Hello from Texas

GRRailways

Hello,
I am an 2-rail HO and 3-rail O modeler with a global interest in railways. As such, I have American, British, and German equipment in my HO fleet, and don't mind running them all together at the same time. (Everything has Kadee couplers for compatibility.) I don't have a permanent layout yet, but I am acquiring structures and brainstorming layout ideas. Although I admit it will most likely be set in the US, I want to include enough European-inspiration that the European trains could look at home. The Central Texas area has a strong German and Czech heritage, which is especially prevalent in such cities as Fredricksburg and New Braunfels, so I do have a reference point to start from.

I hope to gain more interesting and helpful information from this forum, and maybe even contribute some tips as I go along.

Aaron

Unknown

Hi Aaron

Welcome to our Forum.

I model 3-rail AC HO (Maerklin). I also have a conglomerate of mixed trains, European and US. I also run them together on the same layout.Personally, I am not keen on detailed landscaping, but there are a few buildings and other accessories.

I found it difficult to come up with scenery that make all trains look at home. Therefore my layout is set in a fictional location somewhere out West. There is a village by the name of Clarksville, simply because a fully assembled American train station has that name on it.
Not far from that building is another one. It is of distinctively European architecture. It says 'European Railroad Museum' on it. I made a little sign and glued it over the name of a German city, the name of which I forgot, in the meantime.
I imagine this village to be something like a tourist trap attracting railroad buffs. On some old pieces of track, there are some Era I locomotives parked. A few figures stand around them, gawking their eyeballs out.
Frequently, there are 'Exhibition Trains' running to fictitious locations.
The rest of the buildings and facilities are American style.

Well, this is how I solved this dilemma.Hopefully, someone will join this thread with a different idea.

BR42

Hello Aaron:

Welcome to the forum.  I run purely European, but have been playing with the idea of an American train.

Ulrich

Railwriter

Ulrich,

 

A number of years ago, I played with the idea of having some American "export" locomotives on my layout.  I bought a couple of undecorated U.S. prototyhpe GE locomotive shells (with trucks, but without motors) that I was going to paint and add buffers to.  They would also have required some work to fit within the European loading gauge. 

 

But, in the end, I decided the project would be too much work and trouble.

 

(For what it's worth, both GE and EMD have produced real export models for other countries, some of which look quite different from American locomotives.  The diesel locomotives that I rode in Vietnam in 1970 were meter-gauge units built in the U.S. by GE.)

 

One way to add an American flavor to a modern European prototype layout would be to have a bunch of intermodal containers labeled and lettered for some U.S. intermodal company.

 

-- Ernest

BR42

Ernest:

Your considerations were exactly the ones that stopped me, but stll a Pennsy, New Haven, or Santa Fe  A-B-B-A lash-up of F7's in front of a long train of hoppers (German ERZIIId) could almost fly.  After all, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Luxemburg had MOHABs that were F-units modified for Europe.  Still thinking, but there are so many European locos that I want first:

Roco BLS Ae6/8 or SBB Ae6/6
Trix E 70
Roco E 80 in green
Trix VT08 or Liliput's VT 06
Fleischmann 78

Ulrich

GCRailways

(Note: for some reason I could not access my first account, and I realized I misspelled my username. This one works and has the username I originally meant to type ("GC...", not "GR...").)

Choo Choo: a museum is precisely the approach I want to take, although it would be more like a museum fleet in regular service. My Continental fleet currently consists of a Roco BR57 0-10-0, Roco 8-car freight set, and a Fleischmann Pwg, all DB Era III. This will probably be the road and era I'll stick with.