Jeff has a shorting track problem – can anyone help?
“Hi Al,
I have been receiving your emails for several years and have enjoyed them greatly.
They have encouraged me in model railroading. I am from Ohio and a novice to this hobby.
I’m sending you some pictures of an attempt I am making at an O scale layout.
As you can tell I am running a loop within a loop. I have connected them with entrance and exits turnouts.
I know I’m supposed to use insulated track sections. But I don’t know exactly how to place those sections or configure the wires underneath.
When my locomotive exits the inner loop to the outer loop or vice versa, it shorts on the insulated track sections.
I would be grateful for any advice on this.
Thank you so much for your encouragement in this hobby. I have included a couple of pictures so that you can see what I mean.
Have a blessed day.
Jeff”
Please do leave a comment below if you can help, Jeff.
Now on to Pete who has been busy with some revisions:
“Hi Al,
Some revisions here.
I made the fence from northeastern strip wood products, then aged with a greying solution. India ink and alcohol. It’s getting real close now.
After the benchwork of a particular scene is complete, I grid it with 1 x 3’s to accommodate buildings, the rest is sectioned off with cardboard strips or metal light screen for the plaster cloth to adhere to.
After all plaster has been put on (1st the gauze then fill in with pre made plaster (mud) in tubs) It is all painted with a latex earth tone. When dry, texturing begins. I use a combination of a lot of things as you see.
Lot’s of ‘Wood scenic products, etc. grass tufts, many different shades of texture, rocks, sand for roads, and so on.
I scratch built the farm house and barn, though the barn was a spinoff from an old Campbell HO kit, I just built it up from scratch to 1/48 O scale that I model in.
Trees are mostly commercial, I just grab whatever, whenever it suits my aesthetic needs.
The water for the garden hose is woodland scenic products for water falls and still water combination.
The rest by viewing is self explanatory, sooo, if you could kindly post these pics of both the standard gauge & narrow gauge, it would be most appreciated.
Thank you,
Peter”
A big thanks to Pete (his last post is here). His layout just gets better and better.
“Hi Al,
I love your site and I can’t wait to read the latest installment each morning.
I have learned a lot from your blog so I thought that I would contribute a little with this power supply and hookup units “manifolds” as I like to call them , that I made.
Under my layout are 8 of these “manifolds” shown in the first picture.
They are daisy chained together to form an expanded hook up for my lighting.
They are hooked up to a computer power supply that I converted to light my layout.
The supply has 12volt,5volt and 3.3volt supplies perfect for supplying whatever voltage is needed to light the entire layout!
All of my lighting is Led from the buildings to the street lights and the vehicle lights.
Hope you enjoy these pictures and hints ,maybe some of your readers will learn something as I have done from this site!!
Thank you for all of your hard work to keep this site going strong!!
Bob ( From Pennsylvania)”
That’s all for this time, folks.
Please do leave a comment below if you can help Jeff.
And don’t forget the Beginner’s Guide is here if you are tired of sitting on the sidelines and want to join in with the fun.
Hope this finds you. As always love the posts from all over the world you share. Always something new and exciting to enjoy each day I open your post.
I’ve been busy on my O Scale and On30 layout. Benchwork is done and my O Scale part is running well. I’ve been busy now getting sub roadbed put in place for my steep logging narrow gauge line.
I will submit more for your consideration later covering building bridge track out of sectional track and some other projects I’ve been up to.
The video shows where I am at currently on building the layout.
Gary’s been in touch with quite a HO track layout project:
“Al:
Here is the narrative of my HO layout (Mt. Thornton National Railway Park).
Thanks for all you do. I hope you find this project worthy of publication.
So, a year ago, Covid dictated that my annual 750-mile trip from Ohio to my youngest daughter’s home in Nebraska for Thanksgiving and Christmas and my 1,900-mile trip to my oldest daughter’s home in Montana for my annual ski outing was not going to happen. Instead, it was going to be isolation at home with just me and my wife.
That’s when I decided that it was time to resurrect my old HO equipment from over 40 years ago and thus the journey began. Since I live in a patio home with very little extra space, finding an appropriate location was a major challenge.
The only option seemed to be my two-car garage that was already occupied by a workbench and potting bench down one side and large storage shelves down the other side with just enough space for the car to fill the center.
The solution was to build an 8′ by 10′ table with a notch to go around the garage door opener when the layout was hoisted to the ceiling, allowing the car to fit underneath.
So with a power winch, pulleys and some cables the idea seemed feasible (to me but not my wife). Mounting the requisite 3 x 6 beams, the pulleys and especially the heavy winch proved to be a challenge for one person with no help, but it worked perfectly on the first practice lift attempt before track work and scenery were in place.
From there on, every attempt was made to keep everything as lightweight as possible other than the (2) 2×6’s and the (6) 2×3’s that formed the main support for the ¼” plywood base. Everything after that was Styrofoam, paper, plaster cloth, sawdust, eight gallons of light weight plaster, tracks and scenery.
I’m not sure which came first, the basic idea of the layout or my introduction to your blog, but the ideas and inspiration have proven invaluable.
I started with AnyRail and did my computerized layout and then printed it out full scale (something in excess of 140 pages), which I mounted on my plywood base, but only gluing the track layout portions.
A scaled down printout later became my control panel.
From there I cut away the non-track paper and it was ready for Styrofoam (track areas) and plaster cloth everywhere. A portion of the plywood was cut and lowered below grade to create the gorge.
The next phase was to sculpt the hills, mountains, canyons and the gorge with the lightweight plaster. This was easily one of my favorite parts.
Next was the track bed and then the track which was all old Code 100 track in 9″ sections that needed to be cleaned, laid out in place, the rails soldered and then the drop wires soldered to the track. In all, over 200’ of track was installed. This was easily my least favorite part of the project.
The entire layout is wired as 4 master sections with 5 or 6 subsections within each. It is all DCC, however my control panel switches would allow me to run DC if I decided to add a few wires. There are 4 reverse loops that I have working fairly well with the automatic circuit boards.
A bonus to the capability of winching the table off the floor was the fact all the under table wiring could be done without crawling beneath the table – a real life saver.
I noticed in most of your posts that a theme becomes very important to most modelers. I had not thought of that aspect, but eventually my theme has brought me the most joy.
The idea started as a western US mountain layout with the requisite tunnels, and ended up as the Mount Thornton National Railway Park, complete with national park scenery, signage, vistas, park activities and even a visitor center.
It also is based on BNSF routes through the Rockies and includes most of the legacy locomotives, especially Santa Fe, Burlington Northern, Northern Pacific and Great Northern along with the fictitious Mount Thornton & Gary’s Gorge RR.
Now the fun part of the theme, as all the “national park” features are created and identified with appropriate signage for all the members of my family:
Mount Thornton – (named after my dad) – major mountain with tunnel and highline
Gary’s Gorge – (you get to guess where that name originated) – below grade stream and canyon
Sharon’s Summit (wife) – highline route rides the top ridge of the summit
Leanne’s Lookout and Leanne’s Loading Dock (daughter) – overlook of highline and canyons & special loading dock (see below)
Merrilaine’s Meadow (daughter) – spacious meadow complete with horses
Billy (Goat’s) Bluff (brother) – the mountain goat, symbolic of the Great Northern RR
Cookie’s Canyon (sister) – deep canyon with track running through it
Delaney’s Drop (granddaughter) – rock climbing area
Mackenzie’s Mound and Mackenzie’s Mound Yard (granddaughter) – Mound overlooking the yard in one direction and the grazing deer in the other
Taylor’s Tunnel (granddaughter) – entrance to tunnel below Sharon’s Summit
Ben’s Bend (grandson) – deep bend on the back of Mt Thornton
Steve’s Skyway (son-in-law) – highline track around Mt Thornton and atop Sharon’s Summit
The freight depot is special in that I discovered it in my stored HO stuff and it was still in its original box and sealed plastic bag. What made it special was the tag in the box as it was a Christmas present that said “To Daddy from Leanne” – so that meant it was 40+ years old. It now has a permanent home on the layout, complete with its own “Christmas tag” billboard.
Then I came across a story of a special dog that has become part of the Great Northern RR lore and fit so magically into my national park theme that it became part of the small memorial park adjacent to the Thornton National Railway Park Depot and the Legacy Locomotive Museum.
As the story goes, Shep was a Montana working dog and maintained a vigil as his master was taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, his master passed away and his body was moved to the depot then onto a train for the trip back east.
Shep followed him to the depot but couldn’t board the train. So for the next 5 ½ years he lived under the depot platform and greeted the 4 passenger trains that came through every day, hoping for his master’s return.
Ironically Shep died as he was hit by a train as his hearing failed with old age. The memorial that was built in Fort Benton, Montana to honor Shep – “forever faithful” – is fittingly recreated as part of this national railway park.
Painting, staining and application of grasses, shrubs and trees was my second favorite pastime as I spent many years as a landscape architect and contractor, so I was able to utilize those skills in miniature. I hope it shows!
I had never thought of a background for my layout but your blog’s many examples convinced me I should try. Since my layout has access from all four sides, I decided to pick a main view and I found a perfect wide poster to pull off a great background.
Since it would be in the way of conventional garage activities, I mounted it with rope pulleys to raise it out of the way when not railroading. The 90” x 30” poster is an actual photo from Glacier National Park and has the mountains and the start of the gorge that fits perfectly with my layout.
I still have lighting and signaling left to install and as everyone says, “you are never done”. Lots of touch-up and refining still to go as well. My immediate challenge is to get my locomotive’s couplers (new DCC models) to match my rolling stock couplers (old standard cars).
I almost forgot to mention, what you see was all done in 1 year and I am 80 years old, so some of the heavy stuff was challenging, but what a blast this journey has been. Never too late to start!
Gary”
A huge big thanks to Gary. A wonderful narrative and a wonderful layout.
