A crossing station in Africa. The layout appeared in Continental Modeller in May 2010 and won a Certificate of Merit at the 009 Society AGM during the April 2010 Narrow Gauge South exhibition which featured 46 layouts.
This layout is set in what is now known as Namibia, a country in the south west of Africa which Germany had colonised from 1884 onwards. A railway was built by the German military from the colony’s main harbour at Swakopmund to the capital Windhuk (now Windhoek) between 1897 and 1902 to a gauge of 600 mm. The line was 380 km long and climbed to 1630 metres. The worst section was the climb out of the Khan River gorge where the mountainous terrain resulted in a gradient greater than 1 in 25 on the 7km from Khan to Welwisch. This was a major block to traffic; the small 0-6-0T locomotives in use could only take one wagon up the gradient and the larger 0-8-0Ts, four.
The model imagines what might have happened if a new alignment had been built to overcome the severe gradients out of Khan and is set in 1908. The locomotives are scratchbuilt on N gauge chassis and the rolling stock is either scratchbuilt or made from kits.
The wildlife of the area has also been modelled and you can see zebra, gemsbok, springbok, cape hare, vultures and others.
[ Back to Narrow but Nice 2011 details ]
(c) 2011 SNGMs