Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Emsingen & Talheim in Elztal?

I've been reading a lot lately about operating model railroads. I had a chance to operate on Robert Bowdidge's Vasona Branch layout which was a first for me to actually operate on a layout that was built for operations. It was a very nice experience, and got me even more interested in adding car routing and switching to my own layout.

Speaking of which, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel for the control console in Talheim. I replaced the ESU Lokpilot stationary decoders with Digitrax DS64, and rewired the dual-coil switches for them.

Regarding location I always planned to set the layout in the Black Forest area of southern Germany, but couldn't quite settle on where exactly. Since the trackplan already exists, I didn't bother modeling an actual location, but I want to capture the feel of being in the Black Forest. While reviewing several options of existing railways that could be suitably modified with some modeling license, I also took a look at the Elztalbahn, running from Freiburg to Gutach and Waldkirch, ending in Elzach. What made this particular line interesting, was a comment that there were plans to extend the track beyond Elzach to Hausach on the Schwarzwaldbahn. Looking at the map such a connection would be a fairly direct route from Stuttgart to Freiburg/Basel via Gaeubahn and Kinzigtalbahn to Hausach, continuing via Elztalbahn to Freiburg. If we'd imagine for a second that this connection actually had been built, it would likely be a single track secondary  railway. However, I could make it an electrified main line, still single track, take the location names and get some inspiration for local industries, passenger service, and/or regional through traffic. There we go, we have an excuse for running first class trains, and/or heavy freight traffic over this line. Talheim would be "Oberprechtal" (because I like the town name) on the imaginary line between Elzach and Hausach, and Emsingen would become Gutach (or maybe Waldkirch), which are towns on the actual Elztalbahn.

Having a location sets the tone for the look and feel of the scenery. I have plenty of photos to look at...

2 comments:

CHRistIAN said...

das mit den Fotos stimmt - war dabei!
aber Oberprechtal?
Talheim war ja auch schon recht eigenwillig aber wenn schon unten (vorne) dann OK!
und nun? Umbennung?

Chancen stehen aber gut, daß noch nichts endgültig ist. Technisch/zeitlich bedingt geht auch noch ein bißchen Zeit ins Land!

Bernhard said...

"Talheim" ist ein Arbeitstitel. Es stehen nirgends Schilder mit dem Namen ... absichtlich :-)
Der Schattenbahnhof hat seinen Namen auch schon mehrmals gewechselt, war zum Beispiel schon "Schattenstadt", und ist nun "Freiburg" und "Hausach" in Personalunion.

Die Gegend ist uebrigens auf diesem Kartenausschnitt: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=Elzach,+Germany