Introduce Yourself

Hello,

my name is Manfred Baacke, I live in the beautiful German city of Dresden, I am 75 years old and have been a railroad fan since I was 4 years old.

The foundation stone was laid by my grandfather, who was a locomotive fitter at the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Dresden-Altstadt, now the Dresden Railway Museum on Zwickauer Straße.

I was often allowed to pick him up from work and sometimes even take part in a test run on a repaired steam locomotive.

I was also able to satisfy my curiosity in the associated lever signal box.

I got my first electric train at the age of 6 in 1955, a starter set from PIKO in H0 scale. It contained a BR52 freight locomotive, three open freight wagons, a track circuit and a transformer. My mother had won a small lottery prize, from which she was able to put this set under my Christmas tree. I am still grateful to her today.

Yes, that was my start.

Over the years, I then built up an H0 layout. Later, when I had two sons, they played with it. My older son rebuilt it in 1976 and now he has a modular layout in H0e with an H0 section. It is a replica of a piece of a coal mining layout from the 1930s.

But now on to me.

After the reunification of the two German states, new opportunities opened up for me too.

The long-cherished wish of owning a garden railroad was fulfilled for me with LGB.

Then I saw the first LiveSteam locomotives in garden railroad size in Simsheim. So I decided to familiarize myself with steam model building. After building steam engines, I started building real steam locomotives in 1 and G gauges. At the moment I am still building a Crampton locomotive that I designed myself.

As I am now 100% severely disabled and a wheelchair user, I moved into an assisted living facility last year.

I found it very difficult to part with my garden railway layout, but I can still “steam” on test rolling stock.

Last year, a modeling friend bought two Hornby locomotives in 00, brought them to the ier and showed them to me.

My interest was immediately aroused, and so I bought a Hornby “Mallard” set three weeks ago.

The first test runs on the test rolling stock were successful!

I haven't run it on the track oval yet, because I want to familiarize myself with the controls first, as they are quite different from the H0 electric locomotives I'm used to.

That's why I registered here to gain some experience.

I look forward to interesting contributions and wish everyone successful model railroad days.

Best regards

Manfred Baacke