Leberecht

Hello Everyone,
Thanks so much for the replies, I really appreciate it. Some other forums just don't appreciate anything that's not British!
Just to get going, I'll post what I've pretty much posted elsewhere if that's okay.
I am a H0 scale modeller living in North Western England, halfway between Liverpool & Manchester but I am not really interested in football!
I am very passionate about German railways though, I love them all! I have a diverse collection of H0 equipment from Era I through to Era VI but lately I have come to love the old Prussian railways most of all.
For this reason I have started to construct a suitable Era I layout in my spare box room. I have built and arranged four boards in an "L" shape of approximately 2.70m x 2.15m, three boards will be scenic, the forth board is a traverser.
I have been working on a track plan and so far have come up with this (below)

Prussian H0 Quarry MetricB2 by Allegheny1633, on Flickr

I hope it at least looks "Germanic" if not exactly "Prussian". I have had some assistance from a German forum in ensuring that it does follow some aspects of Prussian design.Where in Prussia? I have no idea, hence the name "Irgwendo" which in German means "Somewhere"!
Why Prussia? Well, I originally followed the Bavarian railways for a long time but found that in DB days, I liked the look of the former Prussian machines better, they have become some of my favourite steam locomotives. A couple of years ago, a friend sold me a Brawa G 5.4 with DCC sound for only £100 and I loved it so much, I couldn't stop and now have several locos and have been slowly buiding up my fleet of Passenger and freight cars.

Cheers,
John.

Hi All,
Here are some pictures I took during baseboard construction so I thought I'd post them, hopefully they may be a useful record of how I did it.


This is the timber for the final two boards, all cut ready for assembly.


I clamped a pre-drilled 'noggin' of timber to the ends of the main frame as a drilling template. Note the sacrificial piece of timber that I place under the work, this saves the work-piece some 'splitting' and also saves the workbench/table.


Once 3.5mm clearance holes were drilled, use countersink in electric screwdriver for fast easy countersinking.


Using the work table to line up side and end frames, then clamping securely into position.




Drilling pilot hole then carefully driving screws home - DO NOT overtighten as the wood will definitely split.
This will form an "L", take another side and end & repeat then join both "L"s together now we have a rectangular open box.


Mounting the central frame piece. Similar procedure to drilling end holes only now I go from pencil lines on my 'noggin!


The completed open box.
Part 2 coming shortly.

Part 2;

Use tape measure corner to corner as squareness check, I allow up to about 1/8th inch (3mm) here as we're not doing cabinet making and it's soft wood too.





The open box can now be placed on the board top material and the outline of the frame marked out, then you need the centreline for drilling. This is necessary due to the 12mm thickness of the framing, you really need those screws to go in central & square on.
Again note the sacrificial ply underneath, my work table still got a few holes in it.


Countersink those holes again.


Checking everything is flat.


Two almost completed boards.





Now, those EMGS/C&L type board joiners won't work in such thin timber so taking some slim offcuts, screw & glue them into place.

What I didn't photograph was, once all the metal furniture was added and the boards tested for fit, I then glued in all those little quarter round pieces seen in the first image of post #13. Not much to see, I use the old carpenters method of smearing glue over the mating faces then 'rubbing' the gluing piece closely into position so the glue gets into the grain, then 'sticks' into position. Needless to say, the glue hasn't set yet but it is enough to hold itself in position until it does set properly.
Cheers,
John.

QUOTE (Allegheny1600 @ 21 May 2016, 22:00) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Some other forums just don't appreciate anything that's not British!
Hello,
Try modelling 3-rail German in Australia. Europe doesn't exist at all, for most MRR folk here.

QUOTE A couple of years ago, a friend sold me a Brawa G 5.4 with DCC sound for only £100 and I loved it so much, I couldn't stop and now have several locos and have been slowly building up my fleet of Passenger and freight cars.
Any Prussian loco has a premium attached. I ended up getting the DRG 5.4, simply because it was cheaper. It's a nice model, either way.
If you don't have any of the Brawa 3-axle Prussian coaches, you're missing out. They're pretty special.
Marklin turned out a three-pack of Prussian 3-axle paired coaches that were quite nice also. I don't think these came as a Trix release, so you'll need to swap wheel-sets if go down that path.

Thanks for the detailed build photos.

QUOTE (reddo @ 21 May 2016, 15:33) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Looks very solid. Unless it is already installed, you may want to drill some holes in the cross-braces so you can pass wires through, as it may be easier than doing it from below.
QUOTE (Babz @ 22 May 2016, 11:49) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>John The Baseboards look very solid Indeed I have posted a couple of Pics to show you the Slots we made in the 2 x 1 for wires to come out for the Buss Bar/ Cable Even in the Frame there are slots for wires to follow through. Babs
Many thanks Reddo & Babs,
Yes! That's something I have forgotten about! I think I can get away with it as I have a right angle drill attachment and only need to allow a limited number of wires to pass as I'm purely DCC. I will need more than two though anyway!!! I do wish I'd thought about it beforehand.
Babs,
Those 'slots' of yours are really neat and must compromise the strength of the frames far less than the usual larger holes would.

QUOTE (RFS @ 21 May 2016, 17:04) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Not wishing to sound pedantic, but the German for "somewhere" is "irgendwo". Apologies if your rendering of it is deliberate!
Thanks RFS! Must be my dyslexia slipping in I'm afraid! Oh blast! I shall have to report the initial post to get admin to change it, never mind.

QUOTE (Adrian Ross @ 21 May 2016, 22:38) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hello,
Try modelling 3-rail German in Australia. Europe doesn't exist at all, for most MRR folk here.

Any Prussian loco has a premium attached. I ended up getting the DRG 5.4, simply because it was cheaper. It's a nice model, either way.
If you don't have any of the Brawa 3-axle Prussian coaches, you're missing out. They're pretty special.
Marklin turned out a three-pack of Prussian 3-axle paired coaches that were quite nice also. I don't think these came as a Trix release, so you'll need to swap wheel-sets if go down that path.
Thanks for the detailed build photos.
Thanks Adrian,
I didn't know that, the RoG forum seems to have plenty of Aussies on board! But I know Australia is such a huge place, just a handful of folk will be scattered very far and wide - my sympathies! I once lived in S-W France and railway modellers of any kind were very rare there too.

Also, I didn't know that any Prussian locos have a premium attached. Presumably because of the ornate livery and the more limited market?
I'm certainly very grateful that the Germans feel there is a market for era I or "pre group" as we would call it.
I've seen the Brawa Prussian coaches and they sure are sweet! I simply cannot afford them though but I'm very happy with the Roco/Fleischmann versions, the latest issue is certainly beautifully painted.

Thanks all, for looking in,
John.

Having got the baseboards built, it was time to see how things look with physical track and structures placed in position.

P1160977 by Allegheny1633, on Flickr
The turntable and shed area, this is quite a focal point of the layout as a lot of the movents will be focussed on the table. Any run round move, loco servicing or turning, all uses this!

The trackplan originally called for four tracks through the station area but it would have looked cramped so I settled on three.
P1160978 by Allegheny1633, on Flickr

Two sidings for the quarry area looks fine.
P1160981 by Allegheny1633, on Flickr

A chance for a nice wooded hillside I think?
P1160983 by Allegheny1633, on Flickr

I'm not too keen on how close I have to bring the track leading to the traverser, to the inside corner of the baseboards, I think I should probably build a "filler" board for this point but keep the running line as it appears in these pictures. That way, I'm only dealing with one board crossing rather than three!
Cheers,
John.

QUOTE If you don't have any of the Brawa 3-axle Prussian coaches, you're missing out. They're pretty special.
Marklin turned out a three-pack of Prussian 3-axle paired coaches that were quite nice also. I don't think these came as a Trix release, so you'll need to swap wheel-sets if go down that path.

Good evening mates

I hope not to be boring, but the 3-axle paired coaches - in contrast to the non-paired - have been acquired for the Berlin suburban lines (S-Bahn) only. You can get them of Märklin and of Roco range - both are quite good in accordance with the prototypes built as of 1907. Until 1928 (when Berlin S-Bahn commenced to be transferred to electical System), these have only been used on Berlin and Hamburg suburban lines. As of 1928, already in Reichsbahn times, i.e. epoch II, the paired coaches have been transferred to other Agglomeration Areas such as Ruhr valley, Frankfurt-Rhine-Main and Saxony (Leipzig). At this time, livery had changed from prussian brown to Reichsbahn dark brown green (and different marking and lettering).

In contrast to the paired 3-axled coaches, the standard 3-axled coaches, either in prussian or in Reichsbahn livery, were vastly common to all passenger (not express trains) all over Germany except for Bavaria, Badonia, Württemberg, Saxony and Palatinate. Which was approx. 75 per cent. of the country. You can get such coaches rather expensive from Brawa or - second hand - rather cheap but good from the Roco range. Fleischmann sooner or later will follow with 3rd class coaches in epoch II livery (epoch I only in train sets). The Roco range only incudes the 2nd class coach.

Just to give you an idea:


Prussian 3-axled compartment coach 3rd class, 1907 type, Reichsbahn livery, with brakeman's cab, Roco 44505


Prussian 3-axled compartment coach 2nd class, 1907 type, Reichsbahn livery, brakeman's cab removed, Roco 44526


Prussian 3-axled compartment coach 3rd class, former 4th class, 1904 type, Reichsbahn livery, brakeman's cab removed, Roco 44513


Prussian 3-axled compartment coach 4th class, 1904 type, prussian livery prior to 1914, with brakeman's cab, Brawa 45482

may be continued...

Cheers
Mark

Hi Mark, Neil,
Thanks for your welcome posts, I really do love those 6 wheelers, Mark! Please, do continue!
I have some 'set's of the cheaper 6 wheelers, earlier on in my Prussian career, I bought the Fleischmann "Wannsee" set and recently I bought the Fleischmann set of P8 and 6 wheelers!
In lieu of progress, I really must show some pictures of my stock, maybe?
Progress has been held up because I'm an idiot!
I decided that I didn't want my turntable to have several spurious exit tracks unconnected to anything else so I removed on to see how easy it was to remove the rails and use filler to remove any traces of where the rails where. I then subsequently lost/misplaced* this piece of the table, grrr!!!
Major problem as you cannot buy any spares - anywhere that I've found anyway!
I have feelers out and am hoping to rectify this situation as soon as possible.

*I had a major 'tidy up' as I made room in my shed/modelling den for a US layout and I'm sure this was when the turntable piece disapeared.
Cheers,
John.

Oh dear me, this has been such a long time since I last updated (sorry!).
Progress has been painfully slow, glacial even!
Good news however, I found my missing turntable segment!
The bad news was that I only found it AFTER I had ordered and received a set of additional segments from Lippe, they were reasonably priced in themselves but for such a small order, the postage was relatively expensive. Not to worry, at the time, I could not see how else to get around my missing segment! HA!
So, this is what a segment looks like;


And, with the rails and extraneous bits removed;


Filled with Squadron "White Putty" and sanded down;


As a group and with an original "blank" segment;


Now to paint, possibly fill & sand again, paint again and see what they look like!

I have also found a wonderful picture online showing a similar table in use, in Prussian days. Note that there are only handrails around the winding mechanism, health and safety was much less apparent in those days.


So, here is the original model;


And, without handrails!


A little cheating really, the handrails just unclip from the table, useful!
Hopefully, it won't be so long until my next update!
John.