A 'Serious' start

Back at home again, a 'serious' start has been made on clearing the site for the Trainbarn.  We've had some good rain again recently so the soil is really moist, which makes it a lot easier to dig out the scrub, complete with roots, so that it won't grow up again.  If I can keep going at this rate I'll have it cleared in about a month, which is sooner than expected.

A lot of what I'm digging out is scrubby Tea Tree, of the variety Leptospermum.  We have recently become aware that this is fantastic for bees to make honey from, and is similar to, but reportedly better than, the New Zealand Manuka honey, which is becoming quite well known.  We do intend to keep bees here on Whistlestop, and to sell our Jellybush Honey, so now I'm feeling slightly guilty each time I dig out a tea-tree!!  Ok, there are about 100 more acres of tea-trees for the bees to do their best with..................

I use Fergie to pull out the bigger tea-trees and stumps.  Simply chain said tree to the drawbar, select 'up' with the three point linkage control, and voila, out comes the tea tree!  It's that simple!  Would be quicker and easier with one person on Fergie and one person on the 'chain-gang', but it's a very effective way of getting them out cleanly.

It's now warm enough to venture outside after a very heavy frost last night, so, back to it!!  Lovely clear blue-sky days at the moment.

Tillig Demo Layout at Nürnberg Toy Fair

I'm away with work again at the moment- so much for being able to work on the development of Whistlestop!  It's not too long, though.  One 'advantage' of being away (clutching at straws here) is very good internet access, so I've been looking at some fun model train sites that I wouldn't normally have the time to look at.


My eldest daughter, Amy, lives in eastern Germany in a very beautiful area, with seemingly abundant things of 'train' interest!  Half her luck!!  Just near where she lives is the factory and showroom of a company called Tillig, which produces TT and HO model trains.  The eastern Germans have a long and proud history of producing superb model trains, particularly in TT scale, but are little known outside Germany.  This is changing though, with Tillig being marketed in many countries worldwide.


I found this video on You Tube of their TT demo layout at the 2010 Nürnberg Toy Fair.  While it is nothing at all like what I plan to have in the Trainbarn, nevertheless I thought it was a really well designed and fun demo layout!!



I mentioned TT scale in my post about scales and gauges, but as it is such an unfamiliar size, I'll just mention that it's about half way in-between N scale and HO, and uses a track gauge of 12mm and a scale of 1:120, which is about 2.5 mm/1'.


I was very fortunate to visit a display like this in Paris one time, where all the big European manufacturers had demo layouts like this (or bigger!!).  They're certainly action-packed!!  Setting up a Toy Train Museum as I am, it is hard to ignore or leave out German toy and model trains, particularly since it was the German company Märklin who 'invented' toy trains as we now know them.  The Germans are huge model train enthusiasts!!  Maybe one day I'll find the space to have something like the layout shown in this You Tube video.  It'd be really fun to build!