Press release from 05.02.2024: Private investment competition – From the hobby cellar to the limelight!
In the past years, the interest in the private plant competition for the Fascination MODELLBAHN Mannheim was always very high.
Once again this year, 7 great private model railroad layouts were selected for the MIBA Private Layout Competition 2024. Participants come from all over Germany with their model railroad beauties, often built especially for Faszination MODELLBAHN Mannheim.
Here you will find an overview of this year’s private plants:
Heinz-Ulrich Grumpe: Canal port of the Sendener Kreisbahn (H0 gauge)
The fictitious Sendener Kreisbahn in 1965 serves the region in the south-western Münsterland and northern Ruhr area in western Germany.
A short branch line leads from the Suchtdrup-Nord terminus to the harbor area on the canal. A small terminus for passenger transport is also served there.
The municipal warehouse and a fish smokehouse or fish cannery are regularly called at the harbor quay. Coal and other freight is also transferred to the canal ships. There is still heavy traffic at the time shown.
Gerd Ziller: Yellow Pine Lumber Co. – Tramroads in the Carolina Sandhills (H0e gauge)
The Sandhills region of North and South Carolina was once home to many small forest and small railroads. They brought the wood or other products of the pine forests (pitch and turpentine) from the forests for transportation to the rest of the world.
Some of these railroads were designed as so-called “tramroads”, tracks that used wooden beams as rail profiles. The Yellow Pine Lumber Co. operated 2 such logging railroads from Hoffman, North Carolina, into the surrounding pine forests of the Sandhills. In 1894, the first line was built from Hoffman to the south. Waldbahn operated one of only two Shay locomotives with 30″ gauge in this region.
The miniature layout depicts the early days with all the scenes important for a forestry railroad, from loading to the sawmill.
And of course there are also real forest trains running here. Suitable Shay locomotives were elaborately converted especially for this layout so that they could be used on the wooden tracks.
Otto Gisch: By bus and train to Celts, Romans and charcoal burners (H0 gauge)
The model railroad layout with narrow-gauge railroad and car system is a throwback to times gone by in our home region, the Nordsaarland. Celts and Romans settled here.
Charcoal burning was also practiced here in the past. A large 14-day charcoal burner festival is celebrated every 5 years. Most recently in summer 2023.
Roman excavations and a replica of a Celtic village can be visited within a radius of 20 km. Until recently, there was a disused railroad line that was converted into a cycle path.
The train service is formed by a small railcar and a steam locomotive with passenger carriages in shuttle train operation. The car system includes an automatic bus stop.
Heiko Wendler: The Gnat Shack IV – Ballast works (H0 gauge)
For “The Gnat Shack IV – Ballast Works”, a 1:87 scale ore loading area in Era IIIb of the German Federal Railroad around 1963 was chosen.
The eye-catcher is a compact industrial loading system that enables short train sets to be filled with different ore bulk wagons on a parallel track and truck trailers to be loaded.
Although activities now only take place on the modern facility with conveyor belt connection (the actual plant is hidden in the background), the Cameo also houses the old ballast plant, which was supplied by a small light railroad. Their 600mm tracks and some rolling stock are still available. However, field railway operations have already been discontinued. The former loading track is now used for pulling out or stabling groups of wagons.
There is a shed and diesel filling station for the factory’s own small locomotive on another stub track, which enables additional shunting movements.
Jonas Sommer: Kent’s Mainline in miniature (track Op)
The “Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway” (RH&DR), also known from “Railway Romance”, is a railroad with a track gauge of 15 inches. Since 1927, the railroad has been running along more than 20 km of the English Channel just west of Dover. With 11 steam locomotives and over 60 passenger carriages, regular service is provided on a small gauge according to the timetable. As the course is in no way inferior to the large courses, it describes itself as “Kent’s Mainline in miniature”.
In four years of construction, eight locomotives and over 50 RH&DR carriages were rebuilt. Self-designed 3D prints were used for this. Everything on the wagons, apart from the axles, was made in-house.
The layout itself represents an original section of the RH&DR line. Around 12 km of the line is double-tracked and a small section of this line has been reconstructed. There is a level crossing, a bridge over a drainage canal and an agricultural crossing on the site. As there is no visually appealing track material for this scale, I built the track myself from hundreds of wooden sleepers, track nails and rail profiles.
A small relay circuit results in varied and realistic train operation. In this case, the installation represents a stage which is entered by a train of up to ten carriages. After passing through, the train disappears from the stage again, leaving it behind for the next train composition.
Gerhard Lindner-Wiederspahn: Christmas train (H0 gauge)
The model railroad layout is the replacement for a broken nativity scene and contains all the motifs of a Christmas nativity scene, such as Mary and Joseph and the Christ child on an open freight wagon, shepherds with sheep and an angel in the pasture as well as the Three Wise Men taking a break at a snack bar.
An imaginary place was built in the present day with references to the Lindner-Wiederspahn family and the family’s special wishes.
A small mountain chapel belongs to it with a pastor(my wife is a retired pastor).
Our sons The youngest is a tennis player and is on his way to the French Open tennis tournament in Paris with his tennis bag, the middle one has been playing jugger for years and is on his way to Madrid, where the Spanish jugger championship is being played – he has his “jugger pomfe” with him.
Our eldest son is sitting with his wife and two daughters at the snack bar on the way to their new house.
There are many people in our family who are farmers and beekeepers, hence the field, the bees and the pigs. A children’s carousel was built for the granddaughters.
My godson is an enthusiastic barrel organ player, so “his colleague” could not be missing from the set.
The angel, the church and the path to it, the station are illuminated – we decided this together so that nobody gets lost… The organ grinder also stands under a lantern, and the food truck and carousel are illuminated so that everyone can find their way there easily.
Song requests were also taken into account: At the touch of a button, “Vom Himmel hoch…”, bells ringing, barrel organs playing “kling Glöckchen kling” and “In der Weihnachtsbäckerei” in the carousel can be played.
Ilona Rüger: Holzwarenfabrikation Bernhard Brettl (Track GN 15)
Here, the imagination was given free rein, albeit sometimes with a smile and a little exaggeration. In the “Christmas land” of the Erzgebirge, which has been recreated, there are still many small craft businesses producing wooden toys and Christmas items.
The field railway operation is a very good way of transporting the wood and finished products required for this in a small space. In the upper left area, you can see a small beer garden with a brewery, where visitors can take a break and watch the hustle and bustle on the factory premises. Many different vehicles, all of them built in-house except for the chassis, run on the sometimes exotic track layout. The manually operated bascule bridge is a nice special feature. This bridge allows the vehicles to be driven and parked on a 60 x 60 cm module with a turntable attached to the outer left. In the 2nd part of the DIORAMAS there is an old board mill with a mill wheel, in which the logs are prepared for production. In the front area there is another siding to a cellar room in the rock, where the draught beer from the small brewery can be transported.
Images for use free of charge for your reporting here: http://www.faszination-modellbahn.com/presse/
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Contact: Messe Sinsheim GmbH, phone: +49 7025 9206-102, e-mail: presse@messe-sinsheim.de