One for the gallery

Today I stumbled across this picture while "tidying" a bit on my computer. The picture is taken at the 2010 Fremo meet in Zuidbroek, NL. You can barely make out the Grimstad turntable at the back of the little Skd220c locomotive. Further back is another Fremo-module. I think this makes for a cool and unusual background.

Operating session #3

What? A new operating session already? With only 6 months past since the last one? Things are certainly picking up at GFB! Tonight two of my good friends, Styrkar Braathen and Halvor Sannæs, visited for GFB's third official operating session. I've not worked at the layout for quite some time now so I thought nothing is better for inspiration than a good ol' op session to get the creativity up to scratch again.

We actually ran two sessions in one night, with each session representing a day at the Grimstad Line. During one day we ran three passenger trains, one freight train and a couple of "locals" between Rykene and Lia. Each session lasted about 90 minutes and we had a lot of fun!

Here are some quick shots I took during the sessions. Nothing too fancy or exciting new stuff to show, but here goes:

 

Passenger train Pt2580 consisting of BM87 motorcar and type Gx baggage car on it's way to Rise between Grimstad and Lia.

 

Your's truly as the Rise stationmaster. The loco on track 3 is GFB no.8

An action shot of GFB no.2 with freight train Gt5676 from Grimstad.

A short break between sessions. Coffee, icecream and blueberries :)

 

Halvor and Styrkar trying to figure out what goes where at Rykene.

 

GFB borrowed this Skd214 for the occation as I needed a switcher for Grimstad.

Styrkar sorting car cards at Grimstad. I need to do something about that hideous background wallpaper...

A small sidestep

As many of you probably know, we model railroaders tend to have a lot of different plans and dreams. Sometimes these dreams doesn't match with the current projects we are working on. Nevertheless I think following your dreams is important - hence this little building above here.

For some time now I've been really fascinated by the beautiful models in H0n3 by Blackstone Models, so I thought I'd build a little show-layout in H0n3, just for fun. The station above is built from a laser cut wood kit which I painted and weathered with powdered pastels. The figures are Preiser and the bicycle is from Artitec. I completed this kit rather quickly, and it was a lot of fun making something completely different from what I normally do.

Let's see how far I get with this project :)

A danish reefer

This rather nice danish refrigerated wagon turned up at Grimstad at it's last internation outing (Zuidbroek, Netherlands in 2010). It's always exciting to see different types of cars turning up when I attend international FREMO-meetings with Grimstad.

It's all in the details

This is a small detail I've been wanting to make for some time now. The track that went through the freight shed in Grimstad had a nice buffer stop with a flower box on top of it. The flowers are from Mininatur, the flower box is made from two matches glued together and the buffer stop is a modified kit from a swedish manufacturer I can't remember the name of.

The model

Real life version

New and professional trackplan!

Here's a new and revised trackplan for my layout. The trackplan is made by Henning Larsen of the magazine "MJ-Bladet". Isn't it nice? :)

Warning - centerfold picture!

Well, here's the centerfold picture from my before mentioned magazine article. Click on the picture to get a big 1200 pixel version of it.

Railcar BM87.71 on it's way from Rise to Rykene.

G.F.B. on the cover...

... of the Rollling Stone? Well, not quite. But a week ago I received my copy of the excellent norwegian magazine called; MJ-Bladet and within it a 12-page story about my very own layout! Very exiting stuff, and a big dream-come-true for me. More stuff from this article soon, but first of all: The cover

Operation session #2

Finally! It's been almost a year since session #1, so it was about time I got to #2. Since the last session I have worked a lot with different technical things that makes the layout better to operate; I have mounted Tortoise-switch machines several places, made the switches short cut proof, mounted more Digitrax connections for the handheld throttles, made a control panel for Rise and made some car card holders for the fascia around the layout. I've also obtained some new cars so I don't have to rely on others to bring theirs to the sessions to have enough. Most of the new cars are standard inexpensive unmodified models, and some of them don't even have norwegian prototypes. These will be replaced in due course by correct, detailed and weathered cars as time and money allows. For this session, I wanted to try out something new; operating the layout with only two crew members. I therefore invited my nephew and good friend Kenneth Bende to have some train fun! It all turned out great and the two of us had a lot of fun, although I think the ideal number of crew members is three.

It's diffcult to find the time to photograph anything during sessions, but here are a few pictures.

Kenneth was the stationmaster at Rise this time, while I took care of both Rykene and Grimstad. We took turns at driving the trains between the stations. Here Kenneth is waiting for the freight train from Arendal  (hidden staging behind Kenneths back) to arrive. His train is the Gt5746/47 freight train for Grimstad and his engine today is GFB no.2

GFB no. 2 has picked up cars from the train from Arendal, made some pickups and setouts at Rykene, passed the spur at Lia and is now heading for Grimstad.

 

The train has now arrived in Grimstad. The loco needs to take coal and water and be turned before the return to Rise with a new string of cars. All the cars arriving in Grimstad will be sorted and set out by a small switcher stationed here.

More switching at Rykene in preparation for the arriving freight train from Grimstad.

Rykene at the end of the session. The whole session took about one hour and fifteen minutes. Next time around I will try to do two sessions in one night. 

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