Welcome back

I will be looking forward to following your progress, and hopefully my son will be interested as well, he is a WWII history buff.

You MUST be serious !

To go thru removing all that wallpaper....a job I have hired out to professionals and in a two story stairwell...money very well spent ! Sooo Nick...good to have you back and building...look forward to your progress !

Michael

Marine!

Nice concept

I know there's some good German armor and other WW2 vehicles in HO, so you'll do fine for flatcar loads and such.

I have thought over the years that a Wartime German layout would be a great concept. Lots of bomb/staffing damage would look correct along a rail line. Blown up sidings/trains/locos would be quite correct.

Would make for amazing op sessions. Someone is running a train and you tell them a B-24 raid just took out the interchange and you just saw a gaggle of P-47s coming down to strafe the train. What do you do now, engineer?

You only have to Google WW2 German train damage to see countless photos from the timeframe...

WW II German Trains

This thread sent me digging through my photo archives - I remembered seeing an outfit at the 2010 National Train Show in Milwaukee displaying an incredible collection of German and European military trains and models - Wespe Models - https://www.wespemodels.com/

Looks Like An Interesting Project...

... Nick.

One little point. Shunter is a British (and colonies) term. In germany your 0-6-0 would be called a "Rangierlokomotive" or "Rangierlok" for short.

I wondered where you got to...........

...........Nick.  Good to see you are still among the active!  Hey, that sounds like fun and there is a TON of reasonably priced stuff available in HO for this project.  Not so much in O scale.  Please let us know how your eyes and fingers adapt to the smaller pieces!!  LOL

Peter

Might be painful to some

Let me just say right now I'm not the PC

But I wonder if the theme - while cool in some respects - might not be a bit offensive to some.  Yes, the Germans moved military materiel by rail, but they also took trainloads of Jews and others to the concentration camps; would you model those?

And yes, I have the same reaction to layouts set in the deep South in the 40's and 50's that show gas stations with only one set of restrooms.  I've struggled a bit with it as I really like the paint scheme of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railroad - but here in New England we're too close both in time and distance to Lac Magantic, Quebec and the catastrophe the railroad caused there.

Just a thought; I wish you luck with your project!

Geof

Respond

Modeling Concentration Camps-NEVER !! I grew up in a Jewish community and I respect and love them dearly. So that WILL NOT BE MODELED.

Yes eyes and fingers will have to be re-adjusted for a smaller scale coming from O scale.

 "Rangierlokomotive" - thank you for correcting me. You see I learned something new.

Jeff- I wish I would've been there. There is a lot to buy there.

There are a lot of photos on the internet. But I am going to model at the time that they were building up/getting ready for the war.

Paul I am still alive and kicking, hopefully for awhile.

Thanks for the support and help. At first I was eearie of posting my plans, but I thought it would be interested to model the beginning before the atrocities started. It is a touchy subject, so that is why I am focusing on the equipment, transportation and the military logistic. Again thank you all.

By the way, the shelves were painted last night and tonight will be the second hand of paint.

Nick

Welcome Back Nick

Your layout idea sounds like a neat concept, of course now you'll have to learn the Era code we've been talking about in another thread.

I'm not an expert on German railways, but I believe the Prussian State railways would be Era 1.

The Deutsche Reichsbahn or DR railways would be Era 2

The Deutsche Bundesbahn or DB would be Era 3 in West Germany

The Deutsche Reichsbahn or DDR would be Era 3 in East Germany.

I'm looking forward to your updates on this layout build. I've often thought of a European themed layout, but I cannot decide on England, Germany or France. I have the same problem with Europe as I do with the US, to many railroads and not enough room to model them all 

Fun Project . . .

Looks like a fun and interesting project.  I anxiously await photos on your progress.

Background dummy

Depending on exactly what you have for scenic needs, one of these could be a good bit of background scenery:http://www.historicrail.com/German-BR50-2-10-0-Steam-Locomotive-Kit/productinfo/0R85133/

german Eras

Hello the german Eras are as follow:

Era 1: from the beginning of railway construction until the end of WWI 1918

Era 2: from 1919 to 1945/50 as far as I know the the period from 1937 to 1949/50 is the so called era 2c

Era 3a: from 1945/45/50 to 1956 (the third class passenger cars were classified as second class) and on engines the three light headlight was established

Era 3b: from 1956 to 1968 when the UIC computer numbers where introduced for locomotive and rollingstock numbers

Era 4 from 1968 to 1990 fall of the iron curtain in eastern europe

Era 5 from 1990 to 2006

Era 6 from 2006 on : Introduction of new computer number on locomotives and rolling stock, which also shows the country of origin of the rolling stock or locomotive.

Markus

Era's

That's one of the first thing I noticed when I started to do my "homework" on German railroad. To me that is such a big, big plus !!! It was very helpful to me, especially when you are buying rolling stock, which I am not too familiar with German rolling stock. The other good thing about the era is when you shop for anything pertaining to the hobby, buildings and so forth, it tells you what era it comes from, another plus.

Here is a photo of the top shelf painted and tonight I am going to give it a second coat.  The layout shelf will not be painted. It is going to be covered by homasote.This is the first portion of the layout that it will be worked on. This section it will have a spur in the back on the wall side and on front of the track will be the city scene. That section is 46 inches from the entrance on the left of the photo to the wall on the right.

These are the four buildings that I am waiting to be shipped that will be going in that section.

Nick

The painful past...

I guess the Holocaust situation is unavoidable when dealing with Germany in WW2. Especially with trains. But that said, I couldn't imagine the reaction from anyone who sees a line of boxcars coming down the layout with outstretched hands poking through the barbed wire in the windows of boxcars. History? Yep, but it'd be so hard to deal with that in a tasteful manner.

That said, a boarded-up business around a corner with "Juden" crudely painted over the front would get the point across without coming across as a jerk.

I model the Deep south in the 40s, but where I model (the NE corner of Tennessee), there simply weren't other groups than whites, something I've confirmed with family members who remember the area (heck, there's probably mostly whites living in that valley even now, I'd bet). My parents, growing up there, never even saw any black people until their teens.

I don't model anything where a segregation situation would present itself as there's only one store and it has an outhouse (which it'd be unlikely there'd be a different one for other folks). The rest is houses and depots. Any bathrooms in the depots would be internal. But yeah, it crossed my mind and if it presented itself, I would have modeled a "whites only" sign if I thought for a moment it would have been likely.

Being a Jew I have no problem

Being a Jew I have no problem with the idea or practice of modelling WW2 German railways....especially military rail operations. Personally I'm fascinated with armoured trains and have very often thought about modelling one. I can seperate the holocaust out from the other aspects of the modelling of railways.

As for the Lac Megantic oil train catastrophe... i live in Montreal...it was an accident and again I see no reason why one shouldn't model  that particuler railway.

Progress

Fellow Members, the buildings for the city were shipped Friday with some figurines that were back order. So I am expecting the order to arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. That being said, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel to start laying track very soon.

On this layout I am going to use the TOMA approach, although it is not a module-type layout but a shelf. I have divided (mentally) the shelf in seperate-portions and I will construct a section at a time.

Back-drop

Hello Everyone,

Last night I started to installed the back-drop by using foam-core from Wal-Mart. It worked perfectly. Easy to cut, easy to install and easy to paint. I just bought a couple of pieces to see if it did work and it did. Here are some photos of the installation. Tonight I will get some more and I am buying the paint (blue) to paint it. Photos will follow.

Here I am installing the first section after cutting it.

It has,been my experience

It has,been my experience that foam core,warps very easy so good luck with it.  

-Doug M

Warning

Doug,

Thanks for the warning. I will definitely keep an eye on it.

Continuation of the background

Started painting and adding the background to the layout:

Before:

After:

More on the background

Here is another photo of the slow progress on the background. This is the half-way point. Yesterday in the mail I received the "downtown buildings that will go on the left hand side of the photo below, where the white tub is at. I still need to put together the buildings since they are a kit form and needs to be put together. The main wall that you see on the right hand side will be the main "military section" of the layout. The rest of the layout that will be behind of where I took this photo is a mirror image of this section.

Slow?

Your progress hardly looks slow to me! I've seen some people take years to get to where you are now!

Homasote

Thanks Lee, I've been putting in long hours at work so it seems to me kinda slow when it comes to the layout.

Here are some photos of what I did during the weekend. This two photos were taken during the work. The actual blue background is completed, unlike the photos that was taken during the middle of the work.

Here is when I started to lay the homasote.

Here is from a different angle with 75% of the background installed. As of today the background is complete.

Next step will be to install the LED's