OO/HO African profile model railway in Kenya

A new model railway which I am beginning to build:

OO/HO African profile model railway in Kenya: 01

Well, 3'6" gauge scales down to 14mm, so I see no reason why you shouldn't get away with mixing and matching.

You need to keep an eye on Australian manufacturers; if you ignore the modern image stuff, some people are beginning to produce models that fit your requirements for period and origin. Price may be about the only drawback.

Orient Express Reproductions - orientexpressmodels.com/OER
Southern Rail - www.southernrailmodels.com.au

>2 RobertDay:

Thanks, Robert. Yes, I have a page I tore out of a modelling magazine a couple of years ago of an HO Australian diesel of which I know a number of secondhand examples of the real thing were exported to Africa a few years ago - indeed I saw them and climbed on them as some were parked in our depot for a while in their orginal Australian liveries. The model was very expensive, though. I already have a kit for an Australian coaling stage, as it looks very much like a South African one. I'll check out those two links when I'm on a better internet connection.

>3 John5918: The URL for Orient Express was wrong. Try this:

http://www.orientexpressmodels.com.au/OER/

A belated update. I checked out Orient Models and I ordered from them some scenic backdrops. Nothing I could find in Europe or north America looked suitable, but the Australian outback looks a bit like parts of Africa! They weren't cheap, and for some reason I had to pay customs duty on them when they arrived in the UK post office, but well worth it.

I have now built the Australian coaling stage which I mentioned in >3 John5918:. I still have to do a lot of the details, and to paint it, but I'm very pleased with the look of it so far.

I'm making progress with building the baseboard, and I've started updating the thread on the Friends of the Rail Forum with pictures: http://friendsoftherail.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=365

Still a long way to go!

I'm saving up my money now for the Bachmann 45t Ransome & Rapier steam crane. I've seen real life versions of this crane in Kenya and South Africa, so I definitely need one on my layout, but currently it's too costly - the cheapest I have seen is £ 209.50. Maybe by next year there'll be secondhand ones going cheaper.

>6 John5918:

After discussions with my brother-in-law in UK, who is also a railway modeller and who knows how to use eBay, I decided that the Bachmann crane, while definitely a beautiful model, is far too expensive. Instead I decided to go for the Hornby 75t crane, and my brother-in-law phoned me today to tell me that he has bought me a good secondhand one for only £14.50! It'll be several months before it appears on my layout, though, as there's no reliable parcel post to Kenya, so it will wait at his house until our next trip to UK later this year.

I've made a lot of progress in the last three weeks, working up to eight hours a day in the model railway room. I've posted a few more photos at the link in >5 John5918:, and will be posting more in the coming days.

I've made yet more progress while staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic, and have just posted more photos at http://friendsoftherail.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=365

A few more photos and some text posted at http://friendsoftherail.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=365

And a good few more in the last month.

A few months on, and there is not a lot of visible change as I'm concentrating on some of the less exciting parts such as points (switch) motors and trying to turn the messy spaghetti wiring underneath into something a bit more orderly. I'm also installing a lot of lights on the layout, and doing odd bits of scenery here and there as they take my fancy. But there's a huge area to scenify (is that a word?!) and after spending days or weeks on a particular little scene I look up and realise how much more area I still have to cover! It's a lifetime project.

Improbably, I've just seen a post on a Facebook Group for New Zealand Model Railways with pictures of some East African models someone in NZ is building. They ask if anyone else in the world models East Africa....

Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nzmodelrailways

Photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=7641901409156596&set=pcb.259872693029120...

Thanks! I'm not on Facebook but I was able to follow your links and see the posts. That's an interesting scale - everything has to be scratchbuilt. I've shared it with a mate of mine in UK who is building a Kenya OO/HO model there. The only other one I know of is Lord Delamere, but he's in his nineties I believe and I haven't had a chance to get an introduction to him.

>13 John5918: Back in the 1960s, before N gauge, the British company GEM produced white-metal kits for the Festiniog Railway in Wales to 5.5mm/foot scale, so that it could use TT gauge track (12mm). It never caught on, and the arrival of N gauge a few years later made narrow gauge modelling for OO/HO scale modellers a much more practical proposition.

I've been very lax in keeping up this thread. My model railway is up and running, but there's still so much to do. Keeping the track clean and the electrics connected is a constant challenge when you've got a hundred metres of track in a forty foot shipping container. Some of it is in tunnels which are accessible but only just, and require contortions to get a hand in far enough to clean.

Scenic dioramas are progressing well. Recently Doctor Who landed in his Tardis and can be seen fighting four Daleks. I'm gradually adding more lighting to buildings. One task to do soon will be to fix the mosque, Sikh temple and cricket pitch in place.

I'm in UK at the moment and I've just obtained maroon paint, as well as GWR chocolate and cream, which will make some rolling stock look African. I have a mate in England who is a railway photographer and historian who also models Kenyan railways in OO and he has been an invaluable source of advice on authentic paints as well as which UK and US models can best be converted for Africa.

Incidentally fellow Kenyan modeller Lord Delamere sadly died last year in his nineties without me ever getting to meet him.