Last weekend I drove to Frankfurt to visit the Frankfurt Feldbahn Museum for Modelbautag.  Feldbahn means “Field Railway”, and is a term used to describe German narrow-gauge industrial railroading.  The Feldbahn Museum just west of downtown Frankfurt is the largest operating museum of it’s kind in Europe; they maintain a large stable of equipment and a giant mainline loop in nearby Rebstockpark. Last Sunday was a great day to visit, as this day was also Modelbautag, or Modeler’s Day, at the museum.  I expected a train show with vendors and models but there were only a few modular layouts and a … Continue reading No. 123: Modelbautag at the Feldbahn Museum, Frankfurt

Two weekends ago I made the long drive down to Mulhouse, France to visit Cité du Train, the French National Railway Museum.  This museum presents the history and technological achievements of the French railway network, particularly the SNCF–the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer–which, since 1938, is France’s national state-owned railway company. Don’t laugh.  I had read a lot about the museum and understood it was one of the very best in the world.  I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be that good. The museum occupies a huge area on the south side of … Continue reading No. 122: Cité du Train – The French National Railway Museum

Back in the early 1990s I was a young Air Force navigator flying C-141s out of Charleston AFB.  One of our usual runs was to Rhine-Main AB in Frankfurt, Germany.  I flew there often.  Sometimes we’d get a day off between missions so we’d go downtown and see the sights.  We would often rent a car and drive up the Rhine River valley between Rudesheim and Koblenz to visit the little towns, and shop, and see all the castles, and experience the very best of Germany.  We always stopped in Rudesheim as a joke, because Rudesheim was where we would have to hold if Frankfurt/Rhine-Main couldn’t get us … Continue reading No. 119: Railfan Day on the Rhine

On Friday I took my family on a long Labor Day weekend trip to the Ticino region of Switzerland, close to the Italian border, for a weekend of hiking and swimming.  On the way we stopped in Lucerne, which is about a 90-minute drive south of the Germany-Switzerland border at Berne, and visited the Switzerland Transportation Museum. The Swiss Transportation Museum is small but breathtaking.  As you can imagine it is clean and perfectly organized.  The museum devotes a separate building to automobiles, trains, airplanes and shipping, and has a lot more going on, like a planetarium and a chocolate museum, … Continue reading No. 99: The Swiss National Railway Musuem

I spent way too much time in June and July doing this… …and not enough time finishing up models for St. Louis RPM. However, summer is a great time to travel in Europe, and a couple of weeks before St. Louis RPM I visited the big Deutsche Bahn Museum in Koblenz, which is about an hour north of where I live.  Koblenz lies at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers and has always been a major transportation center.  The Deutsche Bahn, or “DB” for short, runs along both sides of the Rhine River here.  A large, retired shop complex … Continue reading No. 96: Deutsche Bahn Museum, Koblenz

Prototype modelers are always in need of motivation.  I spent a week on vacation in Slovenia in June, and during that time I broke away from the family for a few hours and visited the Slovenian National Railway Museum in the capital of Ljubljana.   To my great surprise it was—hands down—one of the most awesome museums I’ve ever been to.  It was full of motivation and a few surprises too. The photo above is the view you get as you enter the museum grounds.  The roundhouse and exhibits are is excellent shape.  There are steam engines–many of which still … Continue reading No. 93: Slovenia National Railway Museum

The following post doesn’t have anything to do with modeling. We threw a big birthday party for one of my daughters on Friday night, and it was a lot of work, so yesterday morning–after dropping the birthday girl off at volleyball team practice–my wife gave me a kitchen pass to “chase trains” for a while.  It was a beautiful, cool, clear, sunny day so I went out to a few places nearby to take some pictures. The first place I went was Otterbach, a nearby town that has a little museum set up in a retired interlocking tower.  Apparently there … Continue reading No. 85: 40 Minutes at Einsiedlerhof