Obbekaer
Obbekær is unashamedly experimental. I wanted a new challenge, and found it in P87 (finescale HO) modelling, this time with a Danish prototype. Why Danish? My home town of Ely is twinned with Ribe in Denmark, so we have been frequent visitors over the years.
The project has involved designing parts and processes for making track, rolling stock and buildings, and Obbekær is the test bed for all of them. The real location is a village just east of Ribe, and the assumption is that a private railway typical of rural Denmark linked Ribe on the west coast of Jutland with Vojens to the east. Such a line was actually planned in the 1920s, as southern Jutland was returned to Danish rule, but it was never built. It’s a sleepy rural station woken several times a day by the passage of a railbus or mixed train, but hopefully a lifelike portrayal of many similar locations in Denmark in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
The trains are typical of branch line formations on both the private lines and the state railway (DSB) in Jutland, and are either scratchbuilt or heavily modified commercial products. The project has been helped by significant research and historical information provided by friends in the Ribe Model Railway Club, and with this project now complete, progress is now being made on a more complex model depicting the line’s supposed terminus in the old town of Ribe.
The project has involved designing parts and processes for making track, rolling stock and buildings, and Obbekær is the test bed for all of them. The real location is a village just east of Ribe, and the assumption is that a private railway typical of rural Denmark linked Ribe on the west coast of Jutland with Vojens to the east. Such a line was actually planned in the 1920s, as southern Jutland was returned to Danish rule, but it was never built. It’s a sleepy rural station woken several times a day by the passage of a railbus or mixed train, but hopefully a lifelike portrayal of many similar locations in Denmark in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
The trains are typical of branch line formations on both the private lines and the state railway (DSB) in Jutland, and are either scratchbuilt or heavily modified commercial products. The project has been helped by significant research and historical information provided by friends in the Ribe Model Railway Club, and with this project now complete, progress is now being made on a more complex model depicting the line’s supposed terminus in the old town of Ribe.