One of Poland's finest and most beautiful model railway layouts with steam trains in HO scale - Wysoka Gorzowska by Tomasz Florczak

Published on December 16, 2024

Sometimes you look at a model train layout with different eyes when you hear the story that led to this model railway layout being built. In this video we see the model railroad layout constructed by Polish model railroader Tomasz Florczak. The entire miniature world in HO scale is a reflection of his childhood memories.

Tomasz Florczak’s grandfather, Józef Florczak, worked as the station master from 1956 to 1981 at the train station Wysoka Gorzowska. His grandfather lived with his family in a company apartment on the first floor of the station building. Also Tomasz Florczak’s father, Tadeusz Florczak, grew up at the train station.

As a little boy, while visiting the grandparents, Tomasz Florczak discovered the railway station in the 1970s and 1980s: There were passenger trains hauled by steam locomotives. There were a lot of shunting operations. There were the first modern diesel locomotives used by the Polish State Railways (“Polskie Koleje Państwowe”). And, of course, there was his grandfather who managed the railroad traffic.

In 1997, Tomasz Florczak decided to recreate a scale model of the railroad station and its surroundings that he remembered so well from his childhood. Wysoka Gorzowska (once called “Hohenwalde”) is rural passing station in western Poland. The wayside station was opened in 1912. Back then, it was part of the “Deutsche Reichsbahn”, located in Neumark, part of Prussia. After the end of the Second World War, the station was taken over by the Polish State Railways (“Polskie Koleje Państwowe”).

Motivation for rail transport modelling was his emotion because the country station no longer exists today. There are no more trains and the tracks have been dismantled. Only the station building remains, where the grandfather once lived. Building the train station of Wysoka Gorzowska had to be true to the original, realistic and functional. Tomasz Florczak, did not imagine it would take more than two decades. All the tracks, turnouts, switches, signals and structures could only be rebuilt by scratch building because there were no kits or ready-made scale models.

The landscape, the beautiful station building and the striking water tower demanded an individual approach. The station has two continuous main tracks and a siding serving the loading dock. The model rail layout was designed as an elongated diorama, like a panoramic showcase with a width of nearly eight meters. Furthermore, Tomasz Florczak had the idea of a special transition between the foreground and background: No-one should be able to tell what might belong to the three-dimensional foreground and what might belong to the two-dimensional photo background.

The model train layout corresponds to the situation in the second half of the 1970s. Therefore, numerous conversions of locomotives, rolling stock and road vehicles were made to match representation of Era IV. To correspond to historical reality, custom made vehicles, most of which are based on resin castings or 3D-printing technology, are in use.

Thanks to the two storage yards (fiddle yards) on the left and right side of the model railroad layout, realistic point-to-point traffic can be realised. During operations, goods trains can be scheduled to overtake passenger trains. To ensure the safety of people getting on and off the passenger trains at the platform, the goods trains were routed through an outside track. Finally, rail traffic control is based on a digital system: All motive power is DCC-controlled using a Roco Z21 system.

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0GsJLoBSx8

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