French NG SIG Meeting 11

[BobB]

After a long gap, a meeting was held on 21 November 2023, with five people attending.

Paul showed pictures of his 4mm scale 3D-printed CdN van, which now has improved door runners, and 'posable' doors.  He is now looking at a 1922 CdN fourgon, creating drawings from very little information.  This van included a separate post compartment, and a dog box.  A rake of CdN coaches will follow 'some time'.  Paul also showed his 4mm scale Billard A150 railcar and trailer, which will be appearing (running in SW Ireland) at Warley...

Charlie's St-Etienne layout has been having a revival, appearing at several shows.  He is building more stock for it, so that it can either appear as a pre-WW2 line, or as a post-war tourist line.  He showed two Decauville 0-4-2Ts running on N-drive chassis, and a baladeuse using Jouef seats on a Pershing chassis (the Jouef chassis and two Egger bodies then becoming a Swedish coach!).  Two resin sugar-beet wagons (produced originally in Spain) have been finished, and two resin single-ended Crochat railcars from the same supplier have been combined to form a double-ended version in CFC livery, suitable for use on St-Etienne).  A borrowed REE Billard A80 HO model looked at home on 9mm gauge among 4mm scale models on St-Etienne.  Charlie showed images of a 60cm gauge railcar design, proposed by Billard for CFC but never built, which would make a nice model...

Richard had bought an unassembled HO DJH DR Mallet kit plus spare parts, with a view to converting it to a Portuguese Henschel Mallet.  He also showed Bemo HOm coaches converted to Portuguese types.  Charlie described how he had converted such coaches to HOe.  Both agreed the appearance of some RTR 4-W coaches is improved by lengthening them, and/or shortening the wheelbase, like typical French vehicles.

Richard also showed pictures of the 60cm gauge P'tit Train de St-Trojan in Oléron, which he had visited in August.  On a cloudy day, passenger services were supplemented by freight trains carrying dune buggies back from the beach.  We saw the 'Ticket Office' on a wagon, (shunted from the terminus into the depot when the line is closed) and the bogie van Café and generator wagon (left at the beach terminus each day to sell snacks to visitors).  This line would make a good model (a model was featured in Voie Libre 44).

Bob showed progress on his 1:100 scale St-Trojan layout (the other end of the same town in Oléron, as it was 100 years before Richard's visit!), and its three Corpet-Louvet engines.  He showed surviving structures on the CdN, Réseau Breton, CF du Morbihan and EC in Oléron, taken during July.  He also described a 1:100 CdN Blanc-Misseron built from a re-scaled 1:87 3D-print from Paul's design.

Mick talked of progress with his 1:55 scale radio-controlled Billard railcar, including editing sound files of actual railcars to provide realistic sound.  We await news of this at future meetings...

We agreed to hold meetings every 3 months or so, so a meeting will be arranged in February 2024.