How many others out there are modelling a European or other non-US backyard railway ? I am in the late-beginning stages of modelling a small alpine village. As a subscriber to GR, I am always looking for more info on the European themed garden rairoads, but am always left disappointed at the lack thereof. I realize the dilemma that GR faces with this issue: If no one contributes any photos or articles about European-themed garden railways, then obviously they cannot publish anything on the subject. As a suggestion, how about a story on the garden railway at the Hotel Bellevue in Wengen Switzerland ? The photos of this garden railroad are stunning. The outdoor background scenery is the actual Alps themselves ! See for yourselves http://www.aengi.com/d/bildergalerien If GR would pay me, I’ll gladly go do the story and the photography too !
Anyone else out there share the same feelings on this subject ?
Amen brother. I am slowly building a German themed layout and I have found it difficult to find information or inspiration. I have googled the internet but all the sites are in German…my wife is german and translates for me but I would prefer to read it myself. I have been to train shows and the literature european rail is very limited.
Mine is a village on the Swiss-German border. The main attraction for the town is the brewery and beerfest. I have 2 LGB ICE trains bringing the folks to the station and a local swiss train to get them to the beerfest in the summer and fall months. In the winter months, it will drop them at the base station of the aerial cablecar to take them up to the ski area.
Seems like brewery is a common theme! We have the Piko Brewery building and supporting structures, a few Piko and Pola houses and train station. I plan on adding the piko Beer Garden Cafe…or attempt to biuld one myself if I can find a suitable material to simulate the red clay roof material that is common in Germany.
If you have any pictures of your layout, please post them. I would love to see it.
I just checked out that site from switz. Wow, that has to be one of the best sets I have seen yet. I really like the trains as well. Only thing that layout could use is some water in their. The scenery is awsome.
I can’t help but believe GR has made an Editorial or Staff decision to forgo any European models. Except for the shelving article, I can’t recall the last time a European wagon even appeared in a background shot.
Good post and great link. My garden railway is Austrian themed including an alpine village. I would love too see some more Swiss, German and Austrian layouts. Any recommendations on building mountains? Has anyone built a rack rail? I was thinking about adding a rack rail line (point to point). Are you using stock kits for buildings or scratch building, etc?
Regarding someones post about many websites being in german, i recommend using the google translater. It will convert a webpage to english.
I still owe Marc an article on my railway. I just finished a thatched cottage and want to build a station before I submit the article. Marc assured me he was interested so I plan to build the station, a few carriages and then take some spring photos. Winter gives a rather bleak frost-bitten chill to photos. In Japan, spring gets going quite quickly so I should have everything I need by April.
Now on to European flavoured websites.
Inspiration? I often peruse other scale railway websites for inspiration. This one is not my scale but always keeps me on the computer longer than I should:
Well, those are my links that have a European flavour. Hope they help. Keep searching the web, use google, MSN and Yahoo as they turn up different sitea, also vary the search words you use as you will sometimes stumble across a brilliant site you never knew was there.
LGB Dispatch was probably the best English source for this line of RR theme, but the demise and slow reentry of LGB has hurt the Euro modeler. I dont even know if the Dispatch has been reintroduced yet, its supposed to be, one of these months. If you can read German there are lots of sites over there and in Switzerland, dont ask me to list them, I just know they are there but I dont speaken ze duetche so dont ask me. I found them by googling their german names.
www.GscaleMad.co.uk also has a sizable mad monk squadron of European-centric modelers, being English based thats not too surprising.
You got that right! During the LGB insolvency people were using Google and Babelfish to translate German press releases into English, lets just say the results were less than spectacular, and in fact were almost unreadable!
But our In-House translator had an exceedingly fine time reading some of those translations. Apparently the only part that was still funnier was the interpretation some people took from the “Garblefish” and “Shnoogle” translations.
I am sure I have seen a couple of Euro layouts in Garden Railways mag in the past.
I am not surprised at the predominantly US style articals given the Mags location[swg]
It would be nice to see a larger variety of layout styles, both on a national outline and garden variety basis perhaps indoors as well?? makeing it the large scale mag for all comers.
BUT the magazine is restriced by what people submit for possable publishing.
Mind you I was inspired to find out more about slotted post signals after an artical in the mag and thats now on the one day list.
When I can find a decent drawing of the operating set up at the base of the mast so it can operate just like the real one from a lever at the base of the mast.