Op session #6

Hey! What happened to op-session #5 you might say? Well, it was held, we had a good time, I took some photos, but none of them were any good so let's just skip to session #6 which was held a few weeks ago.

It's early morning down at the station in Grimstad. It's still 15 minutes until the first passenger train of the day, Pt2580, will depart so there's time for some quiet contemplation on the bench in front of the immaculately kept flower box.

Station master at Rykene, Jan Petter Kamnes, is switching some cars which will be picked up by the freight train.

Here the freight train has left Rykene and is on it's way to Rise.

At Rise, Halvor Sannæs is the station master. Here he is busy switching cars on the rather small station.

 Down in Grimstad GFB #7 has picked up a couple of cars from the harbour spur.

Three more freight cars for the layout

I am lucky enough to have a modeling friend that loves to make norwegian freight cars, but has no layout to put them all. He has now given me three cars for me to use on the GFB. All of them are cars from Roco/Fleischmann that have been modified to represent norwegian prototypes that was left here in Norway after WWII. Modification, paint and lettering is by Ole Johan Aabel, and I've given them a very quick weathering myself. Looking at the pictures I see that the wheels maybe are not up to scratch. Maybe I will change them for some Rp25's. What do you think?

A norwegian L4 made from a Fleischmann car. Diagonal bracing has been added on the sides by using thin strips of paper.

Nothing has been done to this Fleischmann car except paint, lettering and some weathering. So it's not 100% correct, but in my mind - good enough.

This car started out as a white Roco refridgerated car with a brake hut on one end. This has been replaced by a small brake platform instead.

Short attention span

I have a seriously short attention span when it comes to modeling. I love to start new projects, but have a hard time finishing any of them. So now even though I perhaps should try to complete my harbour project, I've now moved my attention to the left side of the peninsula - the upper part of it. I have yet to name this area, but It will only contain a small house and lots and lots of trees. And I love modeling wooded areas - hence the move of attention.

Here's a picture of the area taken about a year ago :

And here it is now. I'm now working on a small house for the area in the centre of the picture :

Operating session #4

A three man crew consisting of Jan Petter, Halvor and my self a couple, completed operation session#4 on the GFB a couple of weeks ago. As last time we went through two "days" in one night, running four passenger trains and one freight train in one day. Here are some pictures. Please post a comment if you'd like :)

Halvor running GFB no.2 with today's freight train from Rise to Grimstad.

 

A new locomotive, GFB no.1, had it's debut today as the Rykene switcher. Here Jan Petter is running it down to Lia spur to spot a T0-car.

Halvor is sorting cars with GFB no.7 at Grimstad. I've removed the background wallpaper here, and I think I will try to paint a background instead.

 

Jan Petter with a passenger train with a BM87 from Rise. As you can see here, the majority of my layout is quite unfinished.

 Jan Petter's passenger train is arriving at Grimstad.

The industrial area at Rykene is pretty empty after the second "day"

A small detailed area at Grimstad.

 GFB no.7 is spotting the last couple of cars at the end of the session.

Harbour part III

Finally something happens with Torskeholmen again. I've started to add the pier fronts, and I am experimenting with cobblestones. The ship is from the dutch company Artitec and the model itself is built by a friend of mine.

 

One more for the gallery

A norwegian class Di2 diesellocomotive on it's way to Grimstad with a freight train.

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.