Christmas in July!

When is the best time to buy Christmas ornaments? In the summer!

I bought this Toy State #5430 "Christmas Magic Express" secondhand for the price of a burger and a soda, taking the risk it won't work. I was aware the quality of these sets is not very good. Mostly they survive 1 holiday season.
But I figured I could always chop the engine and place a LGB motorblock in it or use the cars with another engine.
The wheelbase fits the tracks perfectly. The engine runs on 4x C-type 1,5 volts batteries (6 volts total). The dining car and the pumpcar have a light that is powered by a 1,5 volts AA type battery. The tender can play 19 Christmas tunes (but I never came further than 3 as my ears were protesting).

During the first testrun with locomotive runs without any problems on the layout. Though... it does make the same sound as a vacuum cleaner...

 

Testrun with the complete train was no success unfortunately. The engine could not pull all cars through some of the curves. The train gets stuck. This is most likely caused by the two animated cars; the moving bear conductor and the pumping toy soldier. The animated figures are connected to the axles of the cars to make them move. This is causing resistance on the axles and the wheels start to brake because of this. Also, both these cars seems to have a slight bit wider wheelbase on the axles driving the animated figures. The wheels do not run as freely as the other cars. I guess this can be fixed on 2 ways: somehow making a less wider wheelbase and if that does not work, try to drive the figures in another way, for instance with a little electric motor.
An other solution could be to build a motor block in the engine (what was my plan B anyway).
This will make it more powerful and will fix the vacuum cleaner sound as well. Not sure yet what to do...


Some more pictures of the trainset:

Complete train

 

 The engine. It can play 19 Christmas tunes...not very beautiful

Caboose. The bear "motion figure" steps from left to right and back

Dining car

Handcar. The spinning of the wheels make the toy soldier pump.

Box Toy State #5430

Everything complete and in very good shape

Bit warm for Santa...

-o-

 

Solar powered railcar Part III

Chassis

The plywood parts of the Solar House kit turned out to be very handy as a support for the motor and gearbox..With a bit cutting and filing all fits nicely. This base is 72,5 mm square. I will use a similar part and a sheet of balsa wood that I have lying around to expand the chassis. It will become somewhere between 130 or 150 mm in lenght, just what looks fine and runs well.
I just use plastic LGB wheels while I had those left over and to keep it as leight as possible.

Also made an axle mount out of styrene sheets. Again all very basic and light weight.

A little video of the test run which was made without the solar panel. It was powered by a normal 1,2 Volt battery for testing (I could not discover how much the capacity of this battery was).

- o -

April 2019 first run of the season

Nice warm and sunny today. Up for the first run of the season. Although it almost looks like autumn with all the dead leaves flying around (blown from the shed roof...). Some lovely comments from mini-me as well ;-)

Before running the tracks had to be cleared from overhanging greenery and branches:

"Narrow Gauge In The Garden" video series

An other 'classic' series of videos that can be found on YouTube is "Narrow Gauge In The Garden" presented  by Ian Stock and filmed by Mark Found, who later produced the television broadcasted series "The Garden Railway".

Although this series is a bit dated and the HD quality not as good as we once thought it was it shows some really fantastic and atmospheric garden railways. I found it very inspiring and got a lot of ideas from it. In each episode a different garden layout is visited and a specific topic is discussed. The focus is on UK theme narrow gauge railways.

The series can be found on YouTube on The Railway Channel but I also made a summary below with direct links. Needless to say that the one about small gardens is my favorite!

Narrow Gauge In The Garden

Small Gardens
Large Gardens
Difficult Terrain
Layouts
Horticulture
A visit to the Roundhouse factory
Photography
Cwmcoe
Tarren Hendre
Weathering Part I
Weathering Part 2

"The Garden Railway" television series by Mark Found

On YouTube there are a lot of video's about garden railways. Some better than others.

A very interesting series of videos in my opinion is "The Garden Railway" made by Mark Found for broadcasting on television on the Discovery Channel. I believe it actually came out on DVD in 2001 as well. It can be considered a real classic by now!

In 15 episodes from about 23 minutes each it describes the build of a garden railway from start to finish in a clear and often funny way of presentation. It is an introduction to the hobby which mention most basic steps of building a layout and what techniques can be used.

In each episode garden railways from other modellers are visited which provide some beautiful scenes and a lot of inspiration.

The whole series can be found on the YouTube channel ModelRaiwayTV but I have made a little summary below with direct links to the episodes.

The Garden Railway episodes:

 1 Design

 2 Earthworks

 3 Water features

 4 Rockery

 5 Track Bed

 6 Bridges

 7 Track Laying

 8 Power

 9 Control

10 Shed

11 Models

12 Buildings

13 Horticulture

14 Maintenance

15 Finale

Mercedes 170 railcar

This Mercedes draisine is build using an Airfix 1:24 scale plastic modelkit (#6413).
The model is battery powered with an electromotor and RC unit from a cheap RC toycar.











The base of the car is formed by the chassis of the RC car. The rear wheels of the RC car where removed from the motor driven rear axle and replace by metal train wheels that came from Liliput #999300 replacement wheels/axle set.

The donor for RC and motor

The chassis was modified with plastic strips to suport the front axle

At the front section of the RC car chassis the steering mechanism was removed and some plastic strips were used to make a support for the front axle. The car was to light weighted and derailed with the front wheels almost constantly. So a bit of weight was placed in front to give it downward pressure preventing it to derail.

The weight in front

Rear wheels fitted perfectly to track width

When all the work on the chassis was done the body was test fitted, followed by some test runs on the layout.

Testfitting the body on the chassis

Low-rider!

Next step was to fill up the hole for the spare wheel at the back. I placed a round piece of styrene in it covered with a layer of Milliput that was than sanded with fine sandpaper to match the contour of the tailgate. Also a driver was installed. The driver came from a 1:24 scale driver figure set from Fujimi (Fujimi 11040) and fitted very nicely.

Bodywork...

This video shows a testrun on my old layout.  

The car was sprayed in a green livery. Warm white LED's where placed in the kits headlights by sanding of the backside of the headlights and  using the wires as supports. At the rear a red signal light was placed, using a red LED.

The end result was a very nice little car that was running actual very smoothly on the old layout where it had to climb reasonable slopes as well. I am not sure if there was in fact a Mercedes 170 serving a railway somewhere in the world but it would not be strange as many (perhaps redundant or outdated) vehicles were used to rebuild into railcars used as low-cost vehicles for inspection or other goals. But I think it catches the looks ans appearance of such rail vehicles nicely (like the 1937 Ford V8 railcar at the DSB museum in Odense, Denmark).

Pictures of the railcar on the layout (edit April 6 2019)

October 2018 - video and some pictures

October 2018

A little video and some pictures of how the railway looked like in October 2018.