Kaburg
Hi guys, Here is the inspiration behind my layout. For every layout there needs to be a reason, and ultimately mine is so I can have fun building it and as an added bonus, have something to run my trains on. I will draw a plan and take some overview shots of the layout room over the coming week. The beginnings. In Wellington, there are a number of what I would call significant continental layouts. One depicts the Gotthard route, one is built by a master craftsman and one models 4 major stations in the black forest. On this backdrop, I began building my layout in 1999. Yes it is a long time ago and not a lot has realy been achieved in terms of completing it, but progress does occasionally happen. In 1997 I went to Europe for a holiday with Kate and we travelled around southern Germany for a week with a rail pass and a timetable. We arrived in Stuttgart on a Friday and had to be in Frankfurt the following Friday. We spent three days in Lindau and from that point on I knew that one day I would build a terminus station. As much as I would have liked to model Lindau, my room is not big enough. But the thought remains. The area. It should come as no surprise that given the amount of K.W.St.E. stock that I have, that I would logically choose somewhere in Württemberg that was close to the Bavarian border. This allows both railways coaches and locomotives to appear in greater numbers than would be expected say up north. I like to think that Kaburg is close to the Bodensee and is a resort town that has some mid size industry, which justifies the length of the freight trains and the frequency of the passenger trains. The Era 1985 was a major turning point in my modelling. Märklin brought out the K.W.St.E. T5 and manufactures in general started using the NEM coupler pocket. This enabled the easy purchase and retro fitting of couplings. However although I have a reasonable amount of era 1 rolling stock, for some reason era 2 has always had a fascination for me, especially the standard build locomotives. It was probably about 2003 that I decided that epoch 2b was the answer. I can still get away with running my epoch 1 equipment, but the majority of the equipment on the layout will be DRG. What is in a name? The branch line station is called Dittengen. Many years ago the Märklin Magazine had an article on this station, and the track plan is the actual track layout of the station. For my needs it is about 30cm’s short, but I can live with it. Thoughts of a rebuild are continuing! There has been a lot written as to what is feasible when naming towns on your layout. In an effort to personalise my own “major” town, I was looking for a Germanic name that had some meaning to me, and those who know me well could pick the subtle humour of it. Kaburg came about of the three most important people in my life, Kate (your trains all look the same) Aimee (Dad can we run the piggys) and Brianna (I want Thomas). So once a name is decided, there is at least some basis of reality. Layout requirements One of the great joys of embarking on a project is trying to decide what you want. I decided quite early on that the key things my layout need were: No duck unders The ability to run long trains. Terminus station Locomotive serving area Freight yard Passenger yard A balance between town and country Train Lengths To me, looking at a layout where all trains are the same length irrespective of the locomotive pulling it is quite off putting. I resolved early on that my maximum train length was going to be three metres. This meant that my K.W.St.E. K would pull the longest train and the Glaskasten would not look out of place with a three or four wagon train. Time will tell how successful this philosophy is. Terminus Station Stations take up space and when you consider my philosophy on train lengths, my terminus station was always going to be a challenge. As it turned out this was not such a problem. I wanted 5 platform tracks (three platforms) two are for D trains and three are for F trains. Passenger sidings were an issue, but I have two of them. The only problem is that the head shunt is not quite long enough to pull the entire D train out of the platform road and shunt the train into the passenger sidings. The freight yard is quite simple with three loop roads and three sidings. The above all sounds quite easy, but I only had a 5.5 meter length and from between 90 cm to 135cm wide to put it in. But I did it, and it seems to work! Loco Servicing facility I always that this was going to be disproportionate to the size of the station it was attached to. I wanted a round house of 9 tracks plus coaling, sanding and watering facilities. Again I was able to do it. It is functional and needs to be used when running trains. Having a terminus station requires the locomotives to be turned. Shadow station. It is important to have a shadow station when building a terminus station. To save time and space, it has been designed to go under the terminus station. It will have four roads with a minimum length of 3 meters and a short loop to hold the SVT 137. A balance between town and country This was the hard bit. I have a room that is 5m x 6m. 2 m2 of it is taken up with the fridge and freezer. The layout takes up 15 m2 of the room. Baseboard with to the wall ranges from 77cm’s up to 140 cm’s. The shots I have shown hopefully portray an expansiveness that achieves this. Conclusions I have been pottering on the layout now for nearly eight years and still it is nowhere near completion. However I have been productive over the last month or so. It is in the layout tour for the European mini convention at Easter 2007, so that has been a spur to work hard on some of the scenery. This year (and we will see what pressures are bought to bear on the budget by the new releases) I hope to start work building the station building and maybe even the town. Work needs to be completed on design and putting in the signalling system. So much work and so little time.