Indholdsfortegnelse for JULY 2014 - 78 i Voie Libre international

The layout at a glance • Scale: 1/43.5• Gauge: 16.5 mm• Control: digital• Inspiration: freestyle• Dimensions :3.35 x 0.95 m Éric Fresné: Martin Coombs, railway modelling is almost genetic for a Brit… Martin Coombs: hereditary, at any rate! With a father and an uncle who are both railfans, it was almost unavoidable that I should fall in at the deep end. Most of my childhood holidays were spent visiting the “great little trains of Wales”. Since then, I have spent a lot of time working out how to transpose them in the modelling field. EF: When you aren’t attending shows, how is your layout set up? MC: Permanently, in my garage. I have taken it over completely and the car has been exiled outside. This leaves me enough space to set up the layout, which…

Running on lightweight track with sharp curves requires suitably designed locomotives. The problem isn’t easy to solve. For the track to withstand the load, the latter has to be spread over several driving axles if the engines are to retain enough power. The Germans concluded in favour of the 0-8-0 T type. But four driving axles means a long rigid wheelbase, incompatible with the sharp radiuses of portable 60cm gauge track. In France, Péchot and Bourdon thought up two sets of articulated wheels under their locomotive. In Germany, the solution chosen was invented by two Saxon engineers: Ewald Klien and Heinrich Lindner. The leading and trailing axle consist of a hollow axle on the outside and a fixed driving axle running through it (document 1). The central axle (1) is…

In the bottom of the garden, not far from my terminus station, Noyerssur-Couches, there is a large hole that sometimes fills with water. My father-in-law, who owns the property, had several times challenged me to “build a viaduct over the hole!” This construction project took a while to be implemented, as it required restructuring the dry stone wall at the back of the garden, so as to have a sufficiently large curve on the line. It also implied extending the line beyond the terminus, a situation that was actually encountered on the real Vivarais system when the line from Tournon was extended beyond Lamastre to Le Cheylard. I decided to build the viaduct out of PVC and concrete: the PVC mould, engraved and decorated, would remain in place once the…

Supplies required • a glassless mirror• 6mm thick plywood• wood glue• 1mm nails• black paint• fixing screw (special thread)• a few washers In Issue 782 of Loco-Revue, Yann Baude wrote a brilliant article about photographing model layouts. He mentioned one delicate aspect: the axis of the shot musn’t be too high, to avoid seeing mostly the roofs of our models. In practice, on large layouts or in small scales, it’s very difficult to locate the axis of the camera lens at a height that would correspond to the eyes of a scale figure. To create the illusion of being an inhabitant of my layout, via photographs, I imagined using a periscope. This enables me to locate the lens axis of my digital SLR camera 20mm above the ground, roughly the height of a figure’s eyes. This device…

The four carriages date back to 1865 and 1866. They comprise three compartments and feature a wood chassis. The doors have handles only on the outside. In addition, the railway had “brake and luggage van” n° 5. This extraordinary four-wheeler van was built in 1865 by Brown Marshall. Its design was broadly similar to that of the carriages. Over the decades, it underwent many transformations to meet the needs of the railway. It was in particular fitted with a small aperture in the lookout, on the platform side, to serve as a ticket office in the intermediary stations of the line. The goods roster comprised some 150 slate wagons. They were built of wood. The chassis cross-beams acted as buffer beams. Only one wagon out of four was fitted with…

ll the versions indicated in the catalogue are not yet available for sale. And at the time of going to print, the only sets available were those consisting of a locomotive and four wagons, in grey military livery with black lining or in green livery with red chassis. I tested the locomotive in normal operating conditions on an enthusiast’s layout. Appearance The locomotive has a fine appearance, the proportions are correct and the overall shape is prototypical. This engine isn’t in 1/87 scale, it’s actually closer to British 00 than to Continental H0. In view of the small dimensions of the prototype, this doesn’t create a loading gauge problem with other items of stock in H09. The model is made out of injected plastic, with a few etched brass add-on…

With its lightweight appearance and high-standing outline, the Brigade wagon has a very special and recognizable appearance. Its two bogies, fitted with a guardrail, support a wooden body reinforced with ironwork. This “body” actually consists of panels that fit into brackets fixed to the chassis. Like a Péchot platform, such a wagon can carry 6 m3 of equipment, but the comparison stops here. Whereas Allied wagons could happily carry 10 tonnes, the Brigade wagons couldn’t handle more than 5 tonnes. Keeping in mind that German 60cm gauge was designed to support the troops and not to supply the artillery; this wasn’t a problem in practice. The large Feldbahn bogie wagons were complemented by even lighter Förderbahn four-wheeler wagons, which could supply the front lines directly and evacuate casualties using portable…

Supplies: • A metal ruler• A mechanical pencil• A scalpel or an X-Acto knife with a new blade• Liquid cement for plastic kits• Wood glue• Cyanoacrylate glue• Adhesive tape• Two H012 axles• Four axleboxes by Maquette Création (5 €)• Evergreen strips ref. 122-125-262-263-291• 0.13 and 0.5 mm thick plastic sheet• One sheet of graph paper To be fully honest, this article is a pretext. A pretext to convince you that kitchen table modelling is a worthwhile exercise. A simple one: it requires only basic tooling and not much in terms of materials. A quick one: it’s all over in just a few hours. And a pleasing one! Even though this project doesn’t meet the current standards of H012 artisan productions, it won’t look out of place on your layout. I therefore invite you to build a wagon chassis. It is inspired by…

As early as 1830, slate quarries opened in the mountains near Tywyn. They were small artisan undertakings. The only industrial quarry was at Bryn Eglwys, North-East of Tywyn. William Mc Connel, one of the owners, decided in 1865 to build a narrow gauge railway connecting the quarry to Tywyn, already served by the standard gauge line of the Aberystwyth and Welsh Coast Railway. The site was perfect for transshipping the slate. James S. Spooner, elder brother of Charles E. Spooner, the engineer and manager of the Ffestiniog Railway, carried out the studies. The line was built to the unusual 68.6cm gauge, identical to that of the Corris Railway nearby. The ruling gradients were not very steep. There was only one major piece of civil engineering, so the 6.6 miles of…

The layout at a glance • Scale: H0 (1/87)• Gauge: 16.5mm standard gauge and 9mm narrow gauge• Supply: Roco digital• Inspiration: Poland in the1960s-1970s Four persons, two couples. They have a good time, and offer visitors a quality show. And above all, they make us travel, we West Europeans, who are not familiar with the many narrow gauge railways of the former Eastern block. Leszek Lewiñski and his wife Malgorzata, Sebastian Marszal and his wife Monika, operate a large U-shaped layout, one side of which represents an imaginary station named Lewin Leski, served by the standard gauge while also being the terminus of a 0.75m narrow gauge line, and the other two sides the narrow gauge line running through the Polish countryside. For our modellers, the challenge isn’t to model reality, but to evoke…

In the early XXth century, the Prussian and Bavarian army engineers were already quite familiar with 60cm gauge railways. The track and the rolling stock had been put fully through their paces. And the “Zwillinge” engines, those curious 0-6-0Ts of industrial origin, coupled in pairs back to back, had proved their efficiency during military maneuvers. On the battlefields, during the conquest of Namibia, however, they soon appeared less convincing. Even fitted with tenders, they lacked range and endurance. Several builders then dispatched to Africa a series of locomotives, all of which were treated as prototypes to be tested by the military. Subjected to rigorous trials, they led to the definition of a sort of ideal engine, according to the principles of the German army engineer corps… A huge series Out…

The layout at a glance • Scale: 0 1/43.5• Gauges: 16.5 and 32 mm• Dimensions : 80 x 30 cm plus fiddleyard• Control: DCC• Inspiration: freestyle Sometimes, while strolling down an aisle in an exhibition hall, or opening the morning mail, you are caught by the very layout you would have loved to build! That’s what happened with “Les traverses d’Espigoule”, which I discovered one day while reading my emails. I’ll cut a long story short by letting the builder of this layout describe it to our readers. François Fontana : Hallo Olivier. What was the inspiration for Les traverses d’Espigoules? Olivier Rouy : Hallo François. This is my first attempt in 0 scale. It gave me the opportunity to discover the pleasures of this scale economically, and without the need for lots of space.…

The first steam locomotive was supplied by Fletcher Jennings in September 1864. It was a saddle tank 0-4-0 with inside frames and valve gear. In 1867, it was rebuilt as a 0-4-2 saddle tank. Nowadays, it is known as “Talyllyn” and is amongst the oldest steam locomotives still in service in the world. The second engine was delivered in 1866 by Fletcher Jennings. It was a 0-4-0 tank engine with inside frames and a very long wheelbase, typical of very early locomotive design. Neither of the locomotives had cabs, a feature that didn’t really help given the local weather! After having being named “Pretoria”, the 0-4-0 tank was re-named “Dolgoch”. Of the two, it was extensively and almost continuously used by the Talyllyn company from its delivery in 1866. A…

In the far south-east of the German federal state of Saxony, oddly-shaped sandstone formations stand on both banks of the Elbe river. This area is known as “Sächsische Schweiz” (Saxon Switzerland). Until a railway was built along the Elbe in the early XIXth century, this area was remote. In the middle of the same century, a steamboat service was established on the river, generating a large amount of tourist traffic to and from this exceptionally scenic area. This was when the idea of a meter-gauge tram line, running from Bad Schandau on the banks of the Ellbe, to the very top of the Kirnitzschtal valley, was mooted. A tramway for pleasure Construction began on 1st April 1897, and the track reached Lichtenhainer Wasserfall (waterfall), 8.3km up the valley. A shortage…