Eastern European narrow gauge…

It was all Richard Ellis-Hobbs’s fault, years ago he developed a Polish Px48 model to print in 3D through Shapeways. I had been interested in narrow gauge across the continent but this was the real impetus behind modelling it…

Trevor Rowe’s books do have a case to answer too, fueling my thirst for content from a period where travel in the eastern bloc was awkward at best, photographers took an even larger risk. We thank those intrepid explorers for their passion and dedication in recording a railway system that couldn’t last forever, mind Richard’s own trips in the 1990s show a few survivors handing on.

To make things awkward I wanted to use 009 so I could run the models alongside a small collection of British outline narrow gauge I was working on at the same time (spurred on by childhood friend Tim). Richard re-scaled his kit and I spent a few years (!) putting the model together. Those early prints in nylon were especially difficult to work with and I recall having to reshape the lower cab sides and replace the dome and roof, the mechanism is a Bachmann USA 2-80 N gauge chassis, not a terrible runner but certainly not as smooth as others available these days. 

However, a layout never materialised. Building these big 750mm gauge models, they never had a home even on the forestry layout - complete in themselves, I was finished.

But these days of cameo box layouts has me pondering a small scene to give them a home, a narrow gauge setting with proper Eastern European details, a challenge in 1/76 to scratch build but an enticing idea. Here the Px48 is posed on Kinross, with the N gauge tree providing stage left. The coach, a one piece print from Shapeways is also 009 and although not Polish per-se it has that Eastern European style, although perhaps a more colourful livery might suit it more, and I’ll need a few suitable items of freight rolling stock. Oh why didn’t I use H0e, until next time though, more soon…

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