Evolve

The original layout was designed with an opened air town market in the centre with the trains passing through the city. The shape of the market area was planned to be square. However, since visiting Telc last week, the plan has evolved. The layout now calls for a non-symmetric square that narrows at one end towards the cathedral. The direction of the tracks will align with the longitudinal axis of the square and terminate at the station at the wider end of the square. The layout will be narrow and long, which will make it easier to partition into four separate sections. I'm also planning to have the trains enter and leave the station across viaducts ending with a tunnel into the mountains. The tracks within the mountain simply loop and come back out the same portal, but on the other track.

Originally, the layout called for an elaborate gothic cathedral as the centerpiece. I'd still like to construct the original plan, but it will be a later layout. I figure I'll have a better chance of success if I keep my first layout less complex. I'm also considering using stiff cardboard as in those models created by architectural firms to showcase their designs to the public.

München Hauptbahnhof

I mentioned color schemes in a previous post. I love how the red regional express trains stand up against the white schemes of the ICEs. I'll finally be returning to Canada in April so I can start work on my model railway station layout then. There's a dealer in Canada who carries European model trains by Marklin and MiniTrix and happens to have the Regio Express bi-level trains in stock. I'm excited to see how they will look alongside my ICEs.

I noticed that MiniTrix has released the Lightweight Innovative Commuter Service Cars (LINT) in their product line for 2008. These were common on the Deutsche Bahn rail service in München, but I'm not sure if I want to incorporate them into my layout.

Praha Hlavní Nádraží

The main railway station in Prague is Hlavní Nádraží. This building was designed in the art nouveau style which sits on the site of a former station. From a distance, the towers are very imposing, but on closer inspection it is apparent that the station has seen better days. Lack of funding has left it in poor condition.

The city is negotiating with an Italian company to restore the station back to its former glory. They want to modernize many of its facilities as the city bids for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The real shame is that the motorway was built immediately next to the station blocking the view of this majestic building from the centre of Prague. One of my Czech colleagues said that the former regime made the decision to run the motorway through the city centre. A lot of people say it was a bad decision. I would have to agree with them.

Close up

There's a holding yard where trains are parked in Prague 4. It's about 2km from my place. I came across this on one of my excursions earlier last month, but only managed to come back to it today. Here's a close up. I'm told this locomotive is over 30 years old. It's definitely seen better days, but admittedly, the design and style has held up very well. The color scheme matches the Czech Republic's national flag, but I'm not overly fond of how they applied the colors, especially the red doors. My favorite scheme is still the Deutsche Bahn ICEs. That's the white with a single red horizontal stripe.

I visited two model train stores in town to see if any of them carried this locomotive. Unfortunately they didn't. There's a third store, but I chose not to go since they specialize in TT scale. I think I'll have to stay firm and stick with N-scale, otherwise this addiction would get out of hand. Besides, there appears to be limited selection for TT scale. Tillig is the primary provider of this scale and I've never seen this brand in Canada before. HO and N scale are the most common.

Viaduct

Since discovering animated gifs last week, I've been anxious to get out this week-end and do more filming. I had it in my head to take shots from the shores of the Vltava river just outside the open market at Holesovice. It was a good location to get shots of trains crossing the viaduct and provide excellent source material for other layouts I have in mind. I was hoping to get a glimpse of several passenger trains this week-end. I was not disappointed.

There were a few things I learned from last week's outing that I wanted to improve. I really disliked the slight flickering in my first attempts because of the auto exposure. I also decided to use a tripod with a remote shutter release to achieve a stable frame shot. Here is another view of that same train crossing a section of the viaduct taken from a different angle. I wish my camera had audio. The roar of the locomotive sounds so cool.

I also wanted to try my hand at animation with the camera following the subject so I returned to the same area as last week-end to take some more pictures of trams at a higher frame rate. It was the first time I had used the continuous mode on my camera. Google Blogger seems to be truncating my gifs and consequently only the first frame is viewable. Hopefully this is just an anomaly and gets resolved otherwise I won't be able to post any of my results.

Update: It seems like I'm able to post animated GIFs this week-end, but I'm not sure for how long. Uploading to Blogger is inconsistent so I'm making the most of it and uploading one more. For all these animations, you may have to right click on the broken image link [x] and select "show picture" if you have a slow connection.