Modeling the Rhätische Bahn in 0 Scale

Looking forward to seeing more of your collection!

I too have quite a collection of Swiss narrow gauge. Some from Fama and many items from the successor owners of the line. I also have some of the new Bemo items, quite nice, but rather expensive too. The last few years I have concentrated on my two rail layout, Georgenstadt, but now that I am retired and have more time I am now entertaining the idea of a Swiss modular layout.

Miketg

The Rhaetian Railroad is probably my favorite railroad in the world.  I started getting into Bemo and HO and HOm mostly because I wanted to collect the RhB.

I wish one of the major O scale manufacturers would make narrow gauge materials.  And I wish Bemo would offer factory-installed lighting in their passenger cars!!  One of the frustrating things about going from American O gauge to European HO scale is losing so many of the fun bells and whistles - literally.  Sound speakers installed in the engine out of the factory is practically deluxe, when that would be the absolute bare minimum for anything from Lionel.  (I know it's hard to fit all the fun features into a little HO engine, let alone a narrow gauge, but lighting in the passenger cars and sound speakers in all the locomotives seems like it should not be a problem.)

What do you use for 0m track?

Here are some additional photos of my RhB locomotives and rolling stock in 0m:

Photo 2:  A Ge 4/4 II with two Fama passenger cars, an RhB B [ = 2nd cl ] and an FO A [ = 1st cl ].  These are two of the most common 0m cars to be found, as they, along with an FO B, came in the Fama Glacier Express sets.

Photos 3 and 4:  A Ge 4/4 I in the rebuilt form, with a Roco luggage van, a van by Kiss, and an Alpin Line sliding sidewall van

Photos 5, 6, and 7:  An Alpin Line Gmf 4/4 with another Alpin sidewall van, a Kiss cement car, and a Bemo container flat with a refrigerated container

-  I am pretty confident the two Ge 4/4's are by Alpin, circa 2007, but am not 100% positive, as they were bought third hand.  For that matter, with the exception of 90% of the Fama items, and a few Utz / Roco, all of my 0m purchases have had previous owners, although many were unrun or TRO.  Alpin also catalogued the Ge 4/4 I in unrebuilt form in green -- that would have been the model I wished were available in1988 or so.

-  The Alpin sidewall vans were produced circa 2005 in a variety of liveries;  at that time they also made the modern RhB 4 axle ballast car, but I don't have one.  The Kiss freight cars are circa 1993, I believe.

-  The passenger cars Fama introduced stayed in production through all the various vendors, though with changes in livery and some details:  Fama cars did not come with interiors, but they were offered for separate sale;  Utz cars came either way, and again interiors were offered.  Roco cars, with one exception, always had interiors.  I think all Alpin cars had interiors, but am not sure -- I don't have that many [ or maybe I do -- they catalogued a lot of liveries I'm not sure they actually made ].  Fama and Utz cars had flexible rubber corridor diaphragms  which could be inter-car connected;  Roco changed to a solid rubber moulding with no connections.

-  Of course FO and to a lesser extent BVZ cars ran through onto the RhB in the Glacier and other through trains, so one can legitimately use them within reason when modeling the RhB.

There will be another post with the two remaining locos and some more cars.

Best regards, SZ

@BC1989 posted:

What do you use for 0m track?

I.  Well, I would mostly have used the 0m track by the three major OEM's, Fama, Utz and Roco -- especially the Fama, since I had [ and still have ] a ton of it.

A.  Fama made the following sectional track:

     1.  Curved  - about 27"radius, 16 to a full circle

     2.  Straight:  223 mm [ say 8 3/4"]  length

     3.  R & L turnouts;  the diverging had a radius similar to the curves

     4.  Assorted very short fill-in straight sections to get the correct track spacing, etc.

B.  Fama made the rack [ = cog rail ] track  with the same footprint as the plain sections above, ie, straight and curved.  In addition there were concave and convex vertical curve straight sections for the bottom and top of rack track zones.  Each one has 6 deg of curvature, ie, 2 would give you a 12 deg slope.  Finally, there was a straight section with a sprung cog wheel entry [ - exit, though not necessary there if you ran unidirectionally  ] to begin / end the cog sections.

C.  Fama made a 980 mm / 3 ft flexible section, which was very nice;  the tie sections were molded in groups of N ties, and slid on the rail sections, making curvature easy. [ I forget what N is, and the flex track isn't accessible at the moment.]

D.  Utz continued with all of the above, and added a double [ 446 mm ] straight, a half curved, a half straight, and half curved, straight, and entry rack sections.

E.  Roco offered all of the above, plus the double straight with rack.

II.  All of the above track was made for outdoor operation [ ie non-rust rails ]with the following exception:

   A good bit of the Fama track that was furnished to MRC for the North American market came with ordinary steel track;  this primarily shows up in a lot of the sets, but also individual sale items, notably turnouts.  The set boxes or items were all prominently labeled Indoor Track on green adhesive labels;  it is also easy to identify by the darker color of the rails vs the bright finish of the regular track.  [ The dark color looks great, and saves painting the rail ! ]   I don't know if this was a cost saving measure, or availability of material, or both.  All of the Utz and Roco track is suitable for outdoor use;  if you used battery power, and the locos lend themselves to this, you could use the Indoor track outdoors as well...

III.  As far as geometry etc all the the mfg's track are "the same" and are interchangeable.  It all uses Code 148 rail, so making your own turnouts or dual gauge track, especially with Roco / Atlas, is straightforward as those things go.  I made some dual gauge track by ripping the old Atlas track, both sectional and flex [ though not in 3' bites ] into meter gauge and then adding the outside std gauge rail [ this isn't easy to describe, but you get the idea ( or should get the idea....)].

IV.  Fama vs Bemo standards:   Fama gauge is 22.5 mm;  Bemo is 22.2 mm, and has tighter flange height etc etc standards.  Bemo sells conversion wheelsets to convert their rolling stock to Fama;  I found I could just insert Fama wheelsets into Bemo cars instead, although that may not be desirable for long-term high mileage usage.

I hope the above answers a lot of questions readers may have.

Best rgds, SZ

PBS has done some outstanding coverage of the Swiss Railway. Talk about engineering! A helix within a granite mountain! And the viaducts, wow, breathtakingly beautiful.

I know this is an HO scale layout, but it is worth sharing for inspiration alone. I first saw this on Tracks Ahead ~ about 20 or so years ago. It is also part of the Dream, Plan Build DVD series. Marcel Trautwein's work.

The two remaining RhB locomotives I have, a Ge 2/4 and a Ge 6/6 I, are the only brass locos in my 0m fleet.  Photos 8 and 9 are the Krok, together with two of the green Fama cars.  This loco model was started by Utz, so perhaps it was intended to be a plastic model, but ended up being produced for Kiss in Korea,   Photos 9 and 10 are the 2/4 by Fulgurex with a Fama flat and three Kiss cars, two vans and a cement.

Of course, if one were building an RhB layout, FO HGe's could run through, and perhaps locos from other roads might make an appearance as loaners, etc.  It did happen.

SZ

-  An

Thanks - that's a great photo. Keep your history coming, that was a good read!

All my standard gauge O scale (gauge) trains run on O-36 or less curves (I give them O-48 sometimes on the outer loop) so it's slightly maddening that the narrow gauge material would need even bigger curves   I've lived all my life in apartments in Manhattan so space for big curves is not easy to come by!

Could you run these engines/rolling stock on S gauge track, like American Flyer?  I've noticed that 0m is almost exactly S width.

Yes, with the usual caveats, Fama or Fama compatible will run on S ga track because it IS S gauge, 22.5 mm.  [ Bemo stock is a more exact gauge in 1:45 scale, 22.2, unless it is converted to Fama standards;  think of it as, to coin ? a phrase, "Proto39"....]  But remember, there's a lot of different track in S gauge;  examples:

-  I seem to recall from my early Fama days that while AF straight track was fine, standard AF curves were a bit too tight, and turnout frog depth was a problem.

-  Gargraves flex track worked fine, as did their swiveling, unprototypical closed frog turnouts

-  A fellow I knew ran his Fama set on his fine scale [ ie, not a compromise AF + scale ] S ga layout;  you could hear the flanges hitting the spikes, but not see any visual problems as I recall.  I think Fama flanges are somewhere between AF and scale.

So I would check first before buying 1000 ft of any "non-OEM' track.........

As far as apartment dwelling, you could build a nice but downsized stub end RhB station on three walls, including staging with a traverser.  Alternately, you could get a new girlfriend with a few unused rooms in her Park Ave condo......

Hope that helps   ... well, most of it, anyway....

SZ