Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 97 i Voie Libre international

60 years old, more than 6.7 million km travelled, 50 years of LGB, there’s plenty of scope for celebrating anniversaries. This was the German brand’s approach with the Ge 6/6 RhB engines. Delivered in 1958 for the first two units and in 1965 for the five following ones, their power is 2400hp. Originally painted green, they were repainted red when they were modernized. This operation involved inter alia the modification of the front ends, with two windows instead of three, and the replacement of the original pantograph by a single-leg model. Still in service today, theses locomotives now usually haul work trains. The LGB model, totally new, is fitted with two motors. Fully lit, it features motorized pantographs, and the livery is the same as that applied to the real…

Attempting to create an accurate colour chart for shades used more than a century ago is an impossible challenge. Especially as, quite frequently, the paint was made when needed by the workshops using raw materials, meaning that significant variations in shade could occur… Cross-checking at length between the period designations and the contemporary references led us to select the following shades in the Natural Color System (NCS). Feel free to play on the grades to introduce some variety into your military consist.…

Not having had access to accurate diagrams or drawings, this construction project is based on photos found on the Internet, and more specifically on a thread in the Voie Libre section of the LR Presse forum: “La draisine du Chef” [“The Chief’s motor-trolley”] This is therefore an evocation rather than a true scale model, but I hope it will encourage you to build it, and possibly to improve on it! The drawing will need to be adapted to each case, in particular depending on the driving chassis you will select. I opted for a Kato 11-104 mechanism, which ensures smooth working and good slow running. It is slightly oversize for a motor-trolley of this type, hence the rather large dimensions of my project when compared to the prototype. THE BODY…

1 Tiny, unrealistic, but so pleasing to build, we have here a pizza layout! It’s all in the box: layout, scenery, rolling stock and electrical supply. 2 The base, a simple circle of rails glued to a sheet of 3mm thick MDF. 3 For the platform and the station, I laid a balsa frame. This type of wood is easy to work with and takes colour well. 4 The rocks consist of simple volumes of Sculpture Block foam. They are glued in place before being sculpted, but the loading gauge is scrupulously maintained. 5 The foam is sculpted with a knife, rasps, various scalpels... This generates fine dust that sticks to everything! 6 The joints and the various soil levels consist of air-drying plasticine. 7 A coat of Gesso is…

1 To start your drawing, go to the editing/preferences menu and parameterize the grid to a 1mm pitch (1). In the preferences (2), display the grid and select “grid magnetism”. You can then draw your basic shape using the rectangle tool (3). It will be aligned on the grid pattern. 2 Using the “add an anchor point” tool, you can then place an additional point in the middle of the small side of your rectangle (1). Then, the “direct selection” tool allows you to select a specific point or segment (2). In this case, the point at the angle, which I lower by 2mm. Thanks to the “grid magnetism”, it will be accurately located. I proceed likewise for the other angle. 3 To build my shed, I must duplicate my…

This small 0-14 layout features a short line running from the harbour to the lighthouse, serving a beach-side halt on the way. An imaginary line, of course, considering its length when compared to the actual distance separating both termini. But a fine-looking and charm-packed line, a poetic layout that takes us into dreamland. Let’s set foot on the Island, for a night in the lighthouse. François Fontana (FF): Hallo Detlev, hallo Bernard, so we have here the Island, a new joint project. Can you describe the layout for our readers and tell us how the two of you set about creating? Bernard Junk (BJ): The ideas often pop up when we are attending shows. In the evening, at mealtimes, and before retiring for the night, we chat informally. That’s when…

The metre gauge line from Ponferrada to Villablino, 62km long, was built between 1918 and 1920, and inaugurated on 4th May 1920. Created to carry coal from the pits around Villablino to Ponferrada, it connected there with the Spanish Northern Railway’s main line and served the electric power stations located at Ponferrada. The railway was operated by the Minero Siderurgica de Ponferrada (MSP) company. In 1919, a 7km long branch was built eastwards to Villaseca de Laciana. Another one, 8km long, was built westwards to Caboalles de Arriba, and opened in 1921. Built for coal The track, laid with flat-bottomed 22 kg/m rails on wooden sleepers, followed the valley of the river Sil, which it crossed several times in its upper reaches. In the lower part of the valley, the…

Isabelle’s layout represents a totally imaginary cave, inspired by existing sites such as the Rouffignac cave, which visitors explore on-board a small train; the single-track route, with one branch, takes passengers through three chambers. Once the visit is over, the train reverses, without any running problems. Railway modelling as “ladies’ work” is sufficiently rare to draw the eye. Meet a new face in this field, where passion, trains and… miniatures come together. Isabelle opted for the very smallest range in H0 scale: the Busch Feldbahn. Some technical aspects The outside part of the layout comprises the railway services, the ticket office, and an evocation of a Paleolithic settlement. The Busch track is fitted with metal sheets under the sleepers, and the engine features a a magnet to improve adhesion. The…

The story takes place in the border triangle between Austria, Romania and North Korea – an unfamiliar area! And an area that is hard to reach, where time seems to have stood still more than once. “Nuclear propulsion” is a highly progressive idea and there is hardly a tractor that can do without it! The young Kim Jong-un has converted his parents’ former factory into a nuclear waste reprocessing facility, and has thus become an important local actor. The locals have nick-named him “The Beloved Marshall”. His mill features a dam and reservoir system for regulating the water flow. Overview of the layout, an enjoyable little piece of modelling on just 70 x 30cm. Technique I encountered considerable trouble when shunting the small Busch wagons in H0-6.5. Reversing through turnouts…

There is a kind of paradox when it comes to 60cm gauge military railways. They played a key part in the logistics of all the armies involved in the conflict, and all the Great War fronts. But they lacked a personality such as Louis Renault or Marius Berliet to anchor them in the collective psyche. Furthermore, the huge amounts of stock commandeered by the German army during the Occupation and the fact that the French army after 1945 largely gave up using field railways, were the last nails in the coffin. Apart from a handful of enthusiasts who, like Georges Mangin, had been truly familiar with it, military 60cm gauge was all but forgotten for half a century. And when the time came, from the 1980s, to restore whatever stock…

Éric Fresné: Patrick, restoring historic items is beginning to appear in the field of railway preservation. How do you see it? Patrick Mourot: Railway restoration remains apart in the world of vintage objects, and it isn’t very well handled. When it comes to mechanical engineering, each country, each manufacturer had its own approach and techniques. Therefore, restoring consists in understanding such methods and becoming immersed in them, to be able to reproduce them. This locomotive “DNA” is also found on the original drawings, when they exist. Without such a perception, difficulties are encountered when re-creating those tiny details which make the item look right. The repairs and restorations I carry out are inspired by what might have been done at the time. The modus operandi must answer the following question:…

Scales will range from 1/32 to N, including the more widespread 0 and H0, there will be lots to watch and enjoy, no doubt! In the specific topic – narrow gauge – that brings us together around the Voie Libre magazine, we have selected a few gems: besides The Island in 0-14 and Pimbelle Carhye Octobre in H0-6.5, both of which are reviewed in the present issue, discover also: the dream-like Lutgeoog as well as Ga-Long-Bien, in 1/32 scale. The lightweight B.A. Bodil, the sweet Mine de la Sucrée, and the Fouilletout quarry in 1/35 scale. Trinca-Vecnou, where 0-14 and 0 standard gauge work together. Vis-en-Artois and its sugar-beet trains, the Berthoux railways, or the damp and snowy nights of La Banlieue in 0-16.5. Not forgetting an American detour on…

It’s pretty commonplace to say that buildings contribute a lot to the atmosphere of a layout. For my own Ministry of Liberated Regions layout, I realized that I would have to build the many huts and temporary structures that are visible on most period photographs. So, to begin with, I tackled the construction of a large shed-cum-workshop. However, when scratchbuilding structures, some initial design work is required. As is the case nowadays for many modellers, I have been using computers for quite a while. For my drawings, I use vectorial drawing software, for two reasons. First, this type of tool defines objects in a system of Cartesian coordinates. It works therefore on the position of points in a drawing, just like on a sheet of graph paper. This means my…

On my H0-6.5 gauge test layout, if the rails were not perfectly clean, the little train stalled, the eternal problem of miniature railways! In the past, I had already radio-controlled a locomotive in H0-9, so why not do likewise in H0-6.5? The electronic equipment The Busch motor and its simple gearing tower is very efficient, but not suited to radio-control. I therefore chose “coreless” motors from the Nigel Lawton and Tramfabriek range. They revolve slowly and don’t use up much energy. With a Lipo 40 mAh battery, the smallest, designed for Bluetooth devices and which has an in-built electronic protection, I found what seems almost the ideal compromise between autonomy and power. The charger must be suited to the batteries, so I chose a 40mA type: batteries of this type…