Saturday, July 23, 2011

Permanent Miniature Railroad Exhibition at Sinaia Train Station - The Winter Town


Previous part: The summer countryside

  The final part of the permanent miniature railroad exhibition hosted in the Sinaia train station is the snow-covered small winter town with its train station and surroundings. Although smaller than the summer section, it too is full of carefully planned details. Notice for example how Santa is looking down the chimney of the train station, the snowy steam locomotive, the skating rink and the ski run.










Friday, July 15, 2011

Permanent Miniature Railroad Exhibition at Sinaia Train Station - The Roundhouse


During a recent trip I visited Sinaia, a quiet small town in the center of Romania, located in a spectacular mountain region. It offers a lot to see to its visitors, for example the Peles castle. As a fan of steam locomotives, I went to the train station because I knew that CFR 230.039 is located there and I hoped to take some photos.  But, as I soon found out, this small train station has a great surprise for the railroad modeling fans too: it hosts a permanent miniature (H0) train exhibition. The entrance fee is quite low (somewhat more than 1 Euro) and the featured models and the whole setup is great. I will try to present it in this post and the ones which will follow...

The exhibition is divided into two main themes: the city with the summer countryside and the winter station with its surroundings. The summer and winter parts are cleverly separated by high mountains and tunnels. Both of them contain lots of static models and moving elements, not just trains, but also "animated" figures. For example at the roundhouse there is a guy welding a steam locomotive. Another one in the countryside is cutting the grass.

The first area of the exhibition that caught my attention was the roundhouse and the turntable, with lots of static steam locomotives in it: