This is a 'continental'
TT scale
(1:120) layout that represents the German
West Rhine railway
double track line running along the West bank of the river Rhine, in the gorge South of Koblenz, by the
Loreley.
A very German subject to model, but made in England.
| Layout Status: mostly complete Jan 2010. The Exhibition diary continues to fill. |
| White lines are painted on the road way. |
| The 2nd Faller 'car', a Herpa artic tractor conversion worked fine except for one small detail, it would not go around the turning circles at each end of the layout! An experiment shows that although the original vehicle, a VW van on an N scale bus chassis, worked OK on 80 mm radius curves the artic needs 120 mm curves. A rebuild of the turning circles is now planned. |
Tunnel portal image by Marion van Velzen.
The diorama shows the railway running between two of the elegant tunnel portals that feature on this part of the railway and from front to back you see the edge of the river, a road (on which Faller based vehicles will run), the railway tracks and the steep slope of the gorge rising above the river. The period is set from 1st of January 1994, the ' Bahnreform ' , until August 2002 when this route was by-pased by a new Frankfurt-Koln high speed route.
Image by Ian Morgan.
The rolling stock, mostly owned by John who is a bit of a collector, is from the Tillig range, via International Models , but also includes some from Roco , Kuehn and Piko. The trackwork is all from Tillig and the turnouts are operated by RC Servo motors operated by MERG driver modules. Traction power is from a pair of 12 volt DC hand held controllers (modified to only give 9 volts, to limit top speeds).
In the design stage we said we wanted a sucsession of trains to keep moving past the viewer and to recreate our memories of watching trains in this part of Germany and we wanted a compact layout. From this we decided to keep it simple with just a double track main line and not do a station (to do a small station justice we would need a huge layout!). We also decide that it would be modern.
The entire layout is designed with transportaion in mind, it will all pack into the rear of an estate car,
and we hope to exhibition standards.
The six base-boards assemble to an overall size of 3.5 metre (11 foot 6 inch) wide by 1.4 m (4 ft 7 in) deep,
the two scenic boards combine to 3 m (9 ft 10 in) and two 'D' shaped side boards connect to a 3 m long, 10 road,
fiddle yard made on two boards.
It also features a
proscenium arch
which hides lighting units from view.
The original plan drawn up in July 2006 (Wow, so long!) has only changed in a few details.
Other Rhine Side pages... Project plan Construction Exhibition diary .
| Layout style: | Double track oval, 3.5 m × 1.4 m overall size |
| Scale: | 'Continental' TT scale 1:120 (2.5 mm/ft) |
| Baseboards: | Light weight - mostly 6 mm ply wood. (6 off) |
| Traction Power control: | Conventional 12 Volt DC (set to 9 V to limit max speed). (2 off) |
| Tracks: | Tillig (12 mm gauge) flexible & medium radius turnouts (18 off) |
| Turnout Motors: | RC Servos with MERG electronics (18 off) |
| Layout Lighting: | 48" fluorescent tubes hidden by a proscenium arch (2 off) |
| Special Features: | Overhead line equipment - Viessmann |
| Working colour light signals - Viessmann | |
| Faller Car System (FCS) |
watch YouTube video More Rhineside on Youtube