Miniatur Wunderland Weekly Report

22.01.07 at 11:49 hrs

Weekly Report No 325, CW 3

Almost everything we do is for charity, even if we have to sacrifice a small part of our "small" world.

Right now, we are auctioning off "building lots" for organisations like "Ein Herz für Kinder"(A heart for Children), "SOS Kinderdörfer", "Dunkelziffer e.V." and "Kindernothilfe e.V.".

We don't know yet which organisation will benefit from the 5th lot but those interested in this topic and it's results can follow the event here (and, if you wish, take part in the auction!!!).

Harry now has a lot to do and almost every question asked can be replied with : "Yes, it IS plaster". :-)

Gaston is completely back to bridge building. Here, he discusses with Harry where the masonry on the piers should end in order to simplify building up the plaster scenery for Harry.

Of course Gaston has to use a lot of skill and handcrafting to make the arches look like real masonry arches later on.

Sabine and Bobby are currently busy building the houses for the new Alps section and fitting them into their planned spaces.

Sabine cares for the more modern building at the moment.

Bobby, on the other hand, builds the typical huts and houses for specific regions and also adds details the built sections.

Every house is glued down to the layout's base.

Last week, the loco-lift was fully installed and anchored. All the test runs were successfully completed without any flaws. Only the tracks are missing now but once they are in place our locos will "learn to fly". :-)

As announced last week, here's a peek into our loco repair shop.

In this shop, all locos and cars are repaired and maintained. All in all, we have about 50 locos and innumerable cars have to be repaired since there daily mileage of this rolling stock is considerably higher than the manufacturers ever planned for it.

This is also the reason why our in- and out-shelves, as well as our parts-stock are always well filled.

René has his workspace directly besides his test circle and rarely a day passes without him having to repair a couple of locos or cars.

Here we see him repairing an engine that frequently caused a short on the layout. Since there could be a number of reasons behind this, the engine has to be taken apart in order to check the wiring.

In this case it turned out that the engine was technically ok, ie. all the wiring and the decoder were fine. The bad guy was one of the electrical couplers: one of it's wires rubbed itself blank on the chassis and therefore caused the short.