Having been extracted from Blighty I’m always on the lookout for very good layouts of whatever scale from the British Isles. I have seen three American layouts featuring baseball games and the famous Miniatur Wunderland (German for ‘miniature wonderland’) has a soccer game diorama with 25,000 spectators – that’s not a typo. But a cricket match? I nearly flipped when I saw the Cricket game. The vid is very good. If just want to see the Cricket match go to the 2:28 mark and pause the vid.

Wife Sarah and i spent a whole week galivanting all over Wales riding its narrow gauge railroads and scarfing things like Morecombe Bay Shrimp, Bara Brith and Welsh Rarebit. Alas, we never to got to even see this railroad – listen carefully to the words ,,,,,,

One block from Rotterdam Railway Station is the biggest model railroad layout in the Netherlands. This miniature world is built in HO scale and covers an area of more than 650 square feet. Wife Sarah and I went there on our last visit to Holland. Sarah didn’t want to go in but was seduced to enter by an offer of a pastry and a coffee. After she finished gobbling she wandered in and was entranced by the layout.

Rotterdam was destroyed in WWII. The model recreates the city as it was before the bombing. As you move along there are a plethora of very informative  placards with photos of what was there. The trains are a mere adornment to the fabulous modelling. You can see the staff/volunteers building the models. The medium used is cardstock. I had a very interesting conversation with a staff member on how to do it.

Turn the sound OFF – it’s awful.  The vid lasts an hour so don’t be afraid to skip sections.

Since March (202o) I have not been doing much “training”. As one who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer twice my wife and I decided that we world absent ourselves from the world until a reliable vaccine had been developed and we have been “dosed up.” So far, so good. Waiting for the vaccine.

I have been looking at a lot of vids in the period I have been “in absentia.” This one shows a VERY large “O” scale layout built with a VERY LARGE amount of dosh.

https://youtu.be/ZeJRO_UGe2A

[You may have to cut and paste this url – it’s a bit flaky]

Can you enter the lottery on line???

This is definitely the best Marklin 3 Rail layout I have ever seen. It may not look like three rail but, if you look between the rails, you will see bumps – this was how Marklin hid the third rail – a shoe underneath the locos ran along the bumps.  Jens Krogsgaard – a Danish model maker – built this HO scale layout which is called “Kælderkøbing Modeltogbane”.

The detail is prodigous. The animation is superb. I was fascinated by the opening scene of a vertical staging elevator. The layout of Kælderkøbing reflects the same problems of all model railroading hobbyists: Too many trains and too little space. Therefore, Jens constructed a vertical staging elevator. Inside the elevator are seven tracks, each four feet six inches long. I have never seen an elevator like this in a model train layout before.

The vid IS quite long (24 minutes) but if you have the time a VERY worthwhile watch.

I have been trying to enliven my existence in these terrible times by, among other things, watching a lot of train and model train vids. This one i really like for its simplicity and the sound effects – especially the birds.

The layout was built by Rickard Arvius who lives outside Skövde in western Sweden. Rickard’s miniature world is built in HO scale with Märklin C Tracks, which  allows  him to run both analog and digital model locomotives. The track is built like a dogbone  so that the model trains can run around without stopping.The dogbone is double track and is located in a part of a garage, which is about 75 square feet. Rickard wanted to concentrate more on the landscape than on the rail network. Therefore, the layout is fictional; Rickard was inspired by the rural environment where he lives with the classic Swedish wooden houses painted in red with white windows. The catenary is not connected. Rickard decided to install catenary pillars for a more realistic look, but there are no plans to install overhead lines at the moment. Therefore the locomotives’ pantographs are down to avoid hitting the pillars. Perhaps a contact wire will be installed in the future.

Hands up those who have seen  a Spanish Model Railroad. I have not. This one is a VERY long dogbone with very nice scenery.

“This HO gauge model railway layout is based on the original railway line in Catalonia, Spain, between the city of Lleida and the city of La Pobla de Segur. The railroad is called “The Train of the Lakes” because of its beautiful landscape. Many tourists use this railway route when they stay on vacation in Spain. There are trains from the Catalan railway company as well as Spanish RENFE trains. The layout was made by the Spanish modeler Mr. Jordi Auqué. He was commissioned by Mr. Raül Valls, the editor of the Spanish Railway Magazine “La Revista MásTren”, to build a beautiful Spanish railroad display. The layout in 1:87 scale depicts a part of the railway line in Catalonia, and is almost 25 meters (80 feet) long. The locomotives and scale models of the Spanish RENFE trains are made by Electrotren, Ibertren and Mabar.”

I added a visit to my Bucket List.

I have had this photo in my “blog sometime collection.” When I first saw it I thought that nobody would be daft enough to build a model with curves like that. When I went back to the source I found out it really is real. Have a look …….

Freight train wriggling along by a lake

After I had looked at for the the umpteenth time I finally figured out (I think) that the pic was taken with a very long lens thereby foreshortening the view.

If anyone has any better ideas I’d be happy to heat them.