Platinate Overland Trolleys

[Waldbahner]

Many thanks !!!

So here's the second finished module. Acutally this one was the first that I build for this project.

"Palatinate vineyard"

We live in a big wine area here and so it's no wounder that the trolley also rumbled through vineyards along the line. In each village, the stop was mostly in front of the tavern. It's told that the last train at night stoped and the condutcor stepped in to pick up the passengers. While they empty their glases, the conductor get's a wine from the bar tender to thank for this service. Once everyone was ready to go, the trolley continued the trip to the next tavern where the same story was repeated....At the end terminus, the train had to make the return trip the same way.....

Anyway, this second module shows vineyards in spring of 1925. The fresh leaves just spring and will grow up to full grape plants for the next seasons wine. In these old days, most rural streets where gravel roads or like in this case cobbled. Traffic on the streets where just some animal drawn carts and pedestrians. So it was no problem to build the railroad right into the street. In the last 5 years of operation, the individual traffic grows up and there wasn't enough room for the trolleys and cars. This also leads into the change for buses in 1955.

Like before, here're a couple of prototype photos.
The modeled area is at the south entrance to Böchingen. The narrow street lies in a small cut and some pathes are leading into the vineyards.


View along the road down south. Half left in the distance, you can see a group of trees. That's where the stop "three stones" was located.


And that's what the trolleys look like today. The railroad ceased railroad operation in 1955 and switched to bus serivce. This bus service is still in place and more or less the same company, now named Palatina Bus.


Let's go for a look of the model scene.




Narrow streets....


The next seasons wine is starting to spring.


To run trains on this layout, I've a ballon track module for the right end of the layout and a fiddle yard module with a 4 track train turntable for the left end. So I can run the trains point-to-loop. The passing siding allows some action with two trains. The ballon track is fully automatically, so one can operate the whole layout from the fiddle yard.

That's all for now. Actually I'm working on plans to build a part of my hometown in the 1930th as third module.
If there's ane progress, I can post it here if you like.

Cheers, Gerd