Our Summer Operation Session was a lot of fun, but most of all it was informative. I learned three very important lessons concerning my flatcars:
This operation session was scheduled rather spontaneously and spurred me into building a prototype for a flatcar. Accordingly, I was quite expectant concerning the experience I’d gain with the new waggon.
Since we only had a relatively short time for operations and I was preoccupied with test runs, there are only a few pictures. In return, I learned lots of lessons.
As I’ve already described, I’d like to build a consistent set of waggons to build a short train for my porter loco. Of course, that entails waggons. Which run on bogies. Turns out, it’s not that easy to find suitable bogies for Fn3 which stay in a reasonable pricing range. So during winter 2020, I started busying myself with the construction of a bogie prototype.
A particular “thank you” goes out to Gerd, AKA “Waldbahner”, who published a nice series of posts about 5” bogies on his website. I let myself wantonly inspire by those. Extra thanks to Gerd, who kindly allowed me to use some of his pictures of his own projects.
Last Saturday, an old friend of mine and I held a small operation session at his place. The weather was fabulous, we had high temperatures for february, around 14°C and lots of sunshine.
It’s been a huge success: multiple trains running simultaneously, shunting, test drives, lots of talk on lots of topics. But most important: a train-load of fun!