The train room

An overall view of my train room as of now.

In the "crew lounge" I've displayed some old models and railroadiana. The big cars in the display case are early 1930's Lionel cars I've inherited from my grandmother.

At the end of the peninsula I've just started putting in some scenery.

While I'm waiting

The NSB railcar type BM87 was very common on the Grimstad Line in real life. BM87 was used in all passenger trains in the last years of the line's existance. As you can see from the video I posted here earlier, they were often used together with a small baggage car popularly called the "suitcase". Earlier this year NMJ announced the BM87 in 1:87, so naturally I had to have one. I haven't received it yet, so while I'm waiting, here's a picture of a pre-production prototype. With suitcase and all...

 

 

Bm87 at Treungen in 1967. Photo : Ulf Berntsen

Preparations for Op session #2

For the first operating session, which was sort of a test-session, I used small handwritten freight cards. I've now made 4-cycle freight cards for 28 cars which will be used for op session #2. This isn't nearly enough cars, but the first few sessions will be a learning experince anyway, so the trains will be a little bit on the short side.

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Here are all the newly made freight cards. I have 5 different main destinations on my layout and I've colour coded them so it's easier for my operators to block the trains correctly.

The red number in the top right corner indicates which cycle the freight card is in. For the next session I'll arrange all the cards so the red '1' is in the top corner. After four sessions we're back to the beginning.

Here's the back side of the card shown above.

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My car cards are of the norwegian FREMO-standard. They are nice and small and fit nicely and the palm of your hand. On the back is a picture of the car...

... and on the front is a small pocket for the freight card.

Just a couple of pictures

This freight car with wood load has been a small fun project for me for a couple of nights. The car is a plastic model of the norwegian type N2. The wood load is from Duha and the chain is from Weinert. The load is of course easily removable in one piece so it can be removed when needed during operation. The car has been weathered with artist chalks and then sprayed with a coat of Tamiya flat clear.

 GFB no.2 picks up the N2 from the harbour spur in Grimstad.

It's important to check that the load is securely fastened!

Another Fremo-meeting!

I've just got back from a Fremo-meeting hosted by my local club and here are a few pictures. More pictures will be posted soon at our local club site http://arendalmjklubb.blogspot.com

An overview shot from Grimstad with the freight depot to the upper right.

 I've started lettering some of my rolling stock for the GFB, and here is no.7 hard at work switching cars. The GFB was actually a branchline of the large layout this time, so I had to letter 4 locos for this. No pictures of no.8 and 6 though.

Peder Figenbaum as station master during op session #4.

Here is a bad picture (the only I could find) of GFB no.2. This trusty loco took care of all GFBs freight traffic.

This guy is trying to remove a large object in the middle of the rails... As soon as he'll remove this, I guess it's possible to start the task of making the real harbour area at Grimstad.

House - Part IV

I started construction of this house in November 2008 so finishing it is really way overdue. I've worked on it this weekend though, and it's now almost complete. Currently I'm working on the interior (see top left in this picture) and lighting.

Operating session #1

After completing all of the trackwork (temporarily), I invited some of my friends for a test-session on the Grimstad Line.We put the layout and the rolling stock through it's paces and discovered that I still have a lot of work - ehh sorry - fun stuff left to do before everything works smoothly. Although things were a tad chaotic at first, we had a lot of fun! I will try to host bi-monthly sessions in the future.

Halvor was the stationmaster at Rise. To the left of this picture, a staging yard was added to represent Nelaug and "the rest of the world". To the right of Halvor's shoulder, the two-track staging yard that represents Arendal station is barely visible. Rise was a busy place during tonight's session.

 

Frode took care of all the switching duties at Rykene. Rykene can be a challenge but maybe had too little traffic this time.

 

At Grimstad things were a bit quiet. Here Jan Petter is switching some empties from "Grimstad Skipsophungnings co." into the harbor spur.

 

Steinar and Halvor with some refreshments in my little crew lounge. My goal is to have my operating sessions laid back enough so that one can sit down once in a while with a cup of coffee while others perform switching duties.

Scenery work at SjB

Last week I helped one of my good modeling friends, Steinar Jeppestøl, with some scenery work at his layout; Sjuskogbanen (SjB). All of his trackwork is now complete, and he has basic scenery in place. I'm lucky enough to be able to work at this wonderful layout from time to time, and I have "free hands" and can do what I like scenerywise. Here is the result of the scenery work we did this time.

Operation ahead!

My main goal with building the Grimstad Line layout is to be able to invite some of my good model railroading friends and host nice and challenging operation sessions. I guess this is a result of reading too much Model Railroader from an early age, or maybe the influence from attending several Fremo-meets where prototypical operation is the most important aspect. I feel that prototypical operation really makes a layout come alive. A recent "Trains of tought" article of Tony Koester in MR spurred me on to make my layout operational as soon as possible. His idea is that the layout itself doesn't have to be ready or anything near perfect before the first operation session. As a matter of fact, it's better to just lay down the track you need, wire it all up, and then as soon as possible host the first op session. In that way I'll probably receive a lot of comments from my fellow operators, and I'll be able to more easily change stuff that doesn't work as intended before I spend too much time ballasting the track for instance. As a result of this idea, I now lay down track rather hastily witouht worrying about the tortoise switch machines at this stage, and without worrying too much about the track plan at Rykene (which has been a headache for me).


Tonight I finished the temporary trackwork at Rykene. I'm not sure if this'll be the final version, but maybe the first session will shed some light on this. I hope that Rykene will be a challenging place to operate. I'm thinking of it almost as a small time-saver of sorts where an operator will have plenty of switching tasks to perform. There are severeal spurs in opposite facing direction, and that will lead to some switch around moves which has to happen on the main line. Should be interesting...


The trackwork at Rykene will be of a lesser quality than the mainline, so on one of the spurs I've experimented with spacing the ties further apart, and with a double tie for every 14 cms (12 meters in real life) where the rails are joined. I think this looks good so I will eventually do this on all the industrial spurs at Rykene before I glue them down. I will also lay the main line some millimeters above the rest of the tracks here.

New scenery shots from Grimstad

This Morris Minor has to be brand new as it's extremely clean, and for some reason it has no numberplates!

A Cmdeo 10 from NSB is handling today's passenger service between Grimstad and Rise.

It seems the owner of this rowing boat don't care about it's appearance anymore.