The blog is about building a very small layout of a very simple terminus, rather than a copy, it is merely an amalgam of features of existing locations in the area but all the features are consistent with a quiet light line.
The original Grafenwalde 2004
Please note
The layout is a very loose interpretation of a rural station in rural Thuringia, the model should show the station in the summer of 1954, at the time up to the end of the 1960s all the tracks were still in place.
The layout is based upon a Kleinbahn that was originally, a short line, in this case only almost 7km (4.3 miles) to Frauenwald in Southern Thuringia. It was a standard gauge line that was served by tiny trains and lasted from 1913 to 1965. Due to the topography the station at Rennsteig was a 'Spitzkehren bahnhof' or 'hairpin station' where the train changes direction. The railway had to meet the transport needs of the predominantly rural structure of the area
89 5901
The railcar shown below was employed until WW2, although a 0-4-0 tank loco with road number 5 plus passenger cars and goods cars was also employed. This loco was supplemented by one obtained from the Kleinbahn Neuhaldensleben–Weferlingen former roadbed is accessible today as a Wanderweg
The railway survived the Second World War, in 1949, the railway was nationalised and the operation was taken over by the Deutsche Reichsbahn. At the beginning of the 1950s, tourism to the Thuringian Forest increased significantly. In 1952, through express trains ran from Berlin to the Thuringian Forest for the first time. In Rennsteig, the train, consisting of four-axle express coaches, was split up. Three coaches continued on to Schmiedefeld , the other three were hauled by a T 3 to Frauenwald
The condition of the track deteriorated noticeably, and despite increasing traffic, only the most urgent repairs could be carried out. On February 13, 1965, the line had to be closed due to snow drifts, and trains had to be replaced by buses. Railway operations ceased after that because no funds were available for the necessary renovations.
As part of the search for a simple station building for Thuringia, I used this Wiki photo album of various smaller stations. The variety of styles is quite amazing, from full fachwerk, to rendered, stone and finally brick, there is almost no common style, maybe because many of the railways in Thuringia were ‘private’ enterprises…. Below is Blankenfelde beside the Heidekrautbahn.
Auhagen's Lokleitung 11389, the similarity to Blankenfelde is remarkable and as it is not a unique design, its use can be justified for Grafenwalde, somewhere in Thuringia.
In 1913, the Rennsteig-Frauenwald Kleinbahn (KRF) was opened. From 1912 onwards, the Gottfried Lindner A.G. wagon factory in Ammendorf near Halle (which later became the well-known VEB Waggonbau Ammendorf) supplied several narrow-gauge railways with four-axle combined passenger, mail, and baggage coaches with eight upholstered 2nd-class seats and 40 wooden 3rd-class seats. The first of these coaches was delivered to the Rennsteig-Frauenwald Kleinbeahn (KRF),
The small farm comprises of a low house and a small yard separated by a railway line.
The farm buildings include a Wills SS30 barn kit that has been improved with a layer of Polyfilla fine surface render.
Just a couple of scenes in the farmyard, the farm is a tiny dairy unit, just three working buildings around a courtyard.
The 'futtersilo' a must-have on any farm from Epoch 2 onwards but this is the actual reason why there is a silo
Hunting for Frogs
The earth cellar.
Whilst
looking around an old farm we found an odd feature found beside the
farmhouse, it was a small stone hut built into the side of the hill. It
was the entrance to a cold store or 'Erdkeller' for the 18th century
farm, although farmhouse had a basement it also had a separate earth
cellar.
In
terms of room height and shape, it penetrates far less deeply into the
ground, only two steps lead down to the brick entrance. The quarry stone
vault of the cellar is also completely covered with soil and potatoes
are stored here over the winter - dark, cool, but frost-free.
There
were a couple of other similar garden cellars in the village, one was
not built into the side of a hill, instead merely cut into the farm
garden and covered with the displaced soil.
On the layout there is a small cottage, it has a couple of fruit trees, vegetable garden and chicken coop.
I
remember that in my childhood, chickens (and other domestic birds) were
bustling around in every village. The owners of the poultry seemed to
have no concern for their safety at all. A constant image was the birds
taking carelessly walks along the road running through the village
buildings. And this sometimes ended in a tragic accident under the
wheels of a car.
During the ‘50s and ‘60s the Deutsches Reichsbahn (DR) were finding the task of providing a service rather difficult as the Soviet controlled regime did not encourage replacement but rather make n’mend of old stock.
Not to be defeated by these problems, the DR removed the worn out motors and repurposed the railcars as driving trailers replete with controls hauled by lightweight industrial shunters being made in the old O&K plants in Babelsberg which were renamed the LOWA Lokomotiv Plant KarlMarx (LKM). In the same manner, I found a Piko BR195 trailer car which will be hauled by the V15 (LKM) made by Brawa, the trailer simply needs a new close coupling system.
The selection of stock represents those that might have been used on a light rural line with only one train in service at any one time, it is just a few smaller steam locos, a couple of tiny diesels and a railbus with a few wagons.
