Good evening.

Apols for not posting for a while, I was involved in several areas of the model, none of which have come to a conclusion as yet. I also tried the track for the dogbone part of the layout, the elevated Stadtbahn. Unfortunately the tight curve at the end derailed some of my carriages as the dynamic couplings (kinematic Kurzkupplungen) were not installed properly and this led to the buffers locking.

The only solution - apart from pulling the things apart and taking a peek at the problem - was to make the curve larger. This you can see in the photo. Now: I had the initial thought of having a gas holder in the circular area at the end. These things are huge. I mean, even in N scale they are seriously big. The point being that they would obscure the trains as they pass along the loop.

Now with more space to play with, the idea came to have the entire gas works along with their attendant gas holders. I worked out the capacity of my intended gas holder and discovered after a little research that the Zentrale Kokerei "Hansa" in Dortmund produced 2 million cubic metres of gas each day, and used 7,000 tons of coal to do so.

That is a serious logistical issue, even with 100t side-opening waggons of the 'Oldenburg' type that were developed in the late 20s.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Gro%C3%9Fsattelwagen-Oldenburg-574-Baujahr-1928.jpg

With a pair of gasholders that would take 100,000 cubic metres of gas, that would mean it would need around 350-400 tons of coal to produce. Given that these are storage containers to buffer production against demand, this means the amount used per day would be perhaps half of this. Even so, with my limited number of waggons, this is putting my railway to the limits of its abilities to supply coal.

So my layout has to be in summer where the production is considerably less and thus I'll need perhaps 90-120 tons each day which I can supply given the number of two-axle, 15 ton waggons that I have in my fleet.

Well, that's the idea for the gasworks. The track plan is up for grabs at some point in the future when I have established a few more of the details as to what industries I'll have and where they'll all go. Then you guys can invent some knots and other things to make operations more difficult.

Sorry, interesting!

In the meantime, I've had an idea as to how to make proper gas holders - not just toilet rolls - which will be the subject of an future post. Then there are the houses I've been chopping about and a German 0-8-0 ('D') Baureihe 56 locomotive that didn't work. It's being chewed up, filed off and generally having a little surgery. I hope that this time I can get an electric loco to actually work...