Quiet earth (was: Exercise module for Plettenberg railroad in 1/22.5 scale)

[finescalerr]

Hmmm. There is a cigarette butt in the groove, too. I wonder how many butts per kilometer would be accurate?

Seriously, is it not possible that some areas of a line have clean grooves and others have debris ... maybe the result of how often a track crew or street cleaner goes by or how many trains use the line?

Russ

[mad gerald]

Seriously Russ,

isn't this the place we are nitpicking and start splitting hairs ... to achieve higher grounds ... ?!  

Cheers

[Peter_T1958]

Hi Volker

In such discussions I haven't frequently stated my opinion, but here I can only support mad geralds words.
Ok, this is absolute not my line of business ... but I do remember very well my dirty fingers, when we had to fish my coin from the groove between the rails as I was a boy. (We used to put all sort of stuff on the street car rails to flatten them. :-)



Cheers, Peter

[Hydrostat]

Maybe there's a problem with the frontlighting? Here's another pic.



Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

I was joking about the cigarette butts, of course, but not about the track cleaning; I really do not know whether a street cleaner would remove most of the debris in the track grooves, especially in Europe. I remember many cities, especially in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, being cleaner than American cities (including the streets). -- Russ

[Franck Tavernier]

Awesome job Volker!

Congratulations,

Franck

[artizen]

I still think it's A...R...T

I know I could never achieve that level of perfection and realism but I keep playing at it because I get great enjoyment from my little world in the basement.

[Hydrostat]

Gerald and Peter,

please watch me eating humble pie: After I took counsel with my pillow and then had a very nice spring day it dawned on me that I had a misunderstanding of the word 'detritus', which I solely understood as 'rotten organic material'. This is what I think would have been removed to ensure safe operation. And dirty fingers after touching a rail? Of course! Perhaps in addition I didn't get it how you could have seen missing dust and dirt in the grooves in that frontlighted picture.

Meanwhile I've talked to my friend Wolf, who is an intimate connoisseur of the Plettenberg railway and remembers it from own sight: There's been detritus (= dust, little stones, sand and so on) in most of the rails, but with high variation. A lot of dirt (and rotten organic materials, too) in the seldom used sidings and rather clean grooves at the difficult points like steep gradients - especially after the 'Ritzenschieber' has cleaned out the grooves or a heavy rainfall washed it away.

With his kind permission I'm able to show you an example for very dirty and obviously seldom used trackage ...


Foto by Alb. Middermann, 1953, Source: W. D. Groote collection

... and some cleaning efforts of the neighboring Hohenlimburger Kleinbahn:


Foto/Source: W. D. Groote collection

From my own sight at the Mainz streetcar system I've mostly seen clean rails like these - admitting that's half a century later with better machinery ...
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/14248350
http://fotowelt.chip.de/k/wettbewerb/fotowettbewerb-detail-aufnahmen/strassenbahnschienen/666324/
http://de.123rf.com/photo_3629348_strassenbahnschienen-in-einer-gepflasterten-strasse.html

For me the lesson is clear: The main line will remain as it is. The visible stains of dust in the groove in my last model picture are believable as there is a drainage in the groove and it may have been cleaned by hand and/or rainfall before. I'll add some detritus to the siding's grooves insofar as is possible for running trains on it.

I'm asking you to read what I've written about trackage in one of my first posts of this thread. You won't find trackage to scale at this 'exercise module' anyway. Funny that this is the point, which doesn't let the pictures pass for 1:1 scale for me. Good to have different ways of looking at things ...

Thanks Russ (I did get your joke), Franck and Ian (again). I would appreciate this to be art, given my cultural matrix, but I think it is what you said about your own work: Great enjoyment from my little world in the kitchen. Don't ask me what I do in the basement .

Cheers,
Volker

[shropshire lad]

Hey , Volker . What do you do in your basement ? And does it involve chains ?

  Nick 

[finescalerr]

You are in no position to talk, Nick. I have it on good authority that your entire basement is lined with leather .... -- ssuR

[Hydrostat]

Nick,

mostly nothing. And yes, there are some chains. I think you train buff would love it.

Cheers,
Volker

[Hydrostat]

Concerning heavy metal like chains and so on - and to get out of the basement: Does anyone have a clue what this might be going to represent?



Cheers,
Volker

[finescalerr]

It looks like the cast iron block my parents tied around my neck before they threw me off the Golden Gate Bridge ... only the one around my neck was bigger. -- Russ

[lab-dad]

Support for an iron bridge?
Marty

[marc_reusser]

Something that inter-locks into something else.

...made in one of the casting foundries for which Plettenberg is known.