I’m new to the forums, but this place looks fun. I have been thinking for a long time about doing a layout (my first), but I had no idea what I wanted to do. Now I have made up my mind to do a layout around a WWII theme. Has anyone else had this idea and if so what did you do? I have the idea of a train that runs somewhere in the U.S., then Germany, then maybe along the beach in Normandy on D-Day. Maybe Omaha beach.
Also, If anyone knows a place where you can order HO size German and American tanks, AA Guns and the such, it sure would help.
Trains were particularly hunted down by Tacair during Normady, prior to and after while inland and strategic marshall yards were bombed into oblivion the entire war.
Here at home, you would have large tank trains because shipping was threatened by Uboats, MAIN trains of troop and equiptment and just flat overall rail-busting wartime traffic.
Well, I can start by saying that I am pretty certain there were no railroads on the Normady beaches. Eurpoean railroad equipment is very different than the North American.
In the US travel was restricted and the railroads pressed very old passenger equipment back into troop train service. The railroads were forced to use old steam locomotives and to take delivery of brand new steam power because the diesel locomotive manufacturers were mostly converted into war production. Remember in WWII the interstate highway system was still a new German invention and unheard of here in the US so almost everything traveled by train.
I have not done any serious searches for a few years but in my experience there is a fair amount of German WW2 equipment in HO but not a lot of US, British or the other allies. This may have something to do with the fact that many of the manufacturers of model vehicles are actually German.
[Modeling & Painting Blog by G-dog and Friends] First pictures of
Layout cons…
Same view but without bay & Submarine from prev. picture/blog
Here is the table that was taken out…the u-boat and scenery will be recycled into the new layout
I’m focusing on the Island of Sylt that was connected by a man made cause way called the Hindenburgdamm. On the Island of Sylt there was a narrow gauge railway that also serviced the military am planning on a small midget submarine (seehunds) base with torpedoes and supplies brought in by the main railway then transferred to the narrow line to service the army base. The other end of layout will be the city of Hamburg Germany with a grand station and glass canopy train shed for passenger service. Freight and passenger service will be the focus on this layout during war time operations in what euro modelers refer to as “era II modeling” plans also include a waybill system for fun operating s
There’s a store in Royal Oak, Michigan that has scale military stuff. Chances are you don’t live around there, but you can order from their website www.michtoy.com They also have a good selection of scenery.
Thank you guys so much for the help. Although I know that the rail system was destroyed in Normandy, I still think it would be cool to model the storming of the beach. That is why I wanted to do it. If you have any other great ideas like the ones above or something else, then please let me know.
I would suggest picking one of the three, and run with that. It will look rather weird to have one train pass through scenes from three countries on the same layout.
Model RR layout with WW2 look ? Do a dockside theme - from e.g. the US east coast where tanks and other military vehicles are unloaded from flatcars to be lifted onto a freight steam ship.
I can at least see the following H0 scale US Army WW2 equipment
(from EKO or Boley’s Dept1-87):
M4 Sherman medium tank
M5 Stuart light tank
M8 Greyhound armored car
M36 Jackson tank destroyer
M36 deuce-and-a-half truck
GMC personell carrier
Go to the “Military Menu” in the “Select a Section” box at the top of the page.
It may take a while to get some items, I got some N scale ship resin kits from them a few years ago. Took about 4 months because the were not in stock.
Just an add-on: one really cool place to model during WW2 would have been the Brooklyn Waterfront - say the Brooklyn Army Base (as it was known during WW2 - it was later renamed Brooklyn Army Terminal) :
Edit: Library of congress HABS/HAER (Historical American Buildings Survey/Historical American Engineering Records) pics and data from this area: http://tinyurl.com/38lq9c
If you send me a couple of billion (doesn’t really matter if it is dollar or kroner as long as it is a couple of billion), I will build you a H0 scale replica of the entire 1200+ car Brooklyn Army Base complex.
Otherwise, I guess I would have picked the upper left hand corner (seaside of building A, parts of pier 3 and 4 and the spur leading to the boilerhouse).
That could be modelled in H0 scale in a regular 10x12 bedroom, using a selective compression of roughly 1:4 (ie having tracks that hold 7 cars on the model where the real thing held about 28 cars).
Perhaps something like this (plan roughed out in about 1 1/2 hours - obviously could be significantly improved if one spent more time on it).
Picture a shelf layout with an 6-8 story massive warehouse building along the 12 foot wall and two three story warehouses on either side, maybe a liberty ship (which would be about 55" long and 7" wide in 1:96 scale, which is close enough to 1:87 scale to look good). War materials piled up on the docks, waiting to be loaded.
I think you should reconsider your idea. A model of say Omaha Beach would require a massive amount of room. Taking the largest invasion in history and using even 500 toy soldiers isn’t going to replicate the idea very well. In addition you are limiting yourself to June 6, 1944. I seriously doubt that any trains in the area (even if they existed) ran on that day. Let’s face it the locals weren’t saying lets go watch the war take place. They were all in basements and cellars trying to survive. Then there is the destruction from all the bombing prior to the assualt. I would look for something a little more uplifting then a day when death ruled on both sides of the battle. A railroad six months later taking supplies in land as fast as possible would offer more operating interest.
All railroad activity was out on D-day for a couple of reason.
French partisans blew up bridges and railroads.
Massive, massive bombing of bridges, train yards tracks and pretty much anything that moved. Even single vehicles where targets on this day. For the Germans to sen a train up the Cotentin peninsula or even close to Normandy would have been assured destruction. The air was virtually filled with air crafts that made sure movement of large scale formations was impossible.
Setting my brain to the ‘way back when’ mode, I seem to recall a scheme to lay rails in the holds of LSTs, matching rails on the inner bow ramp and a wedge-shaped connector to rails laid on the beach at one of the mulberry ports on the Normandy coast. The idea was to get replacements for the destroyed French rolling stock into France to support the Allied advance.
I have no idea whether this was built, or just another ??? article from WWII era Popular Mechanics magazine. During the same era Popular Mechanics was filled with proposed flying cars for the masses and subdivisions built around runways…[%-)][(-D][(-D][(-D]
