Bear Creek Lumber & Railroad - Layout KA-2013

[Waldbahner]

Hello Folks,

last week, we set up the layout for eht big indoor live steam convention in Karlsruhe (Germany).
The Bear Creek Railroad is part of the exhibition with it's own tracks/layout. Over the past years, we build houses and other equipment to get some scenery for the trains. When the exhibition will start in January, old christmas trees will be placed to get some more scenery. Sadly, we are not allowed to add ground textures or ballast to make it look more realistic.

But in the end, we are able to "play" with our trains for 3 days indoor. The layout features an end-of-line station with small engine prepare area, team track and some industrial spures. the main line is approx. 100m long and ends in a ballon track with some stagging spurs. Half way down to the loop, a spur leads into a logging campe where logs will be loaded.

All my BCL&RR-equipment will be in use to operate the layout in January. Here are some photos of the layout progress so far and of the first test run from last Saturday. There's also a short video aviable of one round on the layout on top of my Shay. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpKsS28uYQM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpKsS28uYQM</a><!-- m -->

engine prepare tracks


Townside wth station


Industrial district


main line with logging camp


ballon track with stagging yard


Some trains from the test run...




Cheers, Gerd

[Steve]

Ah the sounds of live steam!
Gerd, that was a great video!
That is a nice big place to play with your trains....it is kind of a shame that you couldn't a little ground cover, but I am sure it was enjoyed by everyone!

[Waldbahner]

Hello Steve,

well, fire protection and other rules prohibited most kinds of scenery stuff. There're some areas at the 1"-scaled train layouts that are raised on tables and with more scenery around, but there are no live steamers allowed.

In the past, our 2"-scale logging layout was well visited during the convention since we are playing with our trains. That means switching cars, running several trains on a point-to-point layout and operating a log loading scene with steam winches or loco action. On the other tracks at the convention, most locos are just running lap for lap....

You can take a look at this video for the first 3-4 minutes. It shows our 2012 layout, filmed by a visitor.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JRqZKobZx4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JRqZKobZx4</a><!-- m -->

Yesterday, we made the Forney ready for the convention by fixing some issues. I'm also working on a new car for coal/fuel service. This car will become my second riding car with water tank to make it possible to operate both steamer at the same time.

Bye, Gerd