Wednesday 31 May 2017

Happy Anniversary!

I had a great time celebrating the 40th anniversary of the heritage Hedelands Veteranbane located 30 km. west of Copenhagen. It's a lot of work to run a heritage railway and adding an anniversary doesn't ease the burden. But getting all locos out, running special trains and giving visitors and passengers something extra will hopefully give an extra boost in PR and produce more passengers during the coming season's traffic. On the modelling side running narrow gauge trains in 1/1 scale surely is inspirational and I picked up several ideas while perching on the brakeman's platform.
A selection of locos outside the shed at Hedehusgård station.

One blog update during May is the consequence of the hours spent planning and helping executing the anniversary. But surely it was worth it. I had a great four day extended weekend with my friends on the railway and chatting with visiting enthusiasts from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
M 3 awaits M 25 arriving in track 1 with a passenger train.


The extended timetable was seasoned with skip trains, alternating locos and extra train meets at stations. A day's extended timetable filled a full 10 A4 pages when printed out. Everything worked out fine and both traffic control and crews carried out the days' traffic with no panic.
After running around the three skips in its train, M 3 meets another passenger train at Rubjerg station pulled by Da 7 before returning to Hedehusgård 3.5 km away.


At Hedehusgård a 1923 Marshall steam roller worked a stone crusher breaking up stone. The Danish steam roller society visited HVB to celebrate the anniversary.



Steam loco no. 3 with a short train of skips. Fireman poses with coal shovel and oil can.

Now that everything has settled back to normal, I'm having a little time at the work table again. I promise to have some finished modelling projects on the blog in the near future. More images from the anniversary in this Flickr-folder.

Friday 12 May 2017

Petrol Delivery (1/35)

Nystrup Gravel relied on primarily petrol powered locomotives and other equipment well into the 1950's. Petrol was stored in an underground tank and delivered to locomotives by the fuel pump placed next to the loco shed. When fuel was needed elsewhere Nystrup Gravel's small fuel train took care of deliveries.

The Ford AA fuel tanker has just arrived at the loco shed with a supply of petrol.

With regular intervals a tank lorry topped up the fuel storage. The usual supplier of petrol and diesel was Shell, while the local Gulf depot took care of oil for lubrication purposes.

Turning around to reach the filling pipe for the underground fuel storage tank.


Almost there...

I built the tank lorry back in 2004. It started as a kit from Eastern Express of the Soviet copy of the Ford AA - the Gaz-AA built in Gorki. The tank is a shortened tank from the Italeri GMC tanker. The shortened tank was fitted with rows of home made rivets and a dome from a plastic tube. I added the pump housing on the lorry's left side and scratch built mudguards from plasticcard. I bought the Shell decals from New Zealand and made license plates myself. The driver is a mix of parts from several figures.

A view through the open doors of the loco shed.