German visitors

I am a member of a club in Pasadena CA, and we get a few visitors from overseas visiting the area and request a tour of our club.

More often than not, the visitor is from Germany followed by Japan. But we have also had people visiting from Australia, England, New Zealand and a few other places.

The Germans seem to be very meticulous in their model building and a lot of them model US railroads and have clubs that specialize in US railroads.

Bill B.

Another German Forum

Here are a couple of German model railroad forums I read from time to time because of my interest in narrowgauge:

http://www.nexusboard.net/index.php?siteid=2408

http://www.schmalspur-modell.at/

If your German is rusty or non-existent, go to Google Translate and it'll do the heavy lifting.

Google Translate

How do I open these forums in Google Translate?

Thanks for any advice.

un3k

We are many. A good source

We are many.

A good source for prototype research is http://www.drehscheibe-online.de, they feature also a photo gallery.

If you are looking for help on German prototype, let me know.

Greetings from Germany

lots of interest in Germany

I read several forums relating to my interest in German prototype, including Stummi and Drehscheibe online.  I find Stummi is skewed towards Märklin 3 rail to some extent, though they also have 2 rail modelers participating.  Drehschiebe is somewhat more advanced in some ways, and has excellent prototype information, both current and historical.

It should really not be a surprise that there are a lot of German forums.  The hobby has always been far more popular in Germany on a per capita basis than in North America, probably 10 times more popular.  The same is true of Canadian modelers versus American, though I think Canadian interest is only about 3 times the US (per capita.)  American manufacturers have only recently caught on to that fact, and have been surprised at how well Canadian prototype models have been selling north of the border.

Google Translate

Mr. un3k

Right click over the link and a box will show up. Go down the list and select Google Translate and start reading.

German Railways forum in english

As I model both American and German prototypes I have to seek advice in many different places. I don't speak German I dug around and got to this forum ( http://germanrail.fr.yuku.com ).Most members are Brits and Aussies as far as I can understand, and they do help a lot... The forum isn't as active as this one, but it helps me a lot (I am a member of both)

Daniel Kramer

The hobby has always been far

Jurgen,

I had no idea. I know there are more Hobby shops around my house in Germany than here in Florida but I never thought about it. Interesting!

Another method to find Google

Another method to find Google Translate is to use the plain old Google search and enter "translate" as the search term.

Modelling in Germany, Holland

Perhaps many of you have visited their site or actually been there - in Hamburg:

The largest model railway in the world, and one of the most successful permanent exhibitions in Northern Germany.

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com

Says much of the popularity of the hobby in that country.

In Holland (Netherlands), there is Madurodam - I was there in fall 1983 and it was impressive. The scale is large and covers many things including railroads, airplanes, ships, et al.

http://www.madurodam.nl/en

Google Translate problem

Thank you DANNY CAUSEY and miehman for your replies.

Danny, I tried your method of right-clicking on http://www.drehscheibe-online.de but none of the options listed in the box that appears are for opening in Google Translate.  I'm using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 8.  I tried the same thing in a Google Chrome browser also with no success.

Is there some add-on that I need to install or perhaps some setting in my browser that I need to change?  If I could get this right-click method to work it would be a lot quicker and easier than the method I'm using at present :---

Open the German website, copy its url, then open Google Translate and paste the url into Google Translate.

Thanks for any help.

un3k

I was stationed in Stuttgart

I was stationed in Stuttgart Germany for 9 years; Model railroading is allot more "mainstream" then it is in the USA....The big toy store in town had a entire floor dedicated to Model RR, and there was quite a few shops that just sold model RR stuff. 

Model railroading is definitely more mainstream in Europe

in part (FWIW) because railroads are a much more visible and integral part of daily life and transportation. 

I think your hit count was in part driven by your being an American modeling Germany which probably appears unusual to many on that side of the pond.

Another useful link is the

Another link for German N scale

A good link for those modeling N Scale German (and other closely related countries) is the 1zu160 website.

I think the site has several suffixes (.de .com and .net), but again, just search for 1zu160 in your browser and use the translate feature to get it in English.

The 2 main topics of interest are the "News" and "Forum / Interactive" sections.

BobH

Modeling DB Epoche III / IV in N Scale 

Had no idea how many people

Had no idea how many people here are modeling German railroads. I felt like I was all alone !

No idea...

Michael,

And I am based in Melbourne, Australia. There are quite a number modeling European prototype "down under" in both N and HO scales.

I am very envious of your train room!

If you have a look at http://www.waverleymrc.org.au and look in the gallery at members layouts, you will see my R&K layout. This has now been mothballed.

Bob H

Do you know how to

Do you know how to read German or is there a translator. I followed the link to the forum and I couldn't understand anything obviously. That's interesting that most of the modelers were female unlike here in the states where the ratio, men/women is a lot more extreme with the odds favoring males.

How to translate

David,

I just open Google as a full web page, then search for "1zu160"

You will then get a list of results, the first one will probably be:

1zu160 - willkommen beim spur n-portal  (In blue) followed below by:

Hey, thanks! That's very

Hey, thanks! That's very helpful!

That's news to me....

I'm not sure where you got that impression.  Not that I would have a problem with it if it were true, but the truth is that Model Railroading is mostly a male pastime in Germany just as it is here.

Hello!

I'm new to this forum so will give a little information on myself, I always had an interest in model trains from a young age but by the time I was 12 I was hooked after seeing my uncle Fred's layout in his loft, although I never had the chance to build a layout till many years later. I was stationed in Germany at the time (1972)and purchased a second hand collection from an Officer being posted out of our unit, unfortunately this was OO scale and being in Germany, HO was the norm so I started collecting German outline stock and my son got to play with the old Hornby rolling stock after many years of collecting and many layouts never completed I finally retired and got down to serious building of a permanent layout in my loft which is still a work in progress.

Narrow gauge

Thanks to all for the links. I have followed meter gage and 760mm gauge modeling for years, with building one or two diorama/layouts, but hadn't found the Schmalspur Modell Forum, for some reason. Can't really speak German but know enough to read some. There is a wealth of photos available through searches on Flickr.

By searching for "http://www.schmalspur-modell.at/ translate english" on Google and then clicking on "translate this page" I get a serviceable look at the forum in English.

Translate German forum web pages

If you are using Chrome as your browser, here's how to get Google Translate as an option:

Go to the 3 horizontal bars in the far right corner of Chrome (customize & control) and click on them.

In the pop-up, drop down to Settings, and click on that.

Scroll down to Advanced Settings, and click again.

Put a check in the box next to "Offer to translate pages........".

Close the settings page.

Now when Google sees you are on a non-English web page, a small icon will appear at the far right end 

of the address bar. Looks like 2 small rectangles, one black, one white. Click on this icon, and a pop-up will

appear, asking if you want to translate the page. Click on it to make it happen. 

The translations aren't perfect, but usually good enough to get the gist of things.

Sams Dad