Dual Use

European models aren't the main focus of my layout, but I do have some. There was a thread about modeling European prototype on the Model Railroader forum recently, but it didn't get a whole lot of replies, and there was a tendency to equate European models with Märklin.

Other than the remaining Märklin 0-6-0T in my last post, my European equipment is all 2-rail DC. The big difference with European models is the flange depth. My understanding is that this is required mainly due to the way 4-wheel European cars interact with the track -- the long wheelbase gives less tolerance for track irregularities. However, European flanges won't run on US code 70 track, and mostly not on US code 83 track. However, European code 83 track is engineered for the deeper flanges, so if you want to run European equipment on code 83, you have to use European track.

I have some code 83 rack that's meant for both US and European equipment, mostly giving US equipment "trackage rights" in "Europe" to reach spurs and staging.

Getting In Touch With My Inner European

After I posted on railfanning the Czech Republic (insofar as I could do this from a boat), I suddenly remembered that what started me in HO was a Märklin starter set my parents got me, as best I can calculate, in 1956. Previously my family had set up a Lionel layout on a plywood rectangle (probably smaller than 4 x 6) that had belonged to my uncle at Christmas. However, that year, we moved to a smaller apartment, and there wasn't room for the Lionel, so the Märklin was a replacement.

I still have the loco from this set:

However, it's 3-rail AC, so it won't run on my layout, though it does live in a display case. I erred in my earlier post in saying that I didn't get hooked on European trains until the 1960s -- I was in fact fascinated with the Märklin set. Trying to read the instructions that came with the set was almost certainly what got me started studying German in school a few years later.

Wind Turbine Loads

I notice from the Model Railroader product news page that American Model Builders has announced wind turbine blade and nacelle loads.

While wind turbines are common on Tehachapi, Beaumont, and Altamont Passes in my area, it's unusual to see all the turbine components shipped together. In fact, I normally see the blades moving by highway, while the nacelles go by rail. Here are two nacelles that seem similar to the AMB model, riding on a Kasgro heavy duty flat:

They appear to be on a Mojave-bound manifest at West Colton. I would guess that the covered hoppers, returning to Mojave empty, are being used as spacers. These are heavy loads. However, the elbow-shaped device to the left of the AMB model seems to travel separately:

These are loaded in twos on QTTX flats, mounted over the trucks.

It looks as though two of the nacelle kits would provide loads for one Walthers (or similar) heavy duty flat and one Athearn or Intermountain 60-foot QTTX type flat.

Detour Into The Czech Republic

My wife and I just got back from a river cruise down the Elbe. I got hooked on European trains on my first visit to Europe in the backpack-Eurailpass-Europe on $5 a Day times in the 1960s. At the time, there was still quite a bit of steam in most countries.

My wife and I have made it back several times. One thing I've had to recognize is that my Eurailpass days are over: it takes quite a bit of agility to hump luggage up the steps from low-level station platforms and then into overhead racks -- and then there's the issue of dashing across 20 tracks or so at a station like Milano Centrale to catch a connecting train with maybe 2 minutes to spare. Plus, the TGV-ICE type trains becoming more and more common are hard to railfan from -- they go fast enough that photos from a moving train through tinted windows just won't work.

So we tried a river cruise, a much better solution for retirees. Boats are nearly as much fun as trains, much better than a bus. This cruise went from Berlin to Prague, entirely through the former East Germany and the Czech Republic. As a young railfan, I saw East German equipment only at border stations and never got to the former DDR itself until well after the wall came down. By now, the two former German rail systems have been thoroughly merged, and there isn't a whole lot left of what used to be -- not much different from railfanning BNSF or UP now.

The Czech Republic is another matter. Once we crossed the border, the Elbe River had electrified double-track main lines on both banks, each with trains running on each other's blocks. Even so, between the trees on the banks and the speed of the trains, grab shots were hard to get. Here are a few:

This is a 363 class electric, dual-voltage locomotives built by Skoda between 1980 and 1990. It is hauling an old-style conventional passenger train with 40-plus year old coaches, the kind of train that goes from city to city, swapping coaches in and out from connecting routes. You see this less and less in western Europe.

Here's a 362-class electric, a dual voltage loco built by Skoda in 1990. This is hauling empty auto racks, probably back to Skoda, the European double-deck style rack, unenclosed. The green and yellow scheme is apparently earlier than the blue on the loco above.

My best shot was of this German 189 class electric running through in the Czech Republic on a container train. This is a Siemens ES 64 F4 four-current freight loco equipped to run on all four of the common European voltages, so it can run through into the Czech Republic.

One factor for modeling more recent European trains is that the containers are very familiar to those of us on the other side of the ocean:

The E.L.Moore Windmill -- I

As I said earlier this week, new Bachmann retooled 4-4-0s and the MR Digital Archive combined to bring back my interest in E.L.Moore's Union Pacific windmill article, which I followed to build a model of my own in 1962. One issue in 1962 was that, although this was a fascinating project, I didn't have any real use for it on my then-layout, and I just kept it in my room and let it turn from the wind out of my electric fan.

Here's the current status:

This is very much in the spirit of E.L.Moore, using leftover stuff from around the house. The main timbers are barbeque-fireplace matches, which I've found various uses for in modeling, mainly bracing behind sheetwood for structures and logging skids up to now, but they work OK for this project as well. I have some cardstock and a school compass that I can use for the wheel when the time comes -- I will just need to run out for some craft store beads to use for spacers.

One thing that began to grow in my mind was whether I could actually put it on my layout. It doesn't look like Moore actually used it on his, from the photos at 30 Squares. It's unusual and sort of era-specific, the sort of thing that Allen McClelland says you should not do, because then you have to justify things to visitors -- but then, as I pointed out in my last post, John Allen got away with a lot himself, and if visitors don't like my layout, they don't have to visit.

So I began to think about a spot I'd already prepared for a water tank on my dual-gauge branch:

It's the flat white area to the left of the general store. I was originally going to put a D&RGW style water tank here, but I have another place where I can use that. With a little finagling, I can fit the windmill in (the catenary line below it will be hidden behind scenery):

I'll need to trim the base very closely, but it's doable. I think I will also E.L.Moore-ize an enclosed base for an old Revell plastic water tank. This will be in the spirit of UP versions, but it'll be small enough to fit beside the windmill. Here's another photo of a UP windmill I found on the web, this one at Laramie:

The proportions suggest this is the one Moore followed for his model.

Fun With The Hobby -- II

The one hobby figure I've always admired above all others is John Allen. Among other things, he broke a lot of the ordinary "rules" that people think govern the hobby with his Gorre and Daphetid layout. Linn Westcott said in his biography of John Allen that there were actually "two G&Ds", the one he operated with a group of regular friends and the one that was depicted in places like the ads he did for Varney and PFM.

Normally, for instance, he didn't run diesels, and the PFM O-8 on the upper track wasn't on the G&D roster. Still, when I first saw this ad in an MR sometime in the late 1950s, it inspired me, and I have an area on my layout now that looks something like this part of the G&D.

Allen was paid something by PFM for this shot, but it was probably a barter deal. PFM probably just gave him brass locos for this ad and other shots for their catalogs. By the early 1950s, according to Westcott, Allen's brother had invested their inheritance well enough that he could quit his photography business and spend full time on modeling. (Allen was 40 at the time.)

This means that, although he was probably very happy to get the PFM locos and rework them for his layout (he was a notorious tightwad), he really wasn't doing the ad shoots for the money. This ad appeared on the back cover of the November 1952 MR.

It's another diesel-powered streamliner of the sort that you wouldn't ordinarily see in a G&D operating session. There's also a Varney NW-2 with a bay window caboose closer to the camera. But even outside the ads, Allen photographed things that broke the rules of conventional expectations:

If he didn't really need the money, he wasn't departing from his concept of the G&D for the ads -- and there were plenty of photos not done for ads that went outside the concept of a "canonical" G&D. He was happily publishing a view of his model railroad that stressed visual interest and a general sense of fun. In this respect, I don't think there were actually two G&Ds. The one in the Varney and PFM ads certainly sticks in our memories, and it's the one I've found most inspiring.

Fun With The Hobby -- I

One of the blogs I follow is 30 Squares of Ontario. One of his favorite topics is E.L.Moore, a prolific model railroad author who had a 25-year career writing for Model Trains, Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman, and Railroad Modeler between 1955 and 1980, the year he passed away. Many of his articles were followed by kit manufacturers who brought out versions of his buildings in wood and plastic, from makers like Durango Press and AHM. (Walthers has recently reissued some of the AHM moldings.)

For a long time, I thought he was basically overexposed (he was), and, often, hokey (sometimes, but not as often as I thought). J.D.Lowe, the blogger behind 30 Squares, has had access to Moore's correspondence and some of Moore's original structures preserved in private collections and has done quite a bit to put together a bibliography of all Moore's published articles. It's been enlightening to go back and get a different picture of Moore from Lowe's blog.

Moore was something like 10 years older than John Allen, who's always been one of my inspirations, but he didn't begin publishing until 10 years after Allen got started. But both represent a lot of what the hobby was about in the 1950s and 60s, when I got started in it as a kid. At its worst, it was the "cute caricature" side of the hobby, but as I look back on it with more perspective, the hobby was part of the culture, and railroad cuteness had been fostered in Hollywood from the time of Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, The Harvey Girls, and A Ticket To Tomahawk.

But not long ago, I was looking at the Bachmann retooled 1860s-70s 4-4-0 locomotives and thinking they might be worth playing around with. That in turn reminded me of a lesser-known E.L.Moore article, "Union Pacific Windmill" in the September 1962 MR. (Now that MR has made its digital archive available at a pretty reasonable price, it's easy to find this.) I won't use anything from the article, since you can find it at MR's site, but here's a shot of the prototype Moore followed:

I was 14 in September 1962 and was inspired to build this immediately. I used balsa, card stock, and acetate just like Moore did, and I ran it with an electric fan. I was always interested in early prototypes, but the windmill is as far as I got at the time. My family moved less than a year later, and I don't know what happened to the windmill. I think I'm going to redo it now that I've found the Moore article again -- as Moore said, it's a 3-evening project. The water tank with enclosed base looks tempting, too.

One of the Bachmann 4-4-0s is lettered for UP 119, one of the Promontory locos. But here's a photo of UP 122, clearly of the same type:

This takes me back to the idea of having fun with the hobby. I'll have more to say on this.