A trip to Kirchheim

[Rekoboy]

An interesting vehicle! As I wrote, just back from Brandenburg where Opel built Europe's most modern and efficient factory in the 1930s for the production of the Blitz. The factory was badly damaged by wartime bombing, the Russians dismantled and confiscated the remains. Production was resumed in the West at Opel's plant in Rüsselsheim. The area once occupied by the huge Opel plant in Brandenburg ist still partly a wasteland. The role of General Motors in wartime Germany was an interesting one - its Opel subsidiary was busy mass-producing trucks for the foe! Zvezda model trucks for the wargamer used to be available at my local model shop, Monk Bar Models, here in York. The kits were cheap and quite basic, although well-moulded, with no cab glazing or many details. I have a couple of Opels, a Ural Russian truck and an AEC Matador, no less, still unbuilt.

 

[David Waite]

In 1956 when GMH ( General Motors Holden ) were testing their latest newly bodied Holden model the FE Holden
it was tested on the streets of Melbourne with all the Holden labels removed but rebadged with OPEL on the bonnet as a disguise.
David.

 

[Rekoboy]

Having been away for most of the summer I have not been able to get much done on the layout - apart from the making of a greater effort to complete the tram depot which now has a three-dimensional industrial background made up from Auhagen components and poly sheet and a more or less complete cobbled yard. The buildings need a good deal of weathering and detailing still, and a couple of light boxes. But still no overhead lines for the tram - yet.

 

[Rekoboy]

Now working on cobbled inserts for the turnouts....

 

[Virgil Wedge]

What a wonderful and charming layout!
Many thanks for sharing your work here, I’m really enjoying it.
Best wishes,
Virgil

 

[Rekoboy]

The photographer is in trouble again - he was beside himself that a V200 'Taigatrommel' and a BR52 Kriegslok were at Kirchheim simultaneously.

 

[Roger Pound]

I have very fond memories of the BR52 model in TT scale. I had one for some time when they were first introduced. Alas, my exit to H0 from TT saw it disposed of along with the rest of my German TT. I recall it was a particularly smooth performer in all respects. Apropos your work with cobbled infills - my sincere encouragement with a job that can rapidly become a real pain in the posterior - or so I found when modelling an 'inlaid' goods yard . Keep the pictures coming please, now that time allows you to indulge the hobby again.

Roger.

 

[Rekoboy]

The V200 'Taigatrommel' is a very interesting loco - as a result of a Comecon agreement (or Soviet decision) the GDR was obliged to end the production of large diesel locos and to import locos from the USSR instead. The V200 was designed with all East and Central European railways in mind and was exported not only to the GDR but also to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary among others. Its nickname in those countries was simply 'Sergei' - a typical Russian man's name - but in E Germany 'Taigatrommel' (Siberian tundra drums!) was the nickname as a result of the astonishing levels of noise that the first locos produced. At the heart of the V200 is a two-stroke diesel engine, designed in the USA by EMD in the 1930s and licensed for production in the USSR. The engine is the direct ancestor of the engines in our Class 66. There were two main problems with the first locos delivered to the Deutsche Reichsbahn - firstly extremely inadequate silencers and secondly a generally inadequate exhaust system which, when the locos were working hard at night, glowed red on the loco's roof. A hard-working V200 of the original batch, could be heard, in quiet countryside or at night, at some kilometres distance - and was clearly a nuisance! The Deutsche Reichsbahn ensured that the locos received a proper exhaust system and Germany-appropriate silencers. The V200s - of which a few remain in private ownership - sound remarkably like our Class 66, especially when idling or powering away from a stop.

 

[Rekoboy]

The trams and the tram system's electric locos are a mixture of rebuilds, scratch-builds and Shapeways products. The idea for the TTm tram system came when a friend in Germany sold me a TTm 'Gotha' tram and 2 trailer cars made by Karsei (a small German TT specialist). Sadly, though, the powered car ran very badly and was very noisy. The trams languished in a display case for quite a while until another German friend suggested I might like to rebuild the motor tram with a Japanese chassis - Kato or Tomix. He also suggested I should open an account as a buyer with a fantastic Japanese online retailer, www.plazajapan.com - where I have since spent quite a lot of money! Plaza Japan's prices are astonishingly low - around £10-12 for a Kato or Tomix chassis - and the postal charges , if you are happy with a long-ish wait, very modest. So my first move was to build a new chassis for the Gotha power car by employing an extended Kato chassis. That worked so well that bought a couple of Sommerfeldt pantographs and converted one of the unpowered trailers into a motor car - the bodyshells are identical. The second trailer will follow - eventually. The Japanese chassis have coreless motors and flywheels (for 12 quid!) and run beautifully. Then I discovered Shapeways - now, sadly, defunct, and the work of Joachim Starke ('Engineer'). From Shapeways I obtained bodyshells for a Dresden tram and two steeple cab TTm electric locos - and a bodyshell for a TT track maintenance vehicle - of which more later. The slightly larger of the two locos has a Kato chassis with one motor-bogie, the smaller has 2 powered bogies, each with its own tiny traction motor. They came from an N scale kit from Plaza Japan - and the kit has now disappeared from stock. Why did I not buy two? Having built the two electric locos I needed some goods or PW vehicles for them to pull - and made a very pleasing discovery. The German company SES (now part of the Auhagen group - I think), manufacturer of H0 and TT scale road vehicles, produced at one time a model of the E German truck, the W50, and it was possible to buy bulk bags of vehicle components including parts for the W50 for a few Euros. The low-sided body for the long wheelbase W50 is a perfect fit for the Peco N scale freight wagon chassis (or brake van chassis, or Grafar chassis...). In the case of the Grafar chassis or the long wheelbase Peco chassis I added a platform for the shunter to stand on!
The photos are fairly self-explanatory

 

[timbowales]

Lovely stuff!

 

[Rekoboy]

The next chapter in the Shapeways saga came following a chance purchase of a further Karsei product at a model railway show in Brandenburg. The product in question was a white-metal kit for an SKL - an SKL, a Schienenkraftwagen, was the main transport for maintenance teams on the Deutsche Reichsbahn. See photo. The kit did not appeal - it was heavy, especially the trailer, and a bit crude, and I was not happy with the motorizing possibilities and recommended wheelsets. But I was very keen to have suitable transport for my PW gang, and the search continued. The first stroke of luck was the acquisition of a Hornby-Arnold TT Köf (shunting tractor) chassis, and the second seeing a photo of a real Austrian PW inspection car - which I then discovered as a bodyshell for scale TT on Shapeways. The vehicle in question is not German, never on the DR's books, but I am, after all, the Fat Controller and can run whatever I like on my railway! The Austrian inspection car, of which the print quality is not very good, in spite of filling and rubbing down, was more or less a perfect friction fit for the Arnold chassis which required just a little building up with poly strips. Now I had an inspection and PW gang transport vehicle but no trailer for the tools and materials. If you remember from my last post I had bought some Peco N scale freight chassis for use on my tram system - one of those chassis happened to be on my desk and the brainwave came to me. In terms of length and also height above the rails the N scale chassis was perfectly suited to be the basis of a TT scale SKL trailer. Out came the razor saw, the chassis was carefully cut lengthways in half and reassembled with a widening piece made of 2 Evergreen profiles. From the spares box came a pair of metal freight wagon bogie wheels by Modmüller and the chassis rolled freely. Two trailers were built, one with drop sides, one a flat bed - the inspection car and the trailers are now fitted with N scale knuckle couplings by Dapol which look great and work well. Originally I tried Fleischmann Profis which were too big, I thought. There is still quite a lot of finishing to do, the trailers need to be loaded and the paint touched up.

 

[Rekoboy]

Red-letter day for the photographer. Not sure about his girlfriend. BR 94 , fomerly by Kuehn, now in the Roco TT range, BR 58 by Hornby-Arnold.

 

[Rekoboy]

A happy New Year to my readers! Many apologies for the prolonged disappearance of Kirchheim from these pages. We have been spending a lot of our time with my brother-in-law Waldemar in Erfurt who has been very ill over the last 2 years. Sadly, he passed away just before Christmas. We are now back, and work has just restarted on the layout - major changes are about to begin at the site of the upper station, Annaberg. Watch this space, as they say.