looked like those of a coal shoveller.
Some engines now handled the inner curve good, others did not. Engines with sliding shoes as third rail pick ups performed better than those with rollers as pick ups. Anyway, I reackon that I need to buy some more clean new Merkur tracks after all. That is a new project for next week.

Lionel 1668E running on the new tracks

The Lionel 817 caboose has the right size to fit with Merkur coaches.

The Lionel 603-604 coaches look like silly dwarves compared to the Merkur coaches;
Who said that everything American is bigger?

Towards a permanent layout

During the holiday season I build the benchwork for a permanent layout in the attic. The layout will have two levels; the lower level with Märklin h0 scale trains and the upper level with Lionel trains. Here are some pictures of the construction.

The new long Merkur coach was used to test the clearance of the new layout. The three rail 0 scale layout has a U shape with a bridge between both extremities. Merkur rails with roughly a 042 radius were used for the outer circle and the side track. But I will probably use Lionel 027 tubular tracks for the freight yard on the middle of the table. Well, there is still plenty to do.

Sunny autumn afternoon

With the lovely sunny autumn weather, I felt obliged to get outside and run the new diner coach. It ran great. The Merkur coaches with Bing couplers couple easy with pre-war Lionel trains with latch couplers, but pre-war Lionel is a bit under scale as compared to the modern Merkur tin-plate toy trains. But the modern MTH engines are a better size match and they also let the coaches run smoothly.

A string of colourful happiness

Pre-war Lionel trains look kind of small compared to these
huge Merkur coaches.

Dutch scale zero meeting in Zutphen

This weekend, the Dutch scale zero train meeting was held in Zutphen. Since most Dutch model railroaders are into half-zero or N, the scale zero public is limited and the gathering has a nice peaceful atmosphere. Up to a few years ago, this was the holy domain of fine scalers, scratch builders and rivet counters. But the toy trains have expanded to here as well. First, brands like Lenz and MTH made more and more European scale zero trains, which are very highly detailed, although some rivet counters will always be difficult to please and we start to see those trains in Zutphen now as well. Secondly, the local Merkur dealer has gained his own table in the group and achieved some pretty good sales with coarse scale Merkur trains, that run on 3 rails...

Yes indeed, here are some MTH engines on sale.

Some fancy coaches.

Nice modelling on the modular layout

It can't get more Dutch than this, I reckon!

Here is the Merkur-Lehnhardt display table with some nice trains running smoothly on the table. The sales representative of Merkur told me that it is likely that Merkur will also commence to produce AC trains in stead of those DC only engines. Would be a very good idea, as far as I am concerned. Also a larger hopper can be expected in the coming year.

Anyway, I could not resist and purchased a beautiful red diner car, Merkur 9331.

Merkur 9331 diner coach.

Memorail

Deep in the south west of France in the department Lot is a small railway museum named Memorail. This museum is located in the old goods shed of St. Gery along the former Quercyrail. The scenery along this line gorgeous; it lies in the gorge of the river Lot and is exceptionally beautiful.

The entrance fee is just a few Euro's and you will get to see a lot of railway artifacts, a nice h0 railway layout and several beautiful self-built large scale models.

One of the volunteers explained to me that they hope to raise funds to re-open the Quercyrail from St. Gery to Cajarc through the spectacular gorge de Lot. That would indeed be a great idea, but the scrubs and small trees that grow on the former railway line since 1989 have done substantial damage and more than some bucks will be necessary to achieve this goal.

Model of the WWI truce train car.

Decapod French style.

Let's hope they succeed to revive the Quercyrail and that trains will run through the valley bed again.

Doetinchem Stoomstad 2013

During the weekend of August 24 to 25th a steam fest was held and the organisation asked me to run some old toy trains. I had several months to prepare myself and choose for two ovals of pre-war Lionel trains.

The inner circle was classic 027 Lionel tubular track, the outer circle was modern Merkur tubular track. The streamlined engine was composed of the 1668E - 1679T - 1630 - 1630 -1631. The freight train was composed of the 1664E - 1679T - 652 - 651 - 1679 - 1680 - 657.

Two toy trains ran almost continuously; one freight train and a passenger train. They performed great. The 1668E suffered from a loose wire from the E-unit and was replaced after a day by a 1688E. Since it were original cotton-insulated wires, it is no wonder that it malfunctioned. I will have to rewire the engine.

It was funny to notice that most visitors did not recognise these toy trains. Some said that they were "Märklin" or "very old Märklin". I had explain quiet a lot, but that is just fine to me.

 Perhaps I have to organise a slightly larger table the next time...

Most of my public were young children; 3-6 years of age. They had never heard the rattle, seen the colours and smelled ozone of old metal toy trains on tubular tracks. What a joy to see these wide open eyes and mouths...

After two days of continuous service, I was more than satisfied with the reliable performance of these pre-war engines and I am glad to have shown some good old toy trains to a younger generation.

For some other pictures of the steam fest, see the site of Achterhoekfoto.

New tubular track curves

Yesterday, I visited the local toy train meeting in Zutphen and purchased some new tin-plate toy train tubular tracks made by the Czech company Merkur. Sixteen R9910 curves make a circle (about 042) and some additional straights R9920 (12 inch long)  make it an nice oval. The local Merkur and ETS dealer had a stand and layout. The tank engine 9195 with lights and sound ran a small goods train around the oval. It was a lively display and it really stood out from all the regular sales booths. Here are some pictures from the "Modelspoorbeurs Zutphen".

Modelspoorbeurs Zutphen May 25th 2013

Merkur toy trains

Merkur and ETS toy trains

There was also a bloke with a Lima scale zero layout, which was nice to see. And I was able to buy two old Lionel street lamps with die cast poles and the white plastic caps.  So a perfect trade meeting as far as I am concerned.

Lima scale zero layout on the floor of the Hanze Hall.

Well we directly laid an oval of the new track on the floor and it just ran great; no more derailments, shorts and other issues. The Weaver Alco can now finally run with some Lionel and Weaver cars directly coupled to it and without the help of some spacer to avoid derailment. I sure made me happy today.

The major bonus of tubular track is the rattle and rhythm, which can be heard in real trains on real tracks as well: 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, etc.