Visit to my FREMO friend (2017)

FREMO

FREMO stands for "Freundeskreis Europäischer Modellbahner", Association of European Model Railroaders. At present, Fremo with approximately 1900 members is one of the few model railroad clubs in the world that enjoy an increase in the number of members. I visited my friends in Germany and learned a lot about FREMO model railroad club activities. Refer to Wikipedia in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREMO

Specification of FREMO Module

There are multiple specifications in FREMO. Other than HO gauge, there is also a specification for N gauge. There are specifications not only for single track but also double track. There are different track dimensions such as normal track dimension and fine dimension. There is no interoperability between modules that belong to different category. For scenery, each module prototypes a certain region of a certain country at a certain era in a certain season of the year. The FREMO supports only DCC.

Here are two unique characteristics of the FREMO module as far as I understand:

The height from the ground to the top of the track is 1,300mm, that’s very high.
There are several pre-defined end-plate shape templates that every member has to follow.

The reason of such high height is that FREMO aims to give more realistic feelings for the loco operator who moves along modules in a standing position. Actually, it is true that the distance between the eye position and the loco is much closer, that definitely submerges myself in the world of real railway. The reason of restricting shapes of the end module is that they do not want to destroy the landscape even at the module connecting point.

FREMO Meeting

In FREMO, they hold very large scale gathering once several years. Recently, they held that meeting in 2016 as the 35th FREMO anniversary event at Riesa close to Dresden in Germany. It is amazing to see so many modules were connected in the huge venue.

Approximately 70 module meetings take place every year, the vast majority of which are events not open to the public. Such meetings last three to five days and are always organized and arranged by local members. These organizers determine the scale, the theme or motto and the epoch in which this meeting is set. Even smaller meetings have 40 or more attendees, some of which travel great distances to participate.

Module meeting

For the module meeting, the layout arrangement and the train timetable are planned utilizing CAD and it often takes more than one month to get the jobs done. An average size arrangement consists of about 10 railroad stations and 150 to 200 meters of main track and it takes about one day to set up and make it ready for operation.

After this has been accomplished train operation is carried out, usually with the time factor 4, in a number of sessions according to schedule and real-life operation. One such session usually lasts 3 to 4 hours and the participants take over various functions such as traffic controller, dispatcher, train engineer or shunter. The main objective of all such meetings is to conjointly pursue diversified activities in compliance with train operation encompassing as many attendees as possible.

For example, at the stone factory yard, the station master controls hopper opening and load right amount of stones (typically ballast of the model railroad) to hopper cars. The loco operator appropriately moves the hopper cars to adjust the right position as a collaboration task.