Model Railways

When I was younger I enjoyed building a model railway. Then space for it ceased to exist and it had to go. Hopefully in the not too distant future I'll move into my own place and have space to start a new project.

The Old Layout

Over the years I built up quite a collection of locos, carriages and wagons along with track, scenery, buildings, signals etc. I don't have any photos of it to show, but I do have many of the locos in a cabinet in my room. And if you think the cabinet looks a little hashed together, it's because I made it myself, in GCSE Technology class.

Plans For A New Layout

It's hard to be too specific without knowing what space I'll have yet. However, here's what I'm looking to do. I want a model involving Swiss railways. My current idea involves a model of two connected parts. One would be a fairly big station with a lot of mainline traffic. The second would be a mountain railway. Trains for the mountain would depart from the station and have a steep climb. This will almost certainly be a rack railway, though I doubt the models will actually use the rack. It will be done in HO scale, though the rack railway may well be HOm (HO meter guage). A lake could also be desirable, plus I'd like to have at least one large viaduct amongst the "mountains" too. A station near the highest point the mountain railway reaches would be good, but for more realism I'll probably create the illusion of it going higher still, perhaps with a sharp bend to an area hidden behind a peak or a tunnel.

To that end, I've started to build a small collection of Swiss models. Here is the collection so far. I tend to grab some of this stuff off EBay when there is a good price on something and I have some money to spare. So, that won't be all that often.

Red SBB CFF Locomotive - used for hauling medium-long distance passenger trains and freight trains

SBB CFF FSS Cargo Locomotive - used for hauling freight trains

SBB CFF Green Railcar - used in short-medium distance passenger trains

SBB FFS Green First Class Carriages - I've ended up with four of these!

SBB CFF FSS Blue Standard Class Carriage - an older carriage; the livery is probably before the era I'm looking to model, but it can always sit in a siding somewhere as older rolling stock often does.