Last running day on my layout - 2025-11-15

I had some train friends visit my layout for the last official running day:

(Photo credit: Erich Scherer)

Friday evening:

Ed, Boyd, me, Hing, Hein, Erich

Saturday afternoon:

Paul, Ed, Richard, Hein, me, Erich

Richard, John, Raman,George, Bruno, Boyd

On Monday Hein and I started packing trains away.

Crossing the bridge at night

I am making progress on the landscaping below the big bridge. I decided to run my ICE 3 train to see how it looks at night.. and here is the result...

related links: The building of the bridge

Aurora borealis

Here is my ICE 3 train rolling past the aurora borealis....

The lights in the sky are implemented by two Hue light strips that I make flicker in alternating aurora colors.

They are controlled by my layout software

Another backdrop

I have now added the backdrop behind the new mountain.

The Rheingold and Würtembugerin pass each other on the mainline.

Creating a pond

I have a small pond and a stream running under a bridge so I have created the water features before I place the bridge in place.

I made a small retaining wall out of some small clay bricks when I was making the foundation landscape.

Speed calibration of ICE 3 (37783)

Today my 37783 set arrived and I thought I would report on its speeds.

The max speed setting in the motorized car was factory set to the maximum speed.

My software calibration measured the following  scale speeds

speed step   forwards  backwards
 1              19km/h     18km/h
 5+            138km/h    158km/h
10             318km/h    208km/h
14             319km/h

I decided that it was way too fast for my layout and decided to reduce the speed by reducing the max speed pot by a 180° turn. (My longest straight track that is visible is only 2,5m long)

This shows the calibrated speeds of my ICE 3 train after reducing the max speed setting with a 180° turn of the speed pot.
It seems that the intermediate speed steps are not all that significant - and are often the same as the non intermediate speed.
All speeds measured with acceleration off.

As you can see the speeds increase pretty much linearly with the speed step.