I became interested in this hobby after going to Germany and seeing the ICE train up close in a train station, in Germany lots of places close early on Saturdays, so I was bored and went to the train station across the street from my hotel in Stuttgart, I looked at the trains and ate the food and looked at magazines, then on one of the floors I saw a model train set, it was pretty big, I cant recall if it was HO or smaller, but if you put some coins into it the train would run, I hoped to take pictures last time i was there 2 year ago but it was gone, anyone else ever see it or similar
A few years ago when I was just thinking about getting back into the hobby, I came across a web site that I think was at a MRR club somewhere in Germany on a university campus. It had a live web cam showing the layout and it had three different scales on the layout. You could use your mouse and click on the icon of the scale you wanted to see run and it would then do one lap around the room size layout. Kept me occupied on graveyard shift. Brent
I can add some info to the layouts on display in some German train stations. These were all HO scale and usually displayed 2 or three trains once you had dropped in a coin. Time of operation was something like 10 minutes. Appearance was very much toy like, but still fun to watch, if you had nothing else to do.
Since April this year, it is all history. Deutsche Bahn has terminated all contracts with the family who ran that as a business. The layouts are all removed, to my knowledge. A tradition of 50 + years - all gone!
there is a coin Lionel 027 layout in the mall near here. I never coin it since I have my stuff…
thats too bad that the trains were removed from the stations, “tut mir leid” is the German phrase is it not? Is Germany a more train oriented country than the US? I recall seeing there is a giant train exhibit in Hamburg
I remember seeing something like what you described in pictures on the internet.
… according to the railroad management, these layouts did not show the “modern railroad of today”, whatever that means…
Railroads do get more and more public awareness and the service has been improved dramatically over recent years, drawing back a lot of people to riding trains again. From Hamburg to Munich, travel time by train is the same as by plane, if you consider the time you need to go to the airport from downtown and check-in time. Going to downtown Hamburg from my place is also a lot faster and cheaper by train - the number of commuters by train has tripled in two years!
German trains are clean and efficient - but certainly lack the charme of days gone by…
As for the Hamburg model railroad show, check this web page:
It seems alot of us became interested in model railroading because of an experience that had German roots. For me, it was the memory of our first train set. No, it wasn’t a Lionel, although we did have one later. Our first one was a Märklin set. Since then, I’ve migrated back to modeling American railroads, but the seed was planted.
When I was 4-5 my uncle came home from the occupation forces in Germany,‘49’ I think, and he brought a Marklin set plus a couple more engines and turnouts. It wasn’t for me but I got to watch it and then play with it when I was around 12 or so. I think this is where "the seed’ was planted for me too.
In Europe, Marklin had been (and still is) the leading brand, so nearly all of us started out with a Marklin train set. My father did in 1934 with one of the first HO scale trains, and I did in 1963, when “Santa” brought me Marklin´s infamous starter set.
It´s a treacherous illness - even after decades of being dormant, it can violently break out again… [swg]