Katzhagen - Archive - August 2007
Weather issues and a busy schedule
The company, the weather and vacations far away from the garden torpedo any attempt to deal with the garden railway. When I think about it - early retirement sprang to mind first when I started building the garden railway. But in the absence of a related suitable offer including double net earnings....
Vacations in Denmark were a welcome change and abstinence phenomenons could be averted since a secondary railway passed by near the house. The sea's roaring in the west, the trains' noise in the east - both in a distance of about 150m. The interesting local transport operations were done with railcars and short freight trains which were disturbing in no way due to long intervals between trains.
DUEWAG railcar
NOHAB Diesel engine with tankcars
As there already is plenty of information regarding this railway on the WWW, I will refrain from producing more related prose and just refer to the following links:
www.lemvigbanen.dk - Pages of the operating company in Danish language
de.wikipedia.org - A synopsis in German
drehscheibe-online.de - Detailed report in German
"Goods go onto the tracks..."
The preliminary work for further banana-, pineapple-, grape- and kiwifruit- boxes could be completed during the vacations in Denmark and accordingly the RhB COOP containercar can now be loaded as directed:
Tons of fruits...
...for the local retailer
Flashback
The level crossing was finished early in August before starting vacations. Initialy, the assembly was planned to be removed from the layout in case of extended interruptions of operations or bad weather. Due to a stroke of genius provided by a member of the "Spassbahn Forum", I decided to build a protection box instead. The picture below shows the box which was purchased in a DIY store. It features fasteners and an old tea box to protect the level crossing attendant figure. Outdoor wood impregnation and three paints in green colour - that's it.
Level Crossing
... with protection box
New Year's Eve...
is the time for bangs - I thought. But there also was a bang early in August - in the garage and as a direct result in the fuse box down in the basement, too. The 30A-power-supply's start circuit had conked out and as a result the fuse in the basement couldn't cope with charging the power supply's capacitors abruptly. Since apart from that the power supply worked smoothly, the automatic circuit breaker was replaced with a C-type, which can cope with higher starting currents than an ordinary B-type.Sooner or later a repair or replacement is needed.
