Modelling German Railways

    

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Intro

 

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The blog is about building a very small layout of a simple station, it is merely an amalgam of features of existing locations in the area but all the features are consistent with a quiet rural line. It shares the same layout as Pottendorf, the stock and buildings are simply swapped. I like small trains, this is reflected by a couple of locos that should not really be used but Grafenwalde is not a copy.

Thuringia

 

 The original layout 2004

Please note

The layout is a very loose interpretation of a rural station in rural Thuringia, the model should show the station in the summer of 1954, at the time up to the end of the 1960s all the tracks were still in place. The location of the layout is a location on the northern edge of the Thuringia Forest, the nearest large municipality is Arnstadt.

 

 The Rennsteig

Locos of Grafenwalde

The locos used on Grafenwalde are simply those which I like and are typical of small rural lines.

The BR55 G7.1 is a visitor, borrowed from the Kyffhäuser line.

 

The T3 is a standard small loco for lightly laid rural lines

The T9.3 is another small tank loco

The V23 was used to haul redundant trailers that had been repurposed as coaches

Finally, a VT135 , these railcars were built in the mid-1930s by Lindner and WUMAG for the "Provincial Saxon Light Railways" and used on various private railways, for example on the Schildau-Mockrehna, Prettin-Annaburg, Wallwitz-Wettin, and Rennsteig-Frauenwald lines. This type of railcar was also called the "Little Wettiner." The German Reichsbahn used them, among other places, in the Altmark region.

Trains such as these are fascinating

 

Spare

Buildings

The small station building is typical of other’s in Thuringia, Auhagen's Prussian style Lokleitung 11389, is appropriate for use as a small station. Click here for an illustrated list of stations in Thuringia

The wooden storeroom

The loco shed

 

BCPwPosti

BCPwPost4i

In 1913, the Rennsteig-Frauenwald Kleinbahn (KRF) was opened. From 1912 onwards, the Gottfried Lindner A.G. wagon factory in Ammendorf near Halle (which later became the well-known VEB Waggonbau Ammendorf) supplied several narrow-gauge railways with four-axle combined passenger, mail, and baggage coaches with eight upholstered 2nd-class seats and 40 wooden 3rd-class seats. The first of these coaches was delivered to the Rennsteig-Frauenwald Kleinbeahn (KRF),

 

 

Progress

BR195

During the ‘50s and ‘60s the Deutsches Reichsbahn (DR) were finding the task of providing a service rather difficult as the Soviet controlled regime did not encourage replacement but rather make n’mend of old stock.

Not to be defeated by these problems, the DR removed the worn out motors and repurposed the railcars as driving trailers replete with controls hauled by lightweight industrial shunters being made in the old O&K plants in Babelsberg which were renamed the LOWA Lokomotiv Plant Karl Marx (LKM). In the same manner, I found a Piko BR195 trailer car which will be hauled by the V15 (LKM) made by Brawa, the trailer simply needs a new close coupling system. 

These were used in Thuringia but mostly centered in the area around Ebeleben. 

 

The standard Kadee from below.