The Making of the Collection
Collection Profile
Thousands of tiny pieces with immense meaning
More than 90 locomotives, all running well, more than 280 freight wagons and more than 210 passenger carriages and baggage vans comprise the “moving” parts of the collection. As a main point of interest, those 580-odd pieces visualize the least represented era of the model railway world – the period that ended when the First World War began. READ MORE . . .
The Soul of The Collection:
Its Tiny People
Virtually all of the people of the “Sarajevo 1914 Collection” came from or began life as minuscule products made by Paul M. Preiser of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a picturesque town in Germany. I’ve made a few of the characters from scratch, from raw styrene plastic. Most of the other figures have been extensively reworked from their original state to make them “of the period”: June, 1914…
The Poster Collection
Unique to “The Sarajevo 1914 Collection” is the collection-within-the-collection of posters representing the immediate pre-First World War period in HO scale. They’re produced on fine-grain film as 35mm contact prints. Only posters that would have appeared in the time and places represented in the collection are included. Their height varies between 13 mm (1/2 inch) for the smallest of those posted on hoardings, and 65 mm for the largest appearing on the exterior walls of buildings…
Important Small Details
Much of the charm of “The Sarajevo 1914 Collection” lies in historically correct details that have little or nothing to do with model railroading except that every object – no matter how small - adheres strictly to the 1/87th HO scale established by the trains. While each of these articles deals to a greater or lesser extent with the details of The Collection, I’m devoting these words to a few “special” details that might be overlooked, some because they’re very small…
The Goof I Took Two
Years to Notice
The photo on the right shows a panel sign hanging above the door of the hotel-restaurant. I worked an entire day on that tiny variation of the grand-ducal coat-of-arms, painting it identically on both sides. Those shields and griffins rewarded me with a headache from eyestrain because the panel is only 17 millimeters high. For two years I congratulated myself on a fine job…
A Work in Progress
The landscaping can always be improved. Every year new models become available to enhance the collection. New stories constantly occur to me that help explain the times and places. Scale model railways are only “finished” when their creators’ imaginations shut down. “The Sarajevo1914 Collection” is far more than a “model railway”…
