Hi all,

I suspect this question will be a tough one to answer but here goes. I am in the process of getting a fairly large diorama (2'x10') started and need some help with locale. I am making a combination diorama; part armor, part model railroad but am having trouble find something in Europe that fits the bill. I am primarily a model railroad guy and I want to model something around 1942 (but can be earlier or later) that is centered around a narrow gauge industrial railroad theme (18" gauge or so) but in an area that has become occupied by Germany. I have recently become quite interested in armor modeling due to another modeler and have decided that I can combine the two and make something quite dramatic. My wife has given me free reign on a 10' wall in the living room so I am going all out on something that I can be proud of.

Although I would like the railroad portion to be operational, it is not a must, and would likely only be a loop of track coming out of one building and into another for a continuous run for displaying at shows.

I had given thought to modeling the cleanup after the war but I would like to model something during the war. My thinking is that I can create a scene in which the railroad, which previously served some small, fictitious (but plausible) industries, now serves some artillery positions for ammo resupply, and the small industries are now storage and maintenance for armor and other items, as well as a forward HQ for. I am thinking Poland or Belgium for location.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated and feel free to comment. Ideas for kits to use are also welcome. This diorama is not intended to have action from firefights and will represent somewhat of a lull in the activities of the day so please keep this in mind when making suggestions.

Thanks for your time and as always I look forward to hearing from you.

John Martin
Fort Mill, SC

i think an area around the netherlands would be a good one, you would need, air defences, searchlights, general service vehicles, so probably a few kubelwagens, and opel blitz or two, maybe a few zundapp motorbikes and sidecars,

you could have a little repair shop in a wearhouse, maybe replacing a panzer 4 engine or the such, the possiblities are endless,
are you going to put it at a slight angle?
now i could do a mockup for you on my video game editor i use i have made one on another thread in the diorama section, if you have a look youll see what i mean,
as it really helpful in visialising things, so if you do a rough sketch on paint, and upload it to photobucket, ill see what i can do th help

Small gauge railroads (Schmallspurbahn in German) where used for a number of reasons and IIRC the Dutch/French have used them for similar jobs

+ Peat diggers used them to transport their product from the bogs to a central point

+ Mining sometimes had small scale tracks connecting the mine to the next trainstation

+ Large scale woodcutting operations used them to transport wood

+ Brickmakers use them

Some links (in German):

General Stuf

In Forresting

In Industrial use

All links have photographs and interesting follow-ups. Not only to german railroads but also to french, hungarian etc. ones.

Jimmy,

It will definitely be at a slight angle. Should help with overall look. I will be doing this viewable from one side only and plan a backdrop to hide the loop of track around the back unless I can figure out a way to hide the loop. I could do an elevated mainline RR along the back to hide the loop though. I'll see how it looks in Autocad.

I am going to design this dio in Autocad. I can send you the drawing in JPEG once complete and you can see what you can do. Thanks for the offer BTW.

anything to help!!

The French Army used 60cm gauge -about 23,6" - railroad (a.k.a. "Decauville") during WW1. This railroad was also used in fortifications like those of the Maginot line in the 40s. There's a article in an old issue of Steelmasters magazine dealing with a diorama showing a Billard T75D locomotive (like the one pictured below) used to tow a flat car carrying a V1...



A 1/35 resin kit of this locomotive had been released back in 1998 by a French manufacturer that went OOB in 2000....

Frenchy