edited by Alberto Pedrini

I have been in the museum  on 13 -14 september 2008 during the "Heilbronner Dampflokfest" where the event

 "The scale1:32 meet the scale 1:1" took place

My expectations haven't been disappointed, the museum is the best you can find for take a leap in to the steam world. The facility includes a turntable with loco sheds, a workshop and a big shed for the trains maintenance. Here there are the cafeteria, some rooms with rebuilding of railroad office and, at the second floor, two big rooms. One with a four lanes electric car track, and the other with the scale 1 layout. The buildings are part of the big Heilbronn freight yard where four diesel loco work hard every day.

The buildings

The scale 1 layout

The freight yard

During the two days three steam locomotives were, in turn, at disposal of the people for a little travel in the cab: one BR01, one BR75 and one BR38 in Reichsbahn livery. On the turntable the tireless Köf and the diesel 800 handled forward and backwards, freights, coaches and not running locos. Never before I've had a so closed and long contact with the puffing machines. Nothing proibhition obstructed the way to walk on the tracks, touch the hot metal and go throught steam clouds.

The 75

The 38

The tireless köf

The other locos

The BR 01

But my top magic moment has been on sunday mornig, before the opening, the sun, only just risen, lighted with warm beams the shed on which the machines appear waiting the work day.

So I approached the 01, slowly, and I've heard his voice, his slow breath, I felt his warmth, and the water rivulets that go down from the drainpipes were as beads of sweat, I felt the machine live... and understood as can be intense and complete the love of an engine driver for his creature. Really a great emotion.

All the locations were open and visitable, go around free gave the sensation to be part of the team. The canteen was prepared inside the round shed. Have lunch between two locos, near the table of the workshop has been great... from the grill we had wurstel and steaks with chips, while in a military field kitchen boiled sup and goulasch.

The kitchen

But,  going to the main reason of my travel, the scale 1:32 trains, one big modular layout were built in the main shed, about 500 meter of  modules built by the railfans from various modelrailroad groups joined under the IG Spur 1 module Rhein Neckar  http://www.ig1.de/

My goals were to know new friends, join the club and get two heads to allow the connection of our italin module to the main layout. Broken the ice has not been easy, due to the different languages, but thanks to our little english and the common passion all has been done.

The layout is very big and always different in each meeting. All the circuits are managed by an intellibox interfaced to a computer for the station control. The power supply come from a set of booster  6A and the other controls in the stations and yards are managed by intellicontroll via loconet. To control the trains around the layout every engine driver has an hand radio control, and follow his train on the main lines.

Here the pics:

At the next time...

Alberto

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