Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 108 i Voie Libre international

THE WRIGHTLINES KITS ARE BACK 0-16,5 /0-14 A must-build for 0 scale narrow gauge enthusiasts in the 1990s and 2000s, who discovered them at the Expométrique show, the Wrightlines kits had become unavailable since Kay Butler retired. After a few years of uncertainty regarding the future of the range, David J. Parkins has bought all the tooling as well as the reproduction rights. This means all the models will become available again in due course. The first references appeared during October on the online shop. You can already order the British Army 40hp Simplex tractors (price: ca £75), the vertical-boilered De Winton 0-4-0 tank engine (£82.80), as well as carriages and wagons. For continental Europe buyers, British VAT is deducted upon order. Customs duties and EU taxes will have to…

Three bodies, two bogies, a 3D printed roof. A sheet of laser-cut card for the door and window frames, the end-balcony gates, the floor of the open wagon and the roofs. Eight nylon axles with 6.2mm diam. wheels. Six piano wire coupling loops. A sheet of transparent polystyrene, three drums, two crates and a trunk. Some inventory, that will enable us to assemble a fine mixed goods-passenger train. THE FIFTH ELEMENT For this fifth set, drawn by Eric Fresné, we chose a short Decauville bogie carriage – 9.1cm over buffers – with seven windows and two end-balconies. A small van – 5.6cm – and an opne wagon – 5.6cm – with a sheet supporting bar from the Trinité Etel line. Enough to make up a 20.3cm long consist, ideal for…

Originally mined by the Beauchamp forges in the XVIIIth century, iron pyrites from Chizeuil were worked by John Cockerill until 1853. The Givors Forges Company, but also Schneider, worked other parts of the deposit from 1852 to around 1870. A concession was awarded to Fernand Raoul-Duval in 1877. Rich in sulphur, this ore made pig iron brittle. The pyrites were shipped to the Perret company at Saint-Fonds for making sulphric acid. In 1896, the Chizeuil Mines Limited Company was created, whose main shareholder, Saint-Gobain, also owned the Saint-Bel mines at Saint-Pierre-la Palud (Rhône), where another deposit of the same ore was worked. To connect the mine to the Moulins – Mâcon PLM line, a 60cm gauge electric railway was built around 1907 to Perrigny-sur-Loire, after having been officially approved on…

The «Secondary and strategic railways» bill having facilitated the financing of new lines, an extension of the Palma-Sóller railway, from Sóller station to the harbour, was put into service on 4th October 1913. Built to the same gauge, 914mm, it was designed as an electric tramway running on 600 Volts DC. It was used to move goods wagons to and from the harbour. During the Spanish Civil War, petrol shortages restricted the use of road lorries, so a small special wagon was built to carry fish into town. It ran behind the trams until the 1980s. Infrastructure The 4.8km line originated from Sóller station, ran through the town, crossed the Torrent Major on a metal bridge, then joined the road leading to the harbour, which was reached at the terminus…

Start by dismantling the engine, by unscrewing the funnel which holds the superstructure onto the chassis. Then, unclip delicately the superstructure. Watch out for the crosshead slides, they must be eased out gently to avoid bending them. Getting past the flywheel is a bit tricky. Then, remove the body shell from the remainder of the engine. The photos are sufficiently explicit to see what needs to be done. The front and rear lamps are removed with a scalpel, as well as the cast smokebox door wheel: nothing more in terms of heavy work!…

Uncommon in those days, the common stretch between Aisey-sur-Seine and Vaurois junction, 2,576m long, was operated with an electric token. This is how it worked: trains could not move onto this stretch without the token. An electric safety system prevented a token from being withdrawn between the various locations as long as one token was missing from one of the panels. And whenever a train was present on the common stretch, specific bells sounded permanently in the stations. This is an attractrive feature when operating a model railway: the train must carry its token to be allowed to run, it is impossible to depart «blind» without this precious item.…

The Narrow Gauge Train In Box allows modellers to build a miniature train layout in H0 scale using 9mm gauge track. Once assembled, the layout measures 80 x 70cm, the contents of the box provide for decorating the front part of the layout – on a surface of 80 x 40cm – leaving a simple undecorated track to close the loop at the rear. This complementary set contains what is needed to add a private siding to this part of the layout, with a kickback siding, and to decorate the area. IT’S ALL IN THE BOX The Train In Box principle remains unchanged: all the items are contained in the box. The modeller has everything required to build the layout. The complementary set features: the track baseboards (3mmthickMDF)for the private…

1 Preparing the parts: removing the flash and the printing supports with various sharp tools. 2 Gluing the jib onto the body of the crane with superglue. 3 Gluing the stays, the gears and their fairings using quick wood glue. One side after the other. 4 Using a spray can, white paint is applied to the crane and anthracite grey to the chassis. 5 The wagon floor and the hookare paintd with acrylic paint, using a brush, after having masked the lower part of the chassis. 6 The pivot is glued under the chassis with superglue. 7 The couplings, recycled from an old Jouef wagon, are added. 8 The REE axles, featuring spoked wheels, are fitted. Take care with the axleboxes, the PLA is fairly brittle. 9 Fit the chain,…

By 1850, the population of Paris had grown to one million inhabitants and the city still had no more than a few dozen kilometres of sewers. In the context of a cholera pandemic, sewage wound up either in cesspits that were seldom waterproof, or worse still, directly in the Seine… While building the modern Paris on the surface, the city authorities undertook an extensive sanitation plan and gradually adopted the principle of universal connection to the sewage network. It became compulsory for privately-owned buildings to be connected, but the main collector sewers still flowed into the river, downstream at Clichy, generating enormous sanitation problems. It wasn’t until 1889 that spreading sewage on agricultural land was substituted to dumping it in the river. During the 1890 decade, the city of Paris…

Working with sheets or strips of polystyrene requires only quite basic tooling. Here is what could be found on my workbench when having completed this article. For tracing, I use a fine permanent felt-tip, a thick ruler, two squares including a heel square (the largest). A protractor can also come in useful. When moving on to the cutting stage, I use a medical scalpel fitted with n° 23 blades for thin sheets. The large yellow Olfa P450 knife is used for making clean cutting grooves on thick sheets. For parts thicker than 2.5mm, the Tamiya saw ref. 74111 and its two types of blades is perfect! I added to it a small mitrebox that I 3D printed myself. The Tamiya saw is also excellent for scribing strips and imitating the…

AtthetimetheNarrowGauge Train In Box was designed by the LR Presse team, it was imagined as an entry point into the world of railway modelling and its many aspects: laying and electrifying track, relief, scenery, vegetation, buildings, but also operation. The trackplan of the stater set allowed for two trains to run and pass in the station and to drop off or collect one or two wagons from the dead-end siding. With the extension, the operational possibilities are increased, as trains can now pass from one side of the layout to the other. In a similar manner to what our Anglo-Saxon colleagues call «shunting puzzles», it is now very simple to imagine small shunting scenarios during which the operator must shunt wagons to achieve a given configuration. To imagine your own…

Carrying logs on a narrow gauge railway is always a pleasing modelling project. The recent release by REE of sets comprising two Hv type flat wagons provides a good basis for evoking the pairs of HTv wagons fitted with swivelling bolsters, such as those used on the CFD Vivarais network. The modification required is simple but must be done with care; and to make the job easier, most parts consist of 3D prints which can be fabricated with an office printer. DISMANTLING 1 The wagon must be dismantled for drilling out the housing for the bolster pivot, and to engrave the floor. I began by dismantling only one wagon, keeping the second as a model for putting things back together. The glue used by the manufacturer for assembling the parts…

A depot on a model railway provides a good reason for displaying your locomotives and shunting them around. It is also a rewarding scenic and staging exercize, as it features many typical elements of a railway atmosphere. After having left the topic aside for quite a long time, I decided to tackle it again seriously last summer by making a list of all the features I could include in Quittancourt. I was inspired by the only panoramic photograph of an MRL depot known to me. On a fairly small surface, a water tower, a coal stage and a pit are all visible. This is what I decided to model. The techniques and materials used are fairly varied. This first article deals mainly with plastic sheet. In the next issue, I…

Let us imagine a junction on a metre gauge line, serving a short branch line. Let us imagine that the junction is not located at the station, but out in the countryside, a few kilometres away, at the end of a common stretch of line. Let us imagine that the timetable is designed so that trains pass there three times a day, in both directions. This is exactly the story told by Gaby Bachet. Enough to conjure up operational sessions based on the real thing. But before grabbing the controller, let us take a closer look at this junction station – without a junction! Aha! Two wagons are parked alongside the raised platform, and a third one blocks the access to track 1. Imagine the shunting movements required to simply…