Building a Swiss narrow-gauge railway in 1:45, early days

[HelgeAndreas]

Hello, I am new to this Forum. I´d love to present my building of this Swiss narrow-gauge railway. Comments are welcome. I am here to learn.

After several years of never having time for getting somewhere with my modelling, I have finally started to realise this old wish. It is a part of the line between Klosters to Cavadürli in southeast Switzerland. I have started this project many times, but it has always stopped, from too little time and also an irritation towards my lack of skills and abilities to accurate building. I want it to look as close to how it did at the time around 1913-1914.

What I want is a miniature railway in 1:45, as much self-buildt as possible. Soldering, machining etc.
I want the Steam era (I am a fireman on steam locomotives in Norway).
I want the track and ties to be as light as it was at that time. I have numerous Photos from this time and I love the Idea of how Man and simple, light dimensioned technique "concuered" the mountains and forests.

I have bought drawings from the Locomotive factory supplying this line, and from libraries and archives, but to build was always difficult. To little practice and knowledge, and an unrealistic desire to get it more accurate, stopped me.

Now, however, it is important to me to finally start building, and have some progression, and I am willing to accept my compromises and imperfections, and I want to learn from them. Most importantly to have a miniature of the Rhaetian railway from that era.

So I am starting with the track. The rail-profile (in 1895) would have been close to 2mm heights in 0-gauge. I have made a compromise to use micro engineering code 100. They are 2,5mm tall, and has meassurements very close to the profile that was used after 1905. It is likely to have had iron sleepers/ties. The ones at the opening in 1895 had wooden ties. So another compromise is that I assume that the sleepers/ties where used again as they changed for heavier rails. I have etched tieplates from 0,4mm brass, and used nails from Wenz Modellbau. 3 in every sleeper. I have made track gauges on my minilathe, and my good friend H.Houen has milled one for use on straight tracks. I have buildt a rail bender from ideas in a German magazine called spur 0 Locomotive. My first 44 cm (20 real meters) was inaugurated and filmed, to my satisfaction, in spring. A small video from that event is on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/tkm00QMaR7c

So I am currently building the north end of the small station Cavadürli. It will be on 5 modules (for the possibility to be moveable). Most of them have roadbed and most of the styrofoam surroundings. I have a little bit more experience in handling the track now, but building the turnouts is still difficult. All commercial models of turnouts have either too heavy rails, wrong ties or wrong geometry. I want that turnouts from the early days, 1:7 with 80 meter radius on the diversion, and a cast iron frog (beautiful curves). My progression is so that I have etched some brass to replicate the frog part, but with 2,5mm rail instead of 2mm. I still don´t have a finished Points to show, slowly I am getting there.

I have a question to the forum: Railjoiners on all railways I have seen have the bolthead on the inside of the tracks and the nut on the outside. I allways assumed that it was because of the wheel flanges. On the Rhaetian railways nowadays it is also like this, but in the early years it was opposite. I have seen many photos of it, one is attached here (from the wonderful book from Camartin u Pfeiffer). Does anybody know WHEN did they change that?

There is also a couple of photos of my work so far. The railjoiners and tieplates, and also the frogpart, and some short track with Engine no 5. (Model from Ferro Suisse)

Thanks for "listening". More photos will come

Helge Andreas

[Barney]

Welcome it all looks good so just keep it coming - what make is the engine - Track work to me has always been a pain  - most available / off the shelf stuff track systems always look over scale with massive spikes eg PECO 7mm Narrow gauge code 100 - looks massive in 1/35th scale I have tried spiking code 100 on wooden sleepers in 1/35th and it don't look to bad - but of recent have started used 1/4scale (1/48) Micro Engineering code 70 and it looks nice for a light Narrow Gauge railway
Barney

[1-32]

Welcome Helge
Great to see more European modellers posting here.
Really looking forward to your progress.
cheers-Kim

[finescalerr]

If you are a friend of Havard, I will expect excellent things from you. -- Russ

[HelgeAndreas]

Welcome it all looks good so just keep it coming - what make is the engine - Track work to me has always been a pain  - most available / off the shelf stuff track systems always look over scale with massive spikes eg PECO 7mm Narrow gauge code 100 - looks massive in 1/35th scale I have tried spiking code 100 on wooden sleepers in 1/35th and it don't look to bad - but of recent have started used 1/4scale (1/48) Micro Engineering code 70 and it looks nice for a light Narrow Gauge railway
Barney

Thanks for the tour of handspiking!
The Engine is from Ferro Suisse, a small (Suisse) manufacturer that made some limited versions of rolling stock in 0m and H0m. I am not sure if they do anymore, but they have some excellent readymade track. A 1:7 turnout that is beautiful - but rail weight is 3,5mm in 0m)

H

[HelgeAndreas]

Welcome Helge
Great to see more European modellers posting here.
Really looking forward to your progress.
cheers-Kim

Thanks!
I am also looking forward to my progress! :-)

H

[HelgeAndreas]

If you are a friend of Havard, I will expect excellent things from you. -- Russ

He is a role model for model builders here!

H

[Ray Dunakin]

Welcome aboard! That's some mighty fine track work!

[Les Tindall]

Great stuff, you've certainly done your research.
Les

[Bill Gill]

Welcome to the forum, Helge. Very nice trackwork. I look forward to following your progress.

[nalmeida]

Welcome to the forum Helge.

Love the European narrow gauge. We have some wonderful prototypes here in Portugal also.

Looking forward to follow your updates.

[HelgeAndreas]

Bom Dia!

Sim, eu sei! Eu pensa para a linha do douro e também Dao. (Desculpe eu não falo bem, mas tenho saudade do Portugal)

I´d love to see someone modelling your lovely narrow-gauge!

Fica bem! H

[HelgeAndreas]

Short Update (well... track work..):

Handling track means... more of the same... But I AM enjoying it. Slowly, slowly skills will come.. :-)

I have spent some time with improving the rail joiners. My modules are a little more than 1 meter long (as close to 5 x 222mm - 10meters rail-length as possible - yes, it is not only the aesthetics, it is also the sound). That means that I need 2 rails to be joined on each module. I thought that to make the bolts coming through from the joiner - Rail - joiner - nut, would be most practical. It would then align the 2 rails. On my old Emco-unimat, still without collet chuck, is the limit of my abilities. But I have been able to produce some (completely) nuts from a 1mm brass hexagon rod, 0,5mm thick and with a 0,5mm hole. I am not completely happy with my soldering skills still, but it IS improving.

I am still in search for the answer to WHEN the RhB decided to have their joining nuts outward instead of inward as they did in the beginning. I think it is such a remarkable feature, and I AM building it, as far as I have gotten, but would be interesting to know.

I attach a few photos from the progress.

Take care, have fun. Yours Helge Andreas

[Ray Dunakin]

Nice work!

[Hauk]

I am still in search for the answer to WHEN the RhB decided to have their joining nuts outward instead of inward as they did in the beginning.

I have never before seen such attention to trackwork details, regardless of scale!