2"-scale Bear Creek Railroad layout at the 18th EDHT

[Waldbahner]

Hello folks,

EDHT (Echtdampf-Hallentreffen) stands for "live steam - indoor meet" and is the biggest indoor live steam event.
It's held each January and in 2014, this was the 18th convention. The event features an huge 5"-gauge indoor layout, hundreds of stationary steam, G-scale live steam and much more.

For the forth time, we were part of this event and set up my "Bear Creek Lumber & Railroad" with own tracks and a lot of details. Here're some photos of our layout and operation. More photos are hosted on my website:
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There's an additional video clip at YouTube showing the log loading process in action.
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This is how it starts in mid december. The first tracks are laid to the floor. In the far background, work starts on the main 5"-gauge layout with more than 8000 meters of track...


Once the terminus station at Bear Creek laid, we started with the single track main line....


....ending at a loop with a small stagging yard. The whole layout is point-to-loop action.


The days before the convention starts, we set up the structures, trees (unsold christmas trees) and many details to create some scnerey around the rtacks. It's not easy to do that indoor, but I guess we're not bad at all with our layout.


During the convention days, we started each day by steam up the steam locos #1 and #2. The battery powered #3 was backup only.


Happy engineers - That's me on the right, together with my dad who is also part of our team.
The two locomotives have burned 24kg coal in 3 days and more than 120l water...


Switching cars at Bear Creek. We run real freight trains and passender trains. Some spur tracks and industries along the line were served by the railroad. So train operation was varied.


My girlfriend is a good engineer too and runs my Shay with a log train down to the saw mill (stagging yard) in this view.


The logs were loaded to the train at the logging camp with bunk houses, camp fire and a working log landing. More than 40 log car loads were handled during the convention days.


The logs are skidded to the landing by using the gipsy head of the steam winch. A haul back line was installed to bring the tonges back into the woods. Once the logs arrived at the loading, they are par-buckled onto the log cars with the steam winch.


Waiting for clear tracks at Bear Creek...


Our team from left to the right : Martin, Kalli, Gerd & Katrin
below : "Maggie" & "Amy"


At least, we set up a long train with most of the cars and run a double header. This was some fun and you can see the train at the youtube video.


After the convention closed, the railroad got "abandoned".....
In Januray 2015, we'll set up the railroad again at the 19th convention - maybe with some more structures, details or other new stuff....


Grüße, Gerd