Small Layout for Taking Photos

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Hi! Tell us about yourself and how you got into model trains

Hi, my name is Benjamin, I´m 39 years old and live in Münster, Germany.

In real life I do have an office job at a railway company operating regional passenger trains. While this seems very fitting, I originally started my N scale model railway hobby approx. five years ago when I still worked in the Aviation industry.

Of course, there also was that large H0 scale layout which my father built at my grandparents´ house when I was a rather small kid, but it took me many years to re-start that hobby when I was a grown-up.

One thing I immediately knew was, it would be N scale this time. I didn´t have a huge amount of space and I still wanted the scenery not to look somehow overloaded.

The work on my first N scale layout needed to be stopped, though, when I moved to a different city.

I started over again like three years ago. Meanwhile I got a channel on Instagram @friedrichshausen_spur_n where I can present my work, get new inspiration, and get in touch with other model railroaders.

Very recently I also got a YouTube channel, but for now I focus on Instagram.

Please describe your layout

My layout tells the story about a fictional little terminus called Friedrichshausen – placed somewhere in the middle of Germany. As I do have very little space, the whole thing is more or less a diorama for taking photos only.

There are two segments which together form a N scale layout of roughly 120×30 cm. Segment 1 originally was only about 52×20 cm but got some extensions over time. This segment mainly displays a small station for passenger trains and a little DHL delivery centre with its own siding.

The most important part of segment 2 is a small container terminal including a self-built gantry crane.

I´m a big fan of modern intermodal trains – so container hinterland traffic as well as combi trains hauling around truck trailers, tank containers, swap bodies, etc. This automatically set the scene to epoch VI.

Additionally, I liked the idea of having my own railway company for Friedrichshausen, so I decided there is a fictional company called Friedrichshausener Eisenbahngesellschaft (FHEG). The company is responsible for operating infrastructure, trains, and the container terminal on my layout.

Generally, I´m still quite satisfied with the set-up of my model railroad. I guess a little downside is, that I didn´t know there would be a second segment when I built the first one. I might have done a few things differently, had I known this from the start.

Right now, I´m working on another tiny extension which I call segment 0.98, but what will be shown there, is supposed to remain a little mystery for now.

How did you plan your layout?

As my layout is really small, I didn´t bother with any computer program for planning model railroads.

Most of the planning happened in my head, I tend to think a lot about little details before I actually start building something. Sometimes I think it would be better to just get started and see how something works out… What I really like, though, is how some new ideas suddenly appear in front of my eyes when I build something.

So, you can think a long time about ideas to model a certain scene, but the best ideas sometimes just come during the process.

Describe your rolling stock

My rolling stock consists of only a small number of locos and wagons. There are three powered locos, a MaK DE1002 from Minitrix, a BR218 from Fleischmann and a Vectron from Hobbytrain.

Additionally, there is an unpowered BR218 from an unknown brand which I won on Instagram. As I created that story about my fictional railway company, I started to apply self-printed FHEG decals to my locos.

Then there are three passenger wagons, all of which came second hand. These all have gotten FHEG logos, too. One of these coaches is an old 3-axle “Umbauwagen” which I fully re-painted into a fictional FHEG corporate-ID.

Last, but not least, there are several freight wagons in my fleet, with the most important variants being containers wagons and pocket wagons to serve my intermodal terminal.

My favourite wagon is probably still the Sggmrss 90 from Rocky-Rail, right now I own four of them.

Advice for other people in the model train world

As I´m still rather new to the hobby of building a layout myself, I don’t think I’m in the position to give other people major advice for their own model railroad.

Just make sure you do know what you really want to do with your layout later. Do you love shunting? Do you just want to run long trains? Plan your layout accordingly from the start as re-building something later might be very time consuming and expensive.

Also do use social media for inspiration and exchanging ideas with other people, but don´t let yourself be pushed into too much rushing.

On the internet everybody quickly gets the idea, everything is a race, and you need to outdo someone else. It´s a hobby after all and you should always be able to enjoy your hobby.