llongi's blog

Below I tried to put together a relatively complete list of Swiss Federal Railways (SBB/CFF/FFS) locomotives and complete trains, mostly built around or after 1950, as I'm more concerned with modern models myself. The idea is to track what has been built in N scale and what is still missing. If it has been built, who built it, in what variants, and is it still freely available, or very rare, or out of production and (almost) impossible to find. Thanks to Wikipedia and BahnBilder for the images, as well as several great resources on Swiss trains and their N scale counterparts, without which this would have been impossible:

• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Lokomotiven_und_Triebwagen_der_SBB
• http://www.9-mm.ch/
• http://spurn.ch/
• http://www.lokifahrer.ch/Lokomotiven/Auswahl/SBB-Lokomotiven.htm
• http://www.spur-n-schweiz.ch/sns/hersteller.html
• http://www.spur-n-datenbank.de/

Model	Image	N Scale Info	Resources
Ae 8/14		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fulgurex 4207 Out of Production Fulgurex 1136 "Landilok" Out of Production Minitrix 12426 Out of Production Minitrix 12713 "Fine-Art Brass" Out of Production	[1], [2], [3]
Ae 4/6		Manufacturer Part Number Status Lematec N-009 Out of Production	[1], [2]
Ae 6/6 Ae 610		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fleischmann 737201 green Chur Out of Production Fleischmann 737202 Cargo Out of Production Fleischmann 737203 red Altdorf Out of Production Fleischmann 737204 green Obwalden Out of Production Fleischmann 737205 red Neuchâtel Out of Production Fleischmann 737206 Cargo Out of Production Minitrix 12723 green Luzern Out of Production Minitrix 12860 green Luzern (Kt.) Out of Production Minitrix 12936 green Luzern Out of Production Minitrix 12939 green Bern Out of Production Minitrix 12967 red Altdorf Out of Production Minitrix 12968 red Waadt Out of Production Lematec N-012 red/green Out of Production	[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
Ce 6/8 II "Krokodil" (Rework to Be 6/8 II)		Manufacturer Part Number Status Arnold 2463 green Out of Production Arnold 2465 green Out of Production Arnold 2466 green Out of Production Arnold 2467 green Out of Production Arnold 2469 green Out of Production Arnold 2475 green Out of Production Arnold 2478 green Out of Production Arnold 32478 green Out of Production Arnold 2468 brown Out of Production Arnold 2479 brown Out of Production Arnold 82468 brown Out of Production Arnold 32479 brown Out of Production Arnold-Hornby HN2005 green Out of Production Arnold-Hornby HN2017 brown Out of Production	[1], [2], [3]
Ce 6/8 III "Krokodil" (Rework to Be 6/8 III)		Manufacturer Part Number Status Merker & Fischer 2407 green Out of Production Minitrix 12128 green Out of Production Minitrix 12413 green Out of Production Minitrix 12672 green Out of Production Minitrix 12673 green Out of Production Minitrix 12798 green Out of Production Minitrix 12926 green Out of Production Minitrix 12127 brown Out of Production Minitrix 12153 brown Out of Production Minitrix 12154 brown Out of Production Minitrix 12956 brown Out of Production	[1], [2], [3]
De 6/6 "Seetal-Krokodil"		None	[1], [2]
Re 4/4 I		TODO	[1], [2], [3]
Re 4/4 II Re 420 Re 421		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fleischmann 734001 TEE Very Small Availability Fleischmann 734002 red Out of Production Fleischmann 734003 Cargo Very Small Availability Fleischmann 734008 green Out of Production Fleischmann 734009 RailAdventure Out of Production Fleischmann 734076 ZVV LION Set 1 Available Fleischmann 734077 ZVV LION Set 2 Available Fleischmann 781602 Gottardo 2016 Out of Production	[1], [2], [3], [4]
Re 4/4 III Re 430		None	[1], [2]
Re 4/4 IV Re 440		None	[1], [2]
Re 450 4 parts, in use by: SBB/ZVV, Sihltalbahn		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fleischmann 7753, 8155, 8154, 8153 "DPZ (yellow doors)" Out of Production Fleischmann 775301, 815501, 815401, 815381 "DPZ new (red doors)" Out of Production Fleischmann 775302, 815502, 815402, 815382 "Sihltalbahn" Out of Production Fleischmann 775304, 815504, 815405, 815384 "ZVV" Very Small Availability	[1], [2]
Re 460 "Lok 2000"		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fleischmann 731302 Rotes Kreuz Available Fleischmann 731404 NEAT Out of Production Fleischmann 731306 Milch Kuh Out of Production Fleischmann 731307 Lokführer Available Fleischmann 731308 Maurice Lacroix Available Fleischmann 731313 Migros Announced Fleischmann 781603 Gottardo 2016 Out of Production Minitrix 12662 Chi rimorchia di più? Out of Production Minitrix 12690 Märklin Alpaufzug Out of Production Minitrix 12693 Milch Kuh Out of Production Minitrix 16761 Lok 2000 Available Minitrix 16762 VSLF Available Minitrix 16763 Migros Announced Kato 13709 Lok 2000 Very Small Availability Kato 13709-24B Die Post Out of Production Kato 137112 Lötschbergtunnel Out of Production Kato 137111 100 Jahre Postauto Out of Production Kato 137114 New Look Very Small Availability Kato 137115 Mit Zug Ins Wallis Out of Production	[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
Re 474 (Siemens ES64F4)		Manufacturer Part Number Status Hobbytrain 2903 Available Hobbytrain 2919 Available	[1], [2], [3]
Re 482 (Bombardier Traxx F140 AC1, F140 AC2)		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fleischmann 738804 Announced	[1], [2], [3]
Re 484 (Bombardier Traxx F140 MS2)		Manufacturer Part Number Status Arnold 2325 Cisalpino-Set Available Arnold 2326 Cargo Gottardo Available Arnold 2327 Cargo Available Minitrix 11629 Cisalpino-Set Available	[1], [2], [3]
Re 6/6 Re 620		Manufacturer Part Number Status Kato 10161 red Out of Production Kato 10173 green Announced Kato 10174 red Announced Kato 10175 Cargo Announced Kato 10176 Xrail Announced	[1], [2], [3], [4]
RABDe 12/12 RABDe 510 "Goldküstenexpress" "Mirage" 3 parts		None	[1]
RBDe 4/4 "NPZ" RBDe 560 "NPZ Domino" 4 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status Minitrain 163916 Out of Production	[1], [2]
RABDe 8/16 RABDe 511 "Chiquita" 4 parts		None	[1]
RABDe 500 "ICN" 7 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status MD Trains SBB-ICN-completo Available	[1], [2], [3]
ETR 470 "Cisalpino" 9 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status MD Trains SBB-ETR470-completo Available	[1]
ETR 610 RABe 503 7 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status MD Trains SBB-ETR610-completo Available	[1]
Stadler KISS (prev. DOSTO) SBB RABe 511 "Regio-Dosto/RVD" 4 or 6 parts BLS RABe 515 "MUTZ" 4 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status MD Trains BLS-MUTZ-completo Available	[1]
Siemens Desiro Double Deck RABe 514 "DTZ" 4 parts		None	[1], [2]
Stadler GTW 2/8 SBB RABe 520 Thurbo RABe 526 3 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status Piko 40226 BLS Available	[1], [2], [3], [4]
Stadler GTW 2/6 Thurbo RABe 526 2 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status Piko 40221 BLS Available Piko 40225 Thurbo Available	[1], [2], [3]
Stadler FLIRT SBB RABe 521 "Regio Basel" SBB RABe 522 "Genf" SBB RABe 523 "S-Bahn Zug, Aargau, Luzern" SBB RABe 524 "TILO" SOB RABe 526 "S-Bahn Zürich, St. Gallen" Thurbo RABe 526 4 parts 6 parts for TILO		Manufacturer Part Number Status Liliput 163990 Regio Basel Out of Production Liliput 163991 S-Bahn Zug Out of Production Liliput 163992 Seehas Out of Production Liliput 163993 La Veveyse Out of Production Liliput 163994 Regio Basel Available	[1], [2], [3], [4]
RAe 4/8 1021 "Churchill-Pfeil"		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fulgurex 1147 Out of Production	[1], [2], [3]
CLe 2/4 RAe 2/4 "Roter-Pfeil"		Manufacturer Part Number Status Fulgurex 1152 Out of Production Hobbytrain 2640 Out of Production Hobbytrain 2642 with Ski-Trailer Out of Production Hobbytrain 2643 Out of Production Hobbytrain 2644 Out of Production Hobbytrain 2646 with Ski-Trailer Very Small Availability	[1], [2], [3]
RAe TEE II RABe EC "Graue Maus" 6 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status Kato 11406 EC "Graue Maus" Out of Production	[1], [2], [3], [4]
TGV Lyria (POS) 10 parts		Manufacturer Part Number Status Kato 10920 Available	[1]
BDe 4/4		Manufacturer Part Number Status Lematec N-205 Announced	[1], [2], [3]
RBe 4/4 RBe 540		None	[1], [2]
Bm 6/6		None	[1], [2], [3]
Bm 4/4		Manufacturer Part Number Status Lematec N-205 Available	[1], [2], [3]
Am 840 Vossloh G2000BB		Manufacturer Part Number Status Hobbytrain 2951 Available	[1], [2]
Am 841		None	[1], [2], [3]
Am 842 Vossloh G1000BB MaK G1204BB		Manufacturer Part Number Status Minitrix 12352 Vossloh G1000BB Out of Production	[1], [2], [3]
Am 843		Manufacturer Part Number Status Hobbytrain 2943 SBB Cargo Announced Hobbytrain 2944 BLS Announced	[1], [2], [3]
Ee 922		Manufacturer Part Number Status HAG 8012001 Announced HAG 8012009 (set of two) Announced	[1]
Ee 923		None	[1]
Ee 3/3		Manufacturer Part Number Status Arnold-Hornby HN2013 Out of Production	[1], [2], [3], [4]
Ee 3/3 IV Ee 934		None	[1], [2]
Tm 235		None	[1]
Tm 234		None	[1]
Tm IV Tm 232		Manufacturer Part Number Status Pirata 2130 red Announced Pirata 2131 Cargo Announced	[1], [2]
Tm III Tm 232		None	[1], [2]
Tm III (Yard)		None	[1]
Tm II		Manufacturer Part Number Status Arnold-Hornby HN2014 #740 Available	[1], [2]
Tm I		None	[1]
Te III		None	[1], [2]

Yesterday I went to Bauma, a small village in the canton of Zürich, where yearly in October the "Platform der Kleinserie" takes place. It's the premier fair in Switzerland for small producers of model trains in any scale, as well as all types of accessories. Mostly high-quality brass models or other small production or limited edition series can be found here. As usual, the N scale was not that well represented, H0 clearly had most exhibitors and customers, with 0 and 1 also having a significant following. I had two main goals when walking out of my home that morning:

• see the swiss train signals manufactured by Microscale
• see the only manufacturer of the SBB RABDe 500 "ICN" in N scale, italian MD Trains

I managed to do both successfully. The signals by Microscale are really well made, I'll definitely order them there when I get to the point where I do need signals.

I also had a very nice conversation with Dario Morciano from MD Trains, it helped a lot that we both spoke italian. His trains are beautifully made, on an order-by-order basis, there are maybe 20 ICNs currently worldwide. Everything was truly lovely, also the models of the SBB ETR 610, the ETR 470, and the BLS MUTZ were amazing. All train compositions that a lot of people in the N scale communities I know of have been waiting for for years. The price may be off-putting for many people, this kind of precision, hand-made small production work is very expensive. I'd say about twice what one of the big manufacturers would sell such trains at, if they ever get to actually producing them, but that doesn't seem to be the case. For me, it was a more than acceptable price given the quality and the opportunity to have an SBB ICN cruising on my layout, sometimes next year.

Towards the end of 2015, when I was looking at which big engines were even available in N scale, I found out about the beautiful Union Pacific GTELs. Sadly, nobody was producing them. Only H0 scale. So imagine my positive surprise when I ran that search again this week and found out that the guys behind the H0 version also announced an N scale version! I've already pre-ordered engine #14 at ScaleTrains, yay! If you like big american engines, check those guys out. It looks amazing! They've also recently released a documentary about making model trains from the producer's view, take a look!

So, first thing that had to be built: the frame. I decided on wood, as it's much easier to work with "at home" than metal/aluminium supports. I went for 12mm thick high-quality birch plywood, as that was the best I could get from my local retailer Migros DoIt. I wanted resistant, heavy wood, so as to avoid deformations. The construction is carried by five thick (7cm) slats, each with a wheel on the underside, so that the whole frame can be moved around the room, and it's thus easily possible to access the backside of the whole layout, which also means I can actually use that space. I early on decided to add a fifth slat in the center, to help support the weigth and avoid any deformation of the cross-bars. Every cross-bar (4-5cm thick) is connected to the main slats as well as each-other through steel angle brackets or T brackets. First, I had to smooth all the wood I bought; especially the slats were very raw. It just looks better, and splinters are always unwelcome. Given that we don't have any public space here to do this kind of work, I did it inside the room. It worked out fine by covering everything and leaving the windows open, but still turned out to be a little bit more of a mess than initially thought. I so wish apartment buildings would have communal spaces with work benches and air filtration for handcraft, like you have communal washing rooms or cellars. Maybe new constructions way outside my price range do have that. I then assembled the cross-bars for the first two levels, as well as the five vertical slats, and then put everything together. Had to put a lot of thought into the length of the screws, so that they wouldn't touch each-other inside of the wood. The battery-powered drill with screw setting proved to be incredibly useful. Each level's base is made up of two plywood planes (1.20 x 1.15 m), as having one big plane would have been impossible to transport and get into the elevator. They are screwed onto the supporting cross-bars. The level 1 plane has, as you can see, a circular hole; that's to hold the turntable. The lowest level sits at 80cm from the floor, allowing easy access from below. Level 2 is 39cm above it to allow a nice view into it, with Level 3 another 14cm up. The much smaller height between levels 2 and 3 is because you don't need an expansive view of level 2, only the front-most part with the replica of the S-Bahn Zürich station is of any interest, the back two thirds are only there to allow the trains to go round and round. For now only the full planes for level 1 are attached. Once level 1 is complete, including the spiral going from level to level, the planes for level 2 can be inserted. And once level 2 is done, the cross-bars for level 3 and its planes can finally be added too. Level after level, going upwards, seemed like the natural way to build this over time.

So, the first step should always be planning. And in the case of model layouts, shape and size are the first things to be determined. In the newly empty room, I could dedicate a rectangular surface of about 2.30 x 1.20 meters to my hobby. While more than twice the size of my very first layout in 1999, which stood at 1.20 x 0.90 meters, this is not incredibly big, only about 2.8 square meters in which to play. Also the new layout requires much larger curve radiuses, due to most of my rolling stock being big locomotives (Big Boy, DDA40X, Ae 8/14). And everything runs better on bigger radiuses, always. And they're usually more realistic. Further, I've always wanted a turntable, so there would have to be space for it somewhere. And that thing occupies a lot of space. So I quickly decided to go 3D and add multiple levels, to maximize efficient space usage: - Level 1 is going to be the staging area. It will have the turntable and space to leave the trains when not in use, as well as some way to turn them around (a loop). - Level 2 is an idea I had, to put in something extra, and try to recreate the underground S-Bahn station found in Zürich HB, probably the single train station I've frequented the most in my life. From a track layout point-of-view very simple, but rebuilding the actual decor will provide to be quite a challenge. Also getting the right rolling stock has not been easy at all. - Level 3, on top, will be a "normal" fantasy layout, with stations, mountains, houses, and so on. There will be a rack railway going up the mountain(s). Now that the main idea and concepts were decided on, the detailed planning had to happen: which tracks are laid out exactly where?, how do we go from one level to another?, slopes?. As a kid I did try out different track layouts using a computer software called Raily, so I knew that software to do this existed, and in the last 15 years it could only have gotten better (at least I hoped so!). Indeed, several pieces of software do exist, but most are commercial-only or have, to me, weird interfaces. On the freeware market, two stood out: XTrackCAD and SCARM. In the end I decided to use SCARM, as it had a, to me, much more intuitive and simple to use interface for the kind of things I wanted to do. XTrackCAD has the advantage of being cross-platform and running even on Linux, but starting a Windows VM to run SCARM was just so much easier to get started with. In the end I managed to finalize Levels 1 and 2 easily, with a spiral loop connecting all three levels. Level 3 is still fluid, but at the current pace of building I have at least another year to think about it. I'll expand on the Level 1 design in another post.

The last post was in 2013, and the one before that inaugurated 2012 with a "Happy New Year!". That's several Happy New Year's since then, and much has changed in the meantime.

I moved from Dietikon to Zürich in 2014. New apartment, new roommates. I completed my Bachelor's degree in Informatics, Software-Systems in 2015. Finally.

I started working for a great company in 2013, iniLabs Ltd., a spin-off from the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) here at the University of Zürich, that works on neuromorphic hardware, specifically bio-inspired vision sensors. Had the opportunity to work with IBM's TrueNorth development team on integrating the sensors with their platform in 2013-2014 as part of the DARPA SyNAPSE project. Met lots of great people, went several times to California (US), partecipated in the 2015 Telluride (Colorado, US) Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop, met even more awesome people. Two fun years working on embedded hardware, low-level C libraries, VHDL FPGA logic and Java GUIs, everything I ever wanted. And it's all set to continue, as we're currently expanding our offering of neuromorphic devices.

On the open-source front, I started contributing to usb4java in July 2013 due to my work at iniLabs, where we use it extensively in the jAER project to talk to the vision sensors in a performant and platform-independant way, as well as in the Flashy project, a tool to update firmware and logic on our sensor devices. Also almost all of the code I've worked on is available openly from the jAER project or the iniLabs GitHub pages. In 2013 I moved my own projects from self-hosted SVN to Git & GitHub, including the source for this blog. Great service.

After over a decade of self-hosting, I moved everything over to Google Apps. Very happy with not having to care about any of that anymore, I just didn't have the time for server maintainance.

Photos of San Francisco, Colorado, New York, Yellowstone, London and other places I visited can be found in the new gallery, powered by Google Drive. I took most of them during the 2015 road-trip through central US with my good friend Diederik Moeys, a PhD here at INI.

I've gone through all the pages in the blog here and updated them, so they should reflect current reality better. I'm hoping to keep the blog more up-to-date in the future. I've promised myself I'd use it to document the resurrection of my oldest hobby: N-scale model trains. More on that soon.

Here some old hardware I have to sell, everything should still work, but there's no guarantee!

• Texas Instruments, "Voyage 200 Calculator" (good condition, cables+manuals+batteries, tested) (100 CHF)
• Huawei, "HSDPA USB Modem E220" (5 CHF)

(Update: the above are the only two things I'm keeping around or haven't sold yet. Contact me!)

First post of 2012, so let's start off with a "Happy New Year!" to everyone.
On an even happier note, I just got word that I passed all my exams. :-)

Now the real topic of this post is SSH, more specifically how to make your SSH connections even more secure than they already are. OpenSSH by default prefers slightly less strong cryptographic algorithms (like AES128 is preferred to AES256), and for its HMAC it still prefers MD5-based HMACs, which, while still kinda secure, are clearly less secure than the SHA2-512 based ones, for which OpenSSH added support in the 5.9 release.
Assuming you're running OpenSSH >=5.9 everywhere, like in my setup, configure your sshd's as following, so that they will only offer the most secure known algorithms in their strongest variants first. This will also only offer SSH protocol 2, as well as set some other miscellaneous login-related settings and make the server check periodically that clients are alive, and if not, terminate the connection.

Protocol 2
LoginGraceTime 1m
PermitRootLogin no
StrictModes yes
MaxAuthTries 3
MaxSessions 5
ClientAliveCountMax 3
ClientAliveInterval 5
Ciphers aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr
KexAlgorithms ecdh-sha2-nistp521,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp256
MACs hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256

Configure your SSH client as follows to only connect to sshd's using secure algorithms, again trying the strongest first. This also enables SSH protocol 2 only, periodically checks that the server is alive (especially useful with sshfs and its '-o reconnect' flag, when working over unstable links like wireless). It further lowers the amount of data needed for a rekey, default would usually be between 1G and 4G.
Note that I had to split up some lines for better readability on the blog, you can notice those by the increased indentation, just always make sure everything is on one line!

Host *
  Protocol 2
  ServerAliveCountMax 2
  ServerAliveInterval 4
  Ciphers aes256-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes128-ctr,arcfour256,aes256-cbc
  KexAlgorithms ecdh-sha2-nistp521,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp256,
    diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256
  MACs hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256,hmac-md5,hmac-sha1
  HostKeyAlgorithms ecdsa-sha2-nistp521-cert-v01@openssh.com,
    ecdsa-sha2-nistp384-cert-v01@openssh.com,
    ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com,
    ssh-rsa-cert-v01@openssh.com,ssh-dss-cert-v01@openssh.com,
    ecdsa-sha2-nistp521,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp256
  RekeyLimit 512M

Given both the server and client running OpenSSH >=5.9 and being configured correctly, you get an SSH connection using AES256-CTR as cipher, exchanging keys using ECDH-SHA2-NISTP521, and using HMAC-SHA2-512 for integrity checking. Basically AES-256 and SHA2-512 everywhere, which, as far as I know, are state-of-the-art in their respective application domains and still considered very secure.
Hope this helps increasing security, as well as reliability (the Alive options especially with sshfs).

Just a general notice that I'll be absent from 14.11 to 09.12.2011 because of military service.
If you want to get in contact with me, write me an e-mail, I'll try to check those at least daily, or, if it's really urgent, write me an SMS, just don't expect a reply right away.
I'll see you all in a month!

As some of you may have noticed already, my blog suddenly looks very different.
I've abandoned Serendipity in favor of Blogofile, which is a Python-based static-site generator. This means I write posts as text-files, they get processed, merged with templates, HTML gets generated, and a fully static site is the result. In fact the only dynamic thing remaining are the comments, which are now powered by Disqus over JavaScript. This allowed me to ditch PHP and MySQL, and reduce the load on the server quite a bit. Search is powered by Google. I've also overhauled the template to look nicer and be fully XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. Thanks to Free CSS Templates for the design!
I've also added a few more parts to the site, now it's not only a pure blog, there's a welcoming page, one about UZH and one about me. As well as a better media gallery. Everything is available via HTTPS, as usual. At the bottom I link to my projects, as well as interesting blogs I follow.
If you find anything not working, be it a link or post, please tell me right away, so I can fix it, thanks!

UPDATE: I've written an ebuild for Blogofile, you can get it from my overlay. It pulls in all required dependencies to run. For my own blog, I also needed dev-python/imaging for the gallery controller.