The reason I fell in love with the TEE/VT 11.5/class 601 is because of multiple reasons. First the train itself screams a long-gone area of railroading. Second, Kraftwerk has writing an amazing song about the TEE. Third and most importantly, the TEE was my father’s favorite train. We tried to track down as many as possible to visit and photograph, the photograph on the front page (also known as featured picture) is my father in front of a surviving VT 11.5 in Bahnpark Augsburg. Together with my father I started building a 6 wide version a long, long time ago. Unfortunately, he passed away before we could finish it. Later I started building 8-wide 1:45 scale MOC’s. And after seeing Holger’s amazing built, I just had to get back to the model and re do it, this time in a proper scale (and with the correct colours), so in some way this model is a tribute not only to the amazing VT 11.5 but also to my father.
In the real version, the motor unit only has got one powered boogie. To keep that realism and scale correct, I decided to have both motor units fitted with only one power function train motor, controlled by a Sbrick and a rechargeable battery box in every motor unit. It’s not able to go through standard LEGO curves because of the sloping on the bottom, but since we don’t use R40 in our layouts (beside shunting yards) this won’t be a problem.
All my coaches have interior based on the technical drawings and pictures I could find. I decided to build a 7 car consist according to the original plans I found which include an open seating car, dining car with a kitchen, a dining car with bar and two compartment coaches.
To read more about my model check out the BMR article.
Also check out the Flickr album.
