2010-08-28

My US style H0 railroad, since long dismantled




Engine and cabooseWhile in the air force, I started reading American
model railroad magazines like Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman. When I left the air force, I used the money I had gotten to purchase a
[Heisler]
Rivarossi Heisler, a Sagami can motor, some flextrack and a few cars. I guess the plan was to build a small logging railroad in my bedroom. But I really don't remember, as it was almost 20 years ago.



This Heisler is one of my all time best running locos. Its slow speed is amazing. You can get it to turn the wheels so slowly you can't see them move, but if you block it so i cannot move, they continue to turn.



Controller
In the mean time, I had built a couple of controllers, one giving filtered DC, the other pulsed power (it also included momentum).

I didn't design them myself, I only assembled them after  instructions other had made. For one I even purchased a printed circuit card. (Actually three cards, but the other two I found I didn't need.)

Cabooses
During the layout building, I also got some rolling stock, and modified it to my private, free lance, railroad, ARC - Anchorhead Railroad Company.

Cabooses were to be brown with yellow ends, engines green and grey.
The GP7 number 41 is unique in that I think it's the only Swedish H0 engine that's been featured on national broadcast radio. This was when the model railroad club I was then part of where visited by a team from Sveriges Radio in order to make a programme about us. You could hear in stereo how it ran from left to right and then back again. I think this was around 1982.

After I had moved, I started with a really big model railroad: It was to go around all four walls, and in parts be triple decked! Amazing that I even could have such ideas!


Soon, I discoverd that duckunders weren't for me, so the layout was adaped to go only around three walls.

Later on, I found that that was too much as well to keep maintained, so I cut it down to an "L", and started to scenic it.

Can't find any photos of it now, but I've got a photo of one of the local control panels.

The layout was scenicked like it was spring, with red and yellow leaf trees and dark green conifers. The buildings were a mixture of plastic kits, mostly Heljan, and mixed material kits from Campbell. (I'll see if I can find an photos of it among my
archived stuff.)


Two switchers
One of the last things I did with the American layout, was to build a very modified switcher.

I had previously built a BN SD9 with flashing beacon and directional constant lights. But on this S-12, I managed to put in directional constant lightning, both white and red with tiny light bulbs.

Lots of detail parts, of course, just like on my other diesels, so they would get a "family" look.


The above text and imgages last modified 1995 Mar 26 by Urban

Some photos from 1987 showing construction and test running.

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