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

[modelsof1900]

Gert, great! Happy model railroading in action. Thanks for sharing!

[Kev1340]

Awesome Gerd, and looks like great fun!

Cheers,

Kev

[Waldbahner]

Thanks,

but now I'm done with model railroads for the next weeks...
until the next show will start in March, but this time with the N-scale layout.

Cheers, Gerd

[BR60103]

Gerd: where does this convention take place?

[Ralph]

That sure looks like a good time!

[e-paw]

That looks like a ton of fun.. I wish something like that went on over here. The building must have a good ventilation system if you can burn that much coal indoors and not set off the fire alarm. hock:

[Waldbahner]

Hello,

the event takes place at Karlsruhe in southwest Germany (approx. 150km off of Ramstein Airbase).
It's belived to be the biggest indoor live steam meet on 5"-gauge in the world and probably the only one at all.

The locomotives run on anthrazit coal only, so smoke is less, but you're right - The air "features" a lot of smoke, water and oil... But it's okay. The ventilation is not bad and it's okay. Otherwise, such an event would be impossible.

My railroad that you can see in the photos above are just a very small piece of the whole cake there...
You may search on Youtube for "Echtdampf Hallentreffen" and you'll find many videos showing the rest of the show.
As the years before, I had just little time to visit the rest of the show. We were always busy on our own railroad.

And yes, it's a lot of fun, but also a lot of work to do. The event is placed in January, when we normaly have winter and the garden live steamers can run their engines indoor on an unique event. There are also many dealers for parts, raw materials and tools at the convention so you can buy stock for the next project or just some repair parts. I bought a new two-chime-whistle for my Shay. You can here the new one in the video above.

Cheers, Gerd

[Sumpter250]

After seeing this, I think I should be a bit more careful not to gripe about setting up my HO scale modules at shows.
THAT, is a LOT OF WORK !!!!!

Lot of fun too !!