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!
