{"id":5901,"date":"2019-06-06T06:24:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T10:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/?p=5901"},"modified":"2019-06-06T07:23:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T11:23:58","slug":"the-design-of-bhw-neukirche-by-enrico-lussi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/06\/the-design-of-bhw-neukirche-by-enrico-lussi\/","title":{"rendered":"The design of Bhw Neukirche: By Enrico Lussi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every now and then our readers themselves get so excited with BMR that they send in their own articles. This is of course something we really appreciate, so please keep them coming! Today it’s Enrico Lussi’s turn, who has written an article about his MILS layout “NeuKirche”. You might have already seen his layout before in our coverage of Legoworld 2018<\/a>, but today he will give some more insight to how this layout came to light. Enjoy, and thank you Enrico for this entry! Please feel free to keep them coming!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introducing Enrico<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well I can\u2019t believe I’m actually writing a post for BMR! What a honor. First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Enrico, 18 years old and currently studying to become a civil engineer at the University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam. I have been building 1:45 scale trains for the last 3 years (could be 3,5 already). My passion is history and especially train related history. So I build a lot of steam locomotives and historic railway wagons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My current collection is 7 steam locomotives, 4 diesels, 1 Intercity train (ICM 4001), 2 diner wagons, 1 postal wagon, 2 passenger wagons, 5 closed freight wagons and 4 flatbeds. My biggest project is my Bahnsbetriebswerk. In this article I would like to take you through the design and building project. I hope you enjoy this article as much as I did building my layout!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A line-up of (most of) my current collection<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Bahnsbetriebswerk NeuKirche, building a \u201chome\u201d for my steam locomotive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Bhw NeuKirche in full overview<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For this article we need to get in our time machines and travel back to the long gone days of 2017. In the summer of 2017, for the first time I attended several \u2018simple\u2019 Lego conventions on my own. Until that time, I had always joined other peoples layouts, I would just bring my MOC trains. Not that this was in any way unpleasant, because I had the honor to attended a lot of amazing layouts, like the Amsterdam Centraal Station by Dutch builder Silvio<\/a>, and Martijn van der Linde\u2019s<\/a> (he is also Dutch btw) wonderful modular France-inspired station (see below). However, not having your own layout means you always have to play by somebody else\u2019s rules, which can be a bit of a problem if you build 8 wide German steam engines, while the reference cadre of your buddies is a 6 wide Metroliner\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Martijn\u2019s modular station at LegoWorld 2017<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The amazing Amsterdam Centraal Station build by Silvio Fontaine<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My steam\nlocomotives always looked somewhat out of place on those shared layouts,\ndefinitely by the \u2018real\u2019 Model Railroaders that would sometimes attend these\nconventions. For this, one first needs to understand how the European Railway\nModellers categorize the different era\u2019s in railway history: By Epoches. Every\nEpoche reflects a particular time within railroading history. The idea is that you\ncan build whatever you want, as long as it makes sense within that epoche (or\none below or above), because the chance of prototypical railroading would be\nhighest, ie. the chance that two trains, or buildings, or cars, would have been\nable to \u2018meet\u2019, would be the highest if we follow these rules.  For the AFOLs out there that don\u2019t know the\nEpoche system I hope this explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n Epoche\n <\/td>\n Time period \n <\/td><\/tr>
\n I\n <\/td>\n 1835\u20131920 \n <\/td><\/tr>
\n II\n <\/td>\n 1920-1949\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n III\n <\/td>\n 1949-1970\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n IV\n <\/td>\n 1970-1990\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n V\n <\/td>\n 1990-2006\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n VI\n <\/td>\n 2006-current\n <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n

To clarify\nmy statement: The layouts I joined where build in Epoche VI, but to be honest,\nmost of my locomotives and wagons are from Epoche III-IV. When visitors asked\nabout this, I always gave the \u201cmuseum\u201d argument: My locomotives are used by a\nRail Heritage museum, and they use them in Epoch VI (which is definitely true\nfor my MOC\u2019s: All of them are decommissioned and Rail Heritage owned). However,\nthat answer never seemed to fully stratify both the visitor nor me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there were 2 problems on my plate: I always relied on somebody else\u2019s layout to be able to attend a show, and my locomotives are kind of out of place on most of these layouts. After a few hard brainstorm sessions I decided to finally do a proper layout. Well, maybe it wasn\u2019t that I needed these brainstorm sessions to decide, because I always had plans for a layout, it was more I just wasn\u2019t able to figure out the How and When. And since I was faced with these terrible problems, it was time to take a few old ideas out of the vault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fully clear, my first idea never was to build a Bahnsbetriebswerk and it definitely wasn\u2019t planned to be something as huge as it is now. I started with something simple, a station, a typical German station that would be located at a museum line (If you want to know why it should be German even though I\u2019m Dutch, I\u2019d say just hold your horses a bit longer, it will all make sense after the next paragraph). It would consist of a small platform where people could wait to get on the train to take them on a small trip on the museum line, which most of the time would be the layout that I would attended at that moment. Besides the platform there would be a small water tower and a signal house. With this I didn\u2019t need somebody else his layout for my trains, and I could even keep it stand-alone, in which cases I of course wouldn\u2019t be able to let my engines run, but at least I could show them off in a proper historic setting, ie. in Epoche IV. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the construction I mainly used the MILS-system<\/a>, however I\u2019m using 48*48 baseplates instead of the \u2018regular\u2019 32*32. The reason for this is that I find it easier to work with 48×48 since you are able to place double track with a good size platform on 1 baseplate, as shown below. Also, in my opinion it\u2019s easier to carry the layout around this way. Oh, and it\u2019s less work setting up the whole thing, which is quite handy if you attend as many weekend events as I do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A picture from around February2018 of my Bahnsbetriebswerk<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you guys might have noticed I build a lot of German trains and scenery. As said I\u2019m a Dutchie and not German. But why do I then build so many German trains and scenery? Well there\u2019s a good reason for that. Besides that German engineering is superior (in my eyes at least), the Netherlands was one of the first countries to decommission steam locomotives, and the first one that actually ended all steam powered trains, as early as January 1958 in fact!  In these first two decades after the war there wasn\u2019t so much of a historic scene in Europe, therefore you can almost count the amount of Dutch steam locomotives that aren\u2019t scrapped on two hands. However, Germany decommissioned steam locomotives almost 20 years later than we did, in September 1977. In those years, the opinion towards preserving steam engines had changed 180 degrees, so a lot of train enthusiast used this moment to bring German steam locomotives to the Netherlands to create steam locomotives museum here. Let\u2019s just say that thanks to this, I don\u2019t know any better than that European Steam Engines are German \ud83d\ude09 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspiration<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am a huge\nfan of the Dutch steam locomotives museums and I\u2019m even a regular sponsor to a\nfew of them. There are 2 which I find really interesting: The SSN and the VSM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SSN (Stoom Stichting Nederland, The organization for running Steam in the Netherlands)<\/a> is located in Rotterdam. I live close to Rotterdam and I have visited the SSN since I was 2,5 years old (I am not kidding, I have pictures!). The SSN doesn\u2019t have their own dedicated track to run their locomotives on, it only has a steam depot which is located at the main Railway line between Rotterdam and Gouda . Their goal is to preserve old steam locomotives for the next generation and organize special train rides in the Netherlands and Germany. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The BR 01 1075 covered in steam at the railway depot of the SSN<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The VSM (Veluwsche Stoomtrein Maatschapij, Veluwsche Steamtrain organisation) <\/a>on the other hand maintains an old train line from Apeldoorn to Dieren in one of our nation parks. It might sounds strange for some people that there is a steam train running through a national park, but believe me it creates an amazing train journey that I took for more times than I can remember. Their train collection is huge, the biggest in The Netherlands and maybe one of the bigger ones in Europe, which is even more impressive if you realize that the VSM isn\u2019t a static museum and has a mission statement to try to have all their stock in running condition! The VSM organizes historic train rides on their own line and sometimes special rides through the Netherlands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The VSM depot Beekbergen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The SSN and\nVSM are thus my get-to places for inspiration, but it doesn\u2019t stop there! I am\nlucky that my Father was a train enthusiast to, so I have visited museums across\nthe globe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My small\nstation was based on one of the stations the VSM has on their railway line. But\nafter it was finished I wasn\u2019t satisfied with the size of it. It was fun and\ngreat to have at shows, but I wanted something bigger, so I decided to go back\nto the drawing board. And then it struck me. A Bahnsbetriebswerk! To fully\nunderstand why this made perfect sense for me, I think it\u2019s better if I first\nexplain what a Bahnsbetriebswerk is before I go into further details about the\nlayout itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bahnsbetriebswerk<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Bahnsbetriebswerk\nis the German equivalent of a railway depot. But since its German it\u2019s bigger,\nand more efficient. A Bahnsbetriebswerk (Bhw for short) comes in different\nsizes and with different functions, but most of them have at least some type of\nturntable with an engine shed or roundhouse. Mostly they also house a few\nfactories, the obvious storage and cranes for coal and of course water towers. So,\nin short, a Bhw houses everything a locomotive needs to be able to fully\nfunction as a main line steam engine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SSN and\nVSM both have railway depots that you would be able to call a Bhw and a lot of\nGerman Railway museum are housed in old Bhw, so inspiration wasn\u2019t that hard to\ncome by!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But where to start? A major feature of any Bhw or Railway depot is the turntable. So, I decided to first start working on a turntable that would get a prominent feature in my Bhw. In total I have built 5 versions with the first 2 being motorized.  However, the biggest problem with motorizing the turntable was that I was still building in the MILS standard, and that my engines are so heavy that it would need a lot of power. After the first attempt I decided to give up the MILS standard and go for MILS+ 1 brick in height. After the second attempted left me with broken technic parts and a lot of frustration I decided to build a \u201cdummy\u201d version with the ability to motorize it sometime in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The first non-motorized version of my turntable<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next up were the Coal bunker and crane. I must admit, my inspiration for the Coal Bunker came from a design I saw over at Ebay. I modified the design a little bit to make it more modular so that it\u2019s easier to move to conventions, but overall, I decided to keep his shapes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then , while on Holiday in Germany, it struck me. I was missing big piece! And by big, I mean a shed\/workplace that could house several engines. You know, a proper place locomotives and wagons can be restored, repaired and more. I was visiting the Technik-Museum Speyer<\/a>, an amazing museum and city. The museum has trains, boats, airplanes bicycle, Space shuttle and more! I recommend a visit. But one of their warehouse\/sheds really stood out. It was an amazing old factory I guess, but you could instantly see it as an Engine shed. The colours where beautiful and the details really struck out. The moment I saw it, I knew I ,I wanted to build sometime similar to that wonderful building. It would be placed at my turntable where 3 tracks would go from the turntable into the Engine shed. I really like TrixBrix and one of their products is a train adapter where you can go from 12v to RC track. Those would be perfect to make a grease pit, something I think is a must-have for any Engine shed. The color scheme would  also be based on the old factory at Speyer: Medium Dark Flesh with Dark Red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The beautiful old factory at the Technic Museum Speyer. Yes, that is a Boeing 747 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
My Engine Shed with turntable<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

LegoWorld 2018<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As you might have understood from the Lego World 2018 report that Raised wrote I am part of the Lego World 8-wide crew. However, we had some difficulties fitting in my Bhw last year, so it got placed on the end of the table. However, I don\u2019t want to go into more details here since Raised already did that, but I do want to mention that the reactions were great! And I got a lot of good feedback from my fellow crew mates. The Bhw gave not only my steam locomotives a \u201chome\u201d and great setup to show them, but also a reason for them to be driving on the main railway line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Overview of my Bahnsbetriebswerk at LegoWorld 2018<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
My BR 41 105 on my Turntable<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of most\nheard pieces of feedback was that it looked a bit cramped. And I couldn\u2019t agree\nmore. So, a few months after LegoWorld I started to expand, adding an extra\ntrack and platform for the station, and building a new switch tower. Also, I\nhave expanding the coal bunker and coal tower to create a more realistic coal\nloading area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1,5 years later (ie. ‘now’)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This brings me to the current day, 1,5 years after having started building. Today my Bhw is 8 48*48 baseplates long and 3 48*48 baseplates wide, obviously a huge layout for a student like me, and something I would have never imagined that it would get to 1,5 year ago. I attended a lot of conventions with the Bhw and has been featured in a lot of articles, videos interviews and more, but I\u2019m for sure not done yet! For example, here are some pictures for the latest convention that I attended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The far-left corner of my Bhw with the R104 double crossover from TrixBrix, a must-have for anybody that wants to have a proper Shunting Yard in their layout<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
My teal NS 2412. Glad they finally unkilled that color several years ago<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The new switch tower. Yes, I still need to finish that big hole in the roof<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, what\u2019s\nnext?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are\nstill a lot of things I still should finish and there are also a lot of plans\nto go even bigger! Things that I still need to finish are the roof of my shed\n(This one has high priority according to my crewmates), making the turntable\nfunctional and of course a station building. Just like last year we will be\nattending Lego world with the whole crew, and again we are trying to go bigger\nthan previous year. I don\u2019t want to give away too much, but I am planning to\nconnect the Bahnsbetriebswerk with the main railway line, and I want to make a\nmuseum line. Plans are mostly finished by now, but not totally set in stone\nyet. However, the show is only in October, so I have more than enough time on\nmy hands to keep on fiddling with this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, that\u2019s it for the moment. I hope to be able to write an update in the future of my Bahnsbetriebswerk. For now, thanks for reading and keep on building! If you want to see more, you can check out my Flickr<\/a>, but I also have a Facebook page<\/a> where I tend to post updates.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

End credits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, I would like to thank the BMR team for letting me write this article for their page, it\u2019s truly is an honor for me. I especially want to thank Raised for all the great advice and help and of course Martijn, a great friend of mine, without whom I would never have been able to come as far as I am now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then our readers themselves get so excited with BMR that they send in their own articles. This is of course something we really appreciate, so please keep them coming! Today it’s Enrico Lussi’s turn, who has written an article about his MILS layout “NeuKirche”. You might have already seen his layout before … Continue reading The design of Bhw Neukirche: By Enrico Lussi<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28,38,855,2],"tags":[873,872,33],"class_list":["post-5901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-layout-design","category-layouts","category-people","tag-873","tag-enrico","tag-lego"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/40596779323_961469a295_o.jpg?fit=4896%2C3264&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8egNP-1xb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5901"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5925,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5901\/revisions\/5925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brickmodelrailroader.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}