Build of the Year 2017 entry

Saturday 07th January 2017 – THE HISTORY

Germany’s very first train ran on December 7, 1835 between the cities of Nurnberg and Furth. Information recorded about this event states that the track ran for a distance of just 7.45 kilometres / 4.66 miles. It was named the Ludwig Railroad and had its roots in a railroad project developed a few years earlier that was quite revolutionary for the times. The "Privileged Ludwig Railroad Company" was founded in November of 1833 and was granted a concession from the Bavarian King Ludwig I on February 19, 1834 to build and operate the railroad. Initially Horses and a steam car were planned to start the service in operation. Originally, the steam car was supposed to be built in Germany, but a reliable builder could not be found. Therefore, an order for the first German "steam car" was quickly placed with the father of the steam locomotive - George Stephenson in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The order was not placed until May of 1835. It took eight weeks before the new steam locomotive arrived in Nurnberg on October 26, 1835. Very much like the model I am building here the loco arrived disassembled in over 100 pieces and packed in 19 large crates. The locomotive was assembled under the direction of the English locomotive engineer William Wilson who was sent to oversee the delivery and rebuild of the loco. The loco was named "Adler" or "Eagle" as the heraldic animal of the Kaiser and the free imperial cities. The purchase of the cars was simpler. Two frames had been delivered from England, and the coach bodies as well as another seven passenger cars were built in Germany. The locomotive was built on a wood frame strengthened with sheet metal. Two inboard, vertical wet steam cylinders powered the driving axle located in the middle. The driving wheels had no flanges in order to enable the locomotive to negotiate sharp curves. The wheels were initially made of cast iron (later forged iron) and were surrounded with forged tires. The forged, hollow wheel spokes were given a wood core in order to cushion unevenness better. Braking was done with the help of a spindle brake, which only worked on the tender wheels on right side of the fireman. Initially, charcoal, then later hard coal was used as fuel. The approximately 6.5 metric ton "Adler" turned in excellent results right from the start. Its performance was around 40 horsepower and its speed when running by itself was 65 km/h / 40 mph. It could pull up to twelve cars. After 22 successful years of operation retirement caught up with it in 1857 and soon after that it was scrapped. Starting in 1933, the DRG had a reproduction built largely true to the original for the 100th anniversary of railroading in Germany in 1935. This was done at the maintenance facility in Kaiserslautern and included the cars to go with the locomotive. In addition to differences in technical data, the reproduction differed from the original chiefly in a thicker boiler wall for the sake of safety, additional transverse bracing, and spoke wheels made of steel. This was the steaming "Adler" reproduction at the one-hundred-year anniversary, 25 years later at the 125th anniversary, and, after being overhauled, the 150th anniversary of the first years of railroading in Germany.


The image posted here is copyright free and this can be verified at the following link:

https://commons.wikimedi...er_May_2008_Fuerth_3.jpg

Hi Tony.
Look forward to seeing your train build. sounds like a lot of work.
Ian

I recently Built the Jupiter by Occre. An interesting build which I enjoyed, well most of it. The supplied transfers where a nightmare to apply but I must admit that the few problems I had with parts where dealt with quickly and at no cost to myself by Occres customer service.

I shall watch this build with interest.

I note from the CMB website that their are in fact two kits for the Adler Locomotive made by Occre the second kit is labelled "revised version" but there is no indication what the difference is. Which kit do you have?

Gil

Will be following Tony, good luck with the build....

Regards

Alan

Thanks for that Tony

Easier to spot the difference when someone point it out

Do you intend to add the Alder Carriages to the display? This would make the overall length some 510mm which brings up the age old question all we modellers must face, " Where do I display it" and perhaps more important will SWMBO allow it.

I am the only one in my house who is allowed/tasked with moving, cleaning or dusting any of my models.

Happy Modelling

Gil

Saturday 07th January 2017 – THE ADLER LOCOMOTIVE Kit Overview

I had initially started an Occre Adler kit just over a year ago but the parts fit was totally incorrect with the side beams being too long that they did not fit he supports on the boiler and the cast metal overlays when fixed left big gaps along said side frames.

It was interesting to see that recently Occre released a “VERSION 2” of the Adler kit although if you look on sites such as Cornwall Model Boats (which is where mine came from) both versions albeit with different pricing are available.

The biggest change to this new version kit is that some of the die cut wood has been totally replaced by photo etch parts. And these photo etch parts also replace the centre large wheel covers which in the earlier kit were cast metal items.

I am hoping that some of the errors from the first version of this kit have indeed been corrected in the re-release but knowing what I do now I will be watching out carefully as the build progresses.

So in summary if there is one big niggle with this kit (and Occre are not on their own with this one) its why on earth do manufacturers carefully package all of the parts but for the brass wire they coil it making it totally useless? Not a major issue as I purchased brass rod in varying sizes for the earlier kit so at least that will not be an additional expense.

Not a major issue but the supposed coal that is supplied in the kit is actually white ballast rocks so unless you are going to sit and paint each individual rock this will bets be replaced with some “G” scale coal from one of the online model railway shops.

The last point which was easily solved was the fact the instructions (two pages of text) were supplied in 4 translations but English was not one of them. A quick email to Occre saw the correct English version of the text instructions arriving as a PDF file to my email in just a couple of days so that situation has been resolved as well.

So here are the pictures showing what you get in this particular kit.

Saturday 07th January 2017 – THE DISPLAY BASE Kit Overview

Occre produce 2 different display boards for their various locomotive kits.

As the intention is to display this build as the locomotive, its tender and three coaches the large of the 2 display boards was required.

It’s a fairly basic kit and to be honest the quality of the wood they supply for the surround is poor to say the least so some modification/improvements will be made once I get to the point of building this part of the model.

The base consists 3 pieces of mdf board that get joined together with some wood battens already cut to size and supplied in the kit.

The sleepers are already cut to size but are unfinished so at this very early stage thinking along the lines of the AK interactive “weathered wood” paint set to detail these.

There are short rail lengths supplied and well as cast rail supports (these are quite rough and will require a lot of cleaning up).

You also get a massive bag of ballast which weighs similar to a bag of sugar and explains the additional postage charge I had when I purchased this one.

I made the mistake of leaving the box out and as you can see our rescued cat Bonny has decided I must have put it down for her to use as a scratching boards even though she already has 3 posts dotted around the house to use.

Again here are the pictures of the box opening along with images of the supplied parts in this kit.

Looks a nice set of kits you have there and good luck with the build

Looks like you are going to be busy for a while with all that Tony look forward to seeing it come together.

Al

Hi look forward to the build on this one.hope all goes well.I agree the wire in these kits is just fit for the bin.cheers mick.