I attended this year's addition of Ontraxs, a very successful attempt of the Dutch Railway Museum to bring together the most beautiful diorama's in Europe and raise interest for the hobby among the youngsters
1 The museum itself is housed in a former railway station near the centre of Utrecht
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4 "Yonder" is Dutch themed diorama set in the fifties
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8 This French modeler worked miracles with styrene.This WWI diorama is approximately in N (1:160) and absolutely convincing
9 On the rear a double locomotive often mentioned in connection to articulated locomotives although a pair like this is strictly not articulated but simply two permanently coupled non-articulated engines.
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11 Welcome to Gabard's world of total amazement. The builder opted to build a kind of dolls house in which all rooms were connected by rail. Each "room" was a small diorama of say 30 x 20 cm and an entire world in itself.
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17 The trade was of equal quality and these Philotrain issues made me drool all over the place
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19 Especially this in O gauge, an NS6300
20 And an Animal Class, so called because every member of the class was named after an animal species starting with Donkey. Noblesse oblige, I must build one as the class also included a Vink (Finch)
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48 "Zwaaghoek" is based on a Dutch tramway. Bystanders actually recognised the houses from days long gone.
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58 Diorama do not need to be large to be beautiful. This simple truth was illustrated by this narrow gauge layout
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62 This one was however very large
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74 The most remarkable and probably the smallest completely operating diorama
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80 To my taste one of the most beautiful layouts. Made by a French team on On3 based on a Romanian backwoods theme
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95 A French rural theme in 1:22,5 (?)
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109 Wonderful IJsselstein, a 3D forced perspective diorama. the only moving object was a steam tramway locomotive and one car passing over the bridge, both also built in forced perspective.
110 When seen from one side the forced perspective is mind boggling
111 but from from straight ahead it is very very convincing
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113 Crane factory, approximately 1:22.5
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124 A Chess fugures factory, just think of it!
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127 Station Venhuizen in days gone by. On the left a member of the Animal Class of which you just saw a model
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134 A huge layout in more or less circular form, built up into three seprate dioramas. A Belgian entry, tramways roamed the Belgian countryside well into the fifties
