A post in the Model Railroader magazine forum
Original question on Ever re-created a movie or t.v. scene on your layout?
My
answer: My entire model railway (I am
currently working on the track layout on the foam) is based somewhat
on The Bridge on the River Kwai. My
late father was a POW on the River Kwai.
I have just finished a
book on a war crimes trial of River Kwai prison guards, called The
Sonkrai Tribunal, that will be
published in Australia this fall (I still haven’t found a North
American publisher)
During the research for the book I obtained
original WWII intelligence reports which listed such things as
rolling stock, locomotives, number of wooden trestle bridges (680)
and steel (8) and how stations and yards were configured.
Reading and
rereading the reports rekindled my long dormant interest in model
railroading. The period I am modelling is after the war, when the
rail line was run by the British military, with cooperation from Thai
Railways. This period ended in 1947, but the freelance element is
that the railway continued to operate throughout the 1940s, as
intended by pre-war planners in UK and Thailand as a short cut
between Southeast Asia and India. (During the research I came across
a United Nations report that proposed that idea was still viable
today. I
blogged that last spring )
It allows for an interesting mix of
locos and rolling stock. As well as Japanese engines brought in and
used by the Japanese Army, there were locos appropriated by Japan
from the Federated Malay States Railway, a number of British made for
export locos and U.S. built Baldwins. Those Japanese locos were
handed over to Burma and Thailand after the war and continued to
operate for many years in both countries. It’s in N Scale called the
Wampo, Nieke and Sonkrai. I plan to unveil a blog on how my progress
on the WNS in a couple of weeks.
