Henry has been in touch with is model railroad diorama ho scale:
“Hello Alastair
Thank you for your continued service to the model railway fraternity.
I look forward to your emails every day.
This email is a little different from my usual, as it does not show my layout, but a model railway diorama I was asked to build for a lady whose husband was a collector of South African model trains.
He sadly passed away, and he had gathered some items to build a display for one of his locomotives.
He never got to build it, and now his wife had asked me if I would build the diorama for her to display his favourite locomotive.
I include a few pictures of the diorama. I added a few details of my own, like the pigeon on the telephone pole and the cart with the milk churns.
I also replaced the incandescent bulbs in the signal with LED’s and wired it up to work.
I routered out a space in the wood to place a 9v battery and installed a centre off toggle switch, so the signal can be turned to red, green or off altogether.
Yours sincerely
Henry”
Now to Hall of Fame member, Rob.
He’s shared his latest video on track laying:
“Hi Al,
This time I packaged up all the track laying wisdom I have learned over the last 12 years of building layouts and laying track.
In all I pass along 12 items of experience. It has proven very popular on my channel. I hope your readers can find a nugget or two that will help them.
Rob”
Thanks to Rob.
And a very big thanks to Henry for sharing his model railroad diorama ho scale – it has a touching back story.
Just so you know, there are 24 printable buildings bundled with the Beginner’s Guide, for just $9 (at the moment).
I know many of you are far from Beginners – but that’s fine because I know many of you get the Beginner’s Guide just for the printable buildings that are bundled with it.
It’s fine by me.
Here’s one of the free bonus buildings that comes with the Beginner’s Guide.
Course I’m biased, but it’s a real steal, and you’ll be directly supporting the blog.
A big thank you to everyone who has already grabbed this deal, because without you there wouldn’t be a blog at all – it’s really that simple.
I do my best to make this hobby affordable to everyone, and as easy as possible for anyone to start. But sadly there’s no way I’ll be able to run a deal like this for so little again.
Dean’s been back in touch with the progress on his N scale model railroad – all built on an old door:
“Hello Al, from Dean from New Mexico.
In my last two submissions I showed the development of my plans for my next railroad, the 32” x 80” Conejos Valley Railroad, a fictitious railroad in southern Colorado.
The time for planning is over and it’s time to start construction.
This is a two-part submission: in the first, I show how I built the support table and baseboard. In the second I’ll describe the laying of the two outer loops of the layout using Atlas flex track and #6 switches.
After that I can run trains to check things out. I’ve included video that show the construction in more detail.
Here’s the plan again for reference. The dashed red lines show where I cut the hardboard and first Styrofoam layer so that I could raise the back part of the outer loop.
The baseboard, shown in the section diagram through A-A, was a sandwich of 1/8” Masonite hardboard over three layers of white Styrofoam.
The thicknesses of the foam layers are not too critical, but at least two layers are best.
The baseboard was contained in a wood box constructed from ¾” x 2 ½” clear pine.
The layers were glued together with Liquid Nails construction adhesive and a bead of the same held the bottom layer into the wooden box.
The diagram shows how the rear part of the upper layer is supported with two more layers of 1” foam.
Full size copies of the layout were printed using the Atlas Track Planning Software that I used for the layout design.
These pages were glued to the hardboard with a thin layer of white glue. The photo below shows how the rear part of the upper layer was raised after cuts were made.
Below is a photo of the supporting table. Diagonal braces and a front cross piece were added after this photo was taken.
Another view of the tabletop:
Now on to the first trackwork. I used Atlas code 80 N-Scale flex track and Atlas #6 Custom Line switches fastened to Woodland Scenic rubber roadbed.
The roadbed was first glued to the baseboard, then the track glued to the roadbed, in both cases using Woodland Scenic Foam Glue.
On the curves I pinned the track to the baseboard with straight pins.
You can see two trains running below.
That’s all for now. In the next two future episodes I will:
Add the remaining track and switch machines (ground throws and remote), wiring (DCC) then ballast.
Build up hills and mountains and cover all scenic areas with plaster cloth.
Thanks to all my watchers and subscribers for your continued support.
Dean from New Mexico”
(Here’s Dean’s last post, where he talks through his Atlas track plan.)
I always think of Michael’s layout when an N scale on a door pops up.
Now on to Ian :
“Hi Alistair,
My interest in trains started at the age of 6 yrs.
When I lived in Great Torrington, my father use to take me down to the station where I spent most of my time taking train numbers ( don’t ask me why).
During that time I got to speak to many engine drivers as well as the fireman. It was because of this that I was offered a trip on the footplate on the Petrockstow line.
Could you imagine that happening now especially with the so called Health and Safety rules.
I was hooked. It was then a built my first Tri-ang analogue layout.
After years of moving around Devon, Dorset and Norfolk I married a Weymouth girl whose father happened to be the Weymouth Station master and the second layout was built. This time it was digital, a train layout in a shed approx. 18@x15’ and was a very complicated layout.
About 3 years ago we moved house which had a long but narrow garden, once the house was in some sort of order a shed measuring 14’x10’ arrived on Nov 2020 somewhat smaller than I wanted.
Rob our electrician was summoned to wire up the shed on one condition that a cup of tea and a visit to the model railway construction was in order should any work be undertaken in the house.
I had an idea as to how the layout should look so first the baseboard was constructed using 3/8” ply and 3”x2” legs which would support my weight, the base width itself was anything between 24” to 36” which gave me plenty of room for the marshalling yard etc.
At this point a second base board was added underneath this ran the full width and length of the shed to incorporate a single track eventually ending up under the control board with four siding fiddle yards, entrance to the fiddle yard is via the tunnel nearest the wall.
Inclines of 1” every 24” were made of ply/hardboard and covered in cardboard, mod rock and a thin layer of Polyfilla to give the rock effect.
Once the inclines, tunnels and bridges were in place and the whole thing wired up to the control board I ran several trains with various rolling stock to make sure of any mishaps.
Next was the Faller car system which I had from my previous layout, as you can see from the video the little VW Camper van run really well sadly only enough room for a single track.
Access to the shed was made from a sliding section 18”x24” (I hope I don’t put on any weight) which can be removed and stored when required, ballast and scenery were next on the agenda, buildings placed in various positions to give me some idea of how the scenery was to be created.
Two sections of the hills can be removed for easy access should a train become derailed, the first is behind the garage the second is in front which allows me to clamber up onto the base board to get to the far corners if required.
Only a 3rd of the scenery is partly finish if ever it is, I don’t want to shut myself in the shed for the rest of my retirement, so I joined a model flying club something I’ve always been interested in.
So dry weekends are spent flying, wet weekends are spent either in the shed or repairing the WOT trainer, for some reason the cornfield in the surrounding landing patch seems to jump up at the plane when landing.
I’m not a model train buff and I’m sure some of you will look at the layout with disapproval especially the way the building etc are placed but to me it’s the way I see it even if some of the engines are pulling the wrong rolling stock, it’s all in the satisfaction of scratch building and running the trains achieving something on your own.
