Club Visit to Hans Bac’s Amsterdam Trams.

On Sunday 18th October, nine EMRIG members went to another home layout visit. This was following the invitation offered to the club by Hans Bac. The theme of the layout was Trams in Little Amsterdam .

Hans has built the layout in the upstairs room in his house adjacent to a small, well kitted and neat workshop where all of his model building takes place.

Hans explained that the love of trams, and the trams in Amsterdam in particular grew from when he used to travel in them as a child during the war years.

This love of the trams urged him to start modelling them and thus his layout was born. His current layout has taken him many years to build and detail but all the hard work is evident.

Hans explained that there are not many HO Scale working trams to be found in the world. There are however many plastic kits available. He has therefore, painstakingly, built these kits and installed motors and gearboxes in them, and even more impressive, installed decoders so that they can be operated on his layout that is controlled by a Digitrax Zephyr Digital Command controller.

Hans mentioned that he currently has about eighty trams fitted with decoders on his layout. The layout is in the shape of an E with many buildings, roads and scenery in place. There are 14 routes on the layout which the trams follow with a number of trams travelling on their routes at the same time.

Hans has hand laid most of the track on his layout which is buried into the road surface as can be found on the prototype. Hans even makes his own custom turnouts, a photo of which can be seen to the right.  The trams are powered through the overhead catenary which acts as the one polarity with both the tracks acting as the opposite.

One impressive feature is a bridge over one of the canals that can be automatically raised and lowered at the push of a button. Firstly the traffic lights for the trams go red, indicating that they must stop and then the bridge goes about its duty.

The scenery is arguably 95% complete. There are many buildings together with many mini scenes. For instance, a wedding at the church, folk sitting around tables on the corner of a city block, and what layout cannot be without something like the photo below?

Lastly, to the right can be seen one of Hans display cabinets packed with trams. It is obvious Hans has a passion for the Trams and this certainly shows in his hobby

It was a great experience to visit a layout that is completely different and to see and admire the work and dedication that the modeller has put into his dream layout. Hans Bac’s layout is one such layout.

As is usual, after the visit, Hans put on a wonderful spread for the visitor which was greatly enjoyed.