Hotel Terminus Model Railway

On September 29, 1856, the “Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn” steamed from Zurich via Baden (1847) to Brugg for the first time. Shortly afterwards, a branch of the Lang family moved from rural Oftringen, some 30 kilometers away, to Brugg, as the new means of transport, the railroad, exerted a magical attraction on my great-great-grandfather Samuel Lang. In 1872, the railroad promoted him to Brugg stationmaster. At that time, life on the railroad was not yet so hectic and, in addition to his main job on the railroad, he still had enough free time to act as a district judge – or to help plan the Bözberg Railway, which was still single-track at the time (it opened in 1875), as a railroad inspector. Working as an innkeeper was also one of his great passions. On August 15, 1895, Samuel Lang bought the inn opposite the railroad station in Brugg and sold it to his son Emil almost two years later, on April 5, 1897. This marked the beginning of a dynasty of railwaymen and innkeepers.

The actual birth of the “Terminus (model) railroad in Brugg” was heralded by Fritz Lang’s wedding on September 15, 1924. As if she had suspected it, Elsi, his wife, brought a clockwork-driven, tin-plate Märklin 1-gauge railroad (scale 1:32, track gauge 45 mm) from her parents’ store into the marriage, which is still in running order today. From 1926, Fritz Lang (3rd generation in Brugg) built the first stationary model train layout in the attic of the hotel, which was still small at the time. After the extension of the hotel in 1956, my father Friedrich Lang (4th generation of hoteliers in Brugg) built a new model railway layout in the attic in his size 1 using tracks and points he had built himself.

50 years after the founding of the “Terminus Railroad” in Brugg, on December 21, 1974, we introduced the second size – the so-called 0 gauge (zero) on a scale of 1:45 with 32 mm track width. Now the toy train changed from the old tinplate railroad with little prototype character to a true model railroad. Being as true to the original as possible, running buffer to buffer combined with model couplings was now standard. The old staff rooms on the top floor of the hotel were removed due to lack of demand and the newly created space was made available for the model railroad. The 300 square meters of space made it possible for our family to lay around 750 meters of track in both “1” and “0” gauges. The new 1-gauge track alone is 133 meters long, and the 0-gauge track is even 185 meters long! Here the trains have “run-out” and do not immediately bite into the end of their own train. The minimum radius of both track sizes was set at 185 cm (due to the width of the room and the topography under the roof) and the maximum gradient is less than 2%. The theme of the layout is “Standard gauge railroads (1’435mm) from the beginnings around 1835 to modern times”. The model trains are our main protagonists on the layout – there is still little to be seen of scenery (lack of time to build – we are only a small “family business” and not a club!) The trains are put together according to the era and are highly detailed. The trains are operated with all common current systems for model railroads in both analog and digital operation – in gauge 0 on a 2-rail track and in gauge 1 with a center conductor (three-wire track), as the old 100-year-old TIN-PLATE (tinplate) vehicles cannot be insulated on 2-rail track, but still run smoothly on the layout!

The facility can be visited by arrangement with the hotel management. Admission is free.

To the model railroad website