Kim' Trains: 2013

Friday 26 July 2013

Authenticity

As I have said, I am trying to build a war 2 milieu set somewhere to the east of Germany at about 1943-44. It is to be a depot where damaged German tanks and vehicles are brought via rail to be repaired and re-deployed. I have chosen the season to be autumn with a light dusting of snow and frost on the undisturbed parts of the layout.

Locomotives

I have been researching the types of locomotives being used on the eastern front and there appeared to be many. I have chosen so far to have a Class 38, Class 50, and a Class 52.

Class 52 Kriegslok

War damaged Class 52 Kriegslok

The DRB Class 52 is in grey kreigslok livery and will be used as a long haul military loco pulling a Panzer unit including troops and tanks to the front. The unit has the new Panthers and Tiger I's as the main tanks.

Class 50

The DRB Class 50 is in standard black and is to be used for hauling freight and other carriages to the front. I will probably repaint this one in camouflage.

Class 38 Prussian P 8

Class 38 (Prussian P 8) being refueled on Eastern Front

The DRG Class 38.10-40 is a heavy locomotive used for general purpose freight and passenger hauling. It was originally produced as the Prussian P 8 class from 1909 onwards.

All of these locomotives have been documented as being in use at that time and possibly in my fictitious location. I am still trying to find a suitable loco for use in shunting.

It appears that at that time there were a number of Prussian T 12 tank locomotives around being used for heavy shunting and goods trains on short hauls. Märklin H0 produce one of these in the 1980's - 1990's in the 3095 BR74. I am trying to get one of these from eBay now.

Class 38 in the winter on the Eastern Front.

Rolling Stock

Here are some of the photos of rolling stock I have found. By the 1943, due to heavy losses from bombing raids, trains where compiled from rolling stock of different types from different locations.

Thursday 25 July 2013

It is hard to believe it is nearly a year later. The set is up and running, I bought some plaster and paints to play with but all went quiet for a while and I never made anything with the plaster at all :( Still things are moving along.

During my mid year break from study, I am doing a Master of Information Systems part time after work, I found myself with some time. I went downstairs and found my m-track had all rusted up. Probably, something to do with sharing space with a clothes dryer; lots of moisture. So I got out some fine sand paper and spend a couple of hours cleaning the track. It was back breaking, dirty and unpleasant. Unpleasant enough for me to upgrade my track to c-track.

Like everything, it was not simple. Apparently, the sizes of m-track and c-track including the curve radii are all different. After a quick trip to the marklin-users.net forum to ask a bunch of questions a lovely chap there did up a track plan for me! How nice! He also pointed me at the track planning software WinTrack 11.0. I went there but found the US$99 was a bit steep for me but there was a demo which installed and ran well. Sadly saving and printing track plans was barred, though I could and did take a screen shot of the plan and saved that. Searching through eBay I found that to reproduce my layout (approximately) would cost over $500. That seemed a little daunting, but in hindsight I probably should have done it ;)

Well, now I am buying bits and pieces of track, some from each pay packet. I did go out on a bit of a spree and bought 3 2nd hand locos and 6 second hand wagons. They were so cheap and nice and fit my layout (WW2 theme) so well!. Here are the pics: