David’s been in touch with his 7×10 HO scale layout:

“Al,

thanks for all of your effort and time involved with all of your posts. I look forward to opening my email daily to keep up with the wonderful hobby of model trains!

I have loved trains ever since my parents gave me a MARX 027 gauge train set in 1959 for my 12 th birthday.

Later, when our son was nearing the teen years, we began purchasing HO equipment and built a layout. He spent many hours enjoying the hobby.

When he reached college age, we packed the trains in their original boxes and kept them in storage. We moved from Iowa to Indianapolis in 2010 and within a year I decided to take a 7 x 10 foot area out of my shop in our detached garage and once again develop a layout.

The layout extends from wall to wall so is 7 x 10 feet. It is 24 inches from the back and side walls so I can reach everything from the center.

The layout on the door wall is only about 12 inches wide – where the bridge is, so the center area is 6 ft by 4 ft.

I am not using DCC. I have two DC transformers. One transformer does the ‘mountain pass’ and the other one handles all of the lower level – which includes several sidings which I can power on and off with switches. This info is not critical, but thought someone might ask about it.

As I have read in many of your posts, a layout is actually never finished.

I have had fun using our real-life camping experiences with the family to create miniature scenes on my layout.

Such as the campground has white picnic tables that I created using the wood purchased at hobby stores along with the fire pits created using the round metal ends of pencils that hold the erasers and filling them with tiny pieces of wood that appear at each campsite!

I also chose to operate the trains from the center of the layout, so used ideas from a few old posts that showed using a portable ‘bridge’ in the doorway, thus eliminating the need to crawl under, which has proven to be a great benefit to the aging process!

For this I chose to use small phono jacks to furnish the power in correct polarity for the trains, which continues to work perfectly for me. It is important to make sure that when the bridge is placed in position, the track rails are in perfect alignment.

I also installed a red arm at each side that can be lowered to assure the safety of any rolling stock falling to the floor by mistake when not operating the trains!

I work hard at trying to make the layout appear very realistic with the scenes as close to scale as possible. I like to imagine what it would look like from the view in a plane flying overhead!

Readers may also notice the retaining walls I created for the gradual elevation of what I refer to as the ‘mountain pass.’

I cut small rectangular pieces of quarter inch plywood about one half by one inch and glued them together to build the walls.

Sorry but I’m not into the video area, but hope the model train group will enjoy the pictures.

David, Indianapolis USA”

Now on to Rob, who has sent in a follow up vid from his earlier post on adding model train lights:

“Hi Al,

One of your readers, Mike Balog, seemed interested in the power pickups on one of the wagons I displayed in my recent video about adding flashing lights to the end of a train.

I thought if one person was interested in DCC-powered lighting, maybe some others would be interested too.

This is the companion video to the battery-operated EoT flashing lights video of mine you recently published.

This one shows how I added a track powered light to a train.

Thank you, I really appreciate you and what you do for the modeling community around the world.

Rob”

“

A big thanks to David for sharing his 7×10 HO scale layout. And to Rob too.

That’s all for today folks – but please do keep ’em coming. It’s getting rather quiet again this end.

And if today is the day you join in on the fun, no matter how long it’s been, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.