Model railroad layouts plans

Dick’s been in touch with his model train town – complete with moving cars… and ghosts.

“Hi Al,

Been too long I need to get back on the train and ride. Soooo here we go.

Dick Stern (old Taz) here, I’m sending you the working pictures of Chapple Train a Rama.

This Train a Rama was set up in the depot here in town to celebrate the 100th birthday of our town.

All the trains in the train a Rama train are all Mr. Chapple’s.

When Dick was asked to set this up in the depot, I told him I would help him with the town.

He said to me then wouldn’t it be neat if we could have moving cars in that town.

So, I came home and worked on two tables that would match the size of his tables that he used to set up the train.

The tables had to be made like a hollow core door to keep them from warping in to lay flat. The pulleys were made out of tempered Masonite. The bearings I used were made from copper pipe and copper couplings.

The cable is 1/8thinch aircraft cable and to keep it tight I used a coil spring to fasten the two ends together.

One table had two large pulleys on it and the other three pulleys between the pulleys I used PVC water pipe cut in half as a trough for the cable to ride in.

The cars were then hooked to the cable with paperclips at first. Then I had to go to a thin piece of tin so that it would ride in the slot.

The police are powered by barbecue spit motors. The gear ratio and speed seemed to work out just right.

The cars and trucks were made from scrap wood. I was going to use plastic models but I wanted a lot of them and that would have gotten way too expensive for me.

I went to our museum which is one of the largest in Montana. There I got pictures of a lot of the older buildings. Some are still standing some are gone.

I tried to pick out the most unusual ones we had in town at that time. The design of the cars and trucks came off of Internet pictures of that era. The airplane may be a little new for that time but I thought it was a good idea.

The model train town buildings are all made out of cardstock. I printed out siding and brick to put on the outside of them. The windows and signs we’re all done on the computer. The buildings were built so that they fold down and are easy to store.

I had a hard time coming up with what I was going to use for people, ended up using old clothespins. You know if you have moving cars you have to have people in them.

On the layout, you go past an Indian village, the Indian village was made by schoolchildren from here in town. Their teacher is a good friend of ours. She was an art teacher.

When it was time to tear it down, we went to one of the local banks who had an open room in the corner with two large windows. They allowed us to set up the town and two tracks going around the outside of the town.

In October of that year, still didn’t want to tear it down after one month so we talked him into letting us use it for Halloween.

At that time the gondolas the pickup trucks, and the trucks all got loaded with candy pumpkins.

The plane was replaced by a flying ghost. There was also a ghost chasing one of the trains. When it came up close to December, we talked him into letting us use it for Christmas. At that time the plane got changed to Santa Claus and his reindeer.

The gondolas were filled with presents. Snow was on the roofs of the houses and scattered around the scene, the pickups had Christmas trees in the back and some of the cars had them on the top. I made horse drawn sleighs and sleds for the kids.

We couldn’t come up with anything for January so we had to tear it down and put it in storage. We have been asked to bring it out of storage and set it up for Christmas again this year. That is a large layout for two people to set up! We’ll just have to wait and see as we both are having a hard time getting around.

Thank you, Al, for all you do to keep this website open. It’s always fun and exciting to see what everyone is doing out there.

I’ve gotten a lot of ideas of things that I want to do and things that I want to change. Thanks to all of you!!

Dick”

A huge big thanks to Dick for sharing his model train town.

What I like best about this post is the raw, undiluted fun and enthusiasm that comes across. Anyone can see how much they enjoyed this layout.

What’s more, you may remember Old Taz from his last post where he added car lights on his N scale

Here’s a pic of his layout to jog your memory.

And you’ll also note ‘Old Taz’ is in cahoots with Mr Chapple (also called Dick), who you may remember from quite a few posts, like this one.

Here’s a pic of from one of Dick’s posts too:

That’s all for today folks.

A great big thanks to Old Taz for sharing. Hope you enjoyed it as much as me.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you join in on the fun and get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Oh – and please do leave a comment below. I’d love to know what you all think of this one.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

John’s been in touch. His train stops and starts on the same piece of track and it’s driving him nuts.

Please do add to the suggestions at the bottom of the page if you can help.

“Dear Al,

Thank you for all you do for the hobby and all the work you do for the many readers.

Perhaps one of your readers can help me solve a problem…

Al has featured my layout in the past. The track plan is as illustrated.

At the two places marked X, the train suddenly almost stops (or sometimes does actually stop) and I have to give it a nudge to get it going again.

The system is DCC and the track is sparklingly clean as are the wheels. I do have jumper wires connecting the different pieces of track and I have checked the track voltage. It is consistent throughout.

Also, it is not at the end of a piece of track (which could suggest a voltage drop) but in the middle of a 1 meter piece of Peco Flexitrack!

Does anyone have a bright idea about a possible solution? I have tried everything that I can think of but am I missing something?

Thanks for your help.

John”

I’m very much looking forward to your comments on John’s issue. I think we’ve all had a layout where the train stops and starts and has left us scratching our heads.

Pleave a comment below if you can help!

It also reminded me of Ray’s post: Model train keeps stopping.

Next, John:

“Alastair:

I thought you and your readers might enjoy some of these.

This 80 year old, coal fired J Class (the 611) from the Norfolk and Southern made three runs this weekend between Manassas, Virginia and Front Royal, Virginia (west of Washington DC).

I was able to photograph it all six times (outbound and inbound).

I do process my images to look for like illustrations. Feel free to distribute any way you wish.

John”

Now on to Nancy.

I do love it when folk add a personal back story to a layout, like Nancy:

“Hello Al and All

My paternal Grandparents with their three sons built a log homestead on the Montana Continental Divide in Woodville around 1900. It still stands!

In fact, I have loved it all my life!

Had to build one for my layout. What do you think?

Best fun!

Nancy from Sequim”

That’s all for today folks.

Please do leave a comment below if you can help John.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you stop dreaming and start doing, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

Fred’s been in touch again, and he’s very kindly put the below together in response to all the comments on his mountain backdrop (which is here).

“Many thanks to all of you for your over-the-top compliments, which were greatly appreciated.

What you see has taken me a full time effort for a year, and it gets lonely in the basement – I appreciate the support.

Iʼll try to answer some of the questions sent me, but first let me explain my background and what excites me about modeling as a pastime.

While I had trains as a boy, as an architect I made a lot of architectural models in the 70ʼs and 80ʼs, and did a number of them professionally to earn extra money in what eventually became a non lucrative vocation that I quit in 1984. (Modeling was my favorite part of architecture.)

Iʼve always loved modeling, though, and as a pilot, I did a lot of RC aircraft modeling, with large scale models of WWII fighters and the like, until I tired at the heartache of seeing a half yearʼs work shattered by a violent crash into a fence or treetop!

So in my retirement I opted for more “permanent” subjects, and my preference is definitely on backgrounds, structures, scenery, etc.

Trains, per se, are less important, and mainly a way to bring the static part of the model to life, rather than the other way round. Iʼm not making a value judgement, itʼs just a personal preference.

Iʼm also finding that the painting of both scenery and structures, rocks, etc. is as fun as it is challenging – architectural modeling is almost always white, which is a bore.

Determining a color “palette,” “atmospheric scale,” or the degree to which color changes and fades with distance is interesting to me, and Iʼve enjoyed the chance to explore this in the layout.

There are a number of fascinating articles about the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in New York, which consumed me as a kid, and inspired me to make my layout as much a full “diorama” as my basement space would permit.

Of course this decision complicated a lot of processes. For instance, I have now learned that I couldnʼt really do the mountain backdrop and the scenery sequentially.

While that might seem more efficient, I was unable to make the judgements about color value, conventional perspective lines, lighting, and decided other things that for visual reasons are best done at once!

So I find myself going back and forth, even with buildings and trees in the way, and I have repainted the majority of the backdrop two or three times already.

Here are some earlier pictures which I never sent Al, which show the dam and backdrop before Iʼd remembered what my high school art teacher once taught me, and before Iʼd even figured out that early fall was the most interesting season to depict from the color standpoint:

For the fellow that expressed some intimidation that he “wouldnʼt be able to meet the grade,” all I can say is that the fun part of this hobby is that we are first our own critics.

So if you feel you arenʼt doing what you wanted to do, just keep pounding away….youʼll eventually improve and be very happy with it!

My first efforts at this backdrop are barely polychromatic, flat, and too sketchy to be anything but a big distraction.

Interestingly, when I progressed last November to a phase of psychological abandon from hating my backdrop so much that I wanted to start all over again, I had had the time to stare it and figure out what was wrong:

1) Mountains were too exaggerated in form. (When you enter my basement and view the backdrop from an angle, the foreshortening effect makes this even worse.)

2) I had chickened out initially from showing any source of light in the painting. This is sort of a no-no in most landscape painting.The most recent version has strong light from the right hand side, which helps define the shape of the topography, bring out some color, etc. By the way, Iʼm starting to experiment with shading and coloring of the shady side of my buildings for added effect. Anybody else tried that?

3) I hadnʼt yet defined my street layout in the village, so I couldnʼt integrate roads and river in the painting.

4) Color palette was out of whack with available ground matte and scenery foams from Scenic Express and everybody else. Now it works, but the choice of foams definitely drove the show, and I think that most of the greens they offer are way to green to look really genuine. I made most of my trees with yellow, olive green, or light green. Iʼll be adding more “aspen yellow,” and subtle orange/red in places. But a little red goes a looong way!

For those who requested videos: Iʼll try. Videography is not my strong suit, and for some reason the video Iʼm taking on my iPhone6 gets out of focus and the color turns reddish and washed out. Anybody have any ideas what Iʼm doing wrong?

Itʼs hard to photo this layout from farther back…my furnace gets in the way. I gave Al a couple additional photos at the other end. Hope that works.

For the question about the dam “penstock,” Iʼve been working on that. The dam was not a kit. I made the face of the dam with built up plywood and foam, then layered with rough stone “tiles” roughly 50ʼ by 25ʼ at N scale which I made with one of my many latex plaster molds.

I ground the edges and thickness of these on a large bench grinder until they roughly coincided with the lines of the stone courses from the mold, then “grouted” in by hand with plaster of paris. All my exposed natural rock and cut stone in the layout is stained with 3 thin acrylic washes (yellow ochre, burnt sienna, black….in that order)

And I had the predictable problems with spots that wouldnʼt stain due to glues, “Sculptamold,” and basically anything beyond plaster. Nothing that a little shrubbery wonʼt hide! Railings are ABS, and dam turrets were “kitbashed” from parts of other DPM kits.

The penstock is going on the face of the dam as a pair of enormous pipes down to the turbine level inside the power house. Iʼve been putting this off while I search for something pre-made that looks like 8 to 10ʼ diameter industrial pipe.

Itʼs tricky at this scale, because without the requisite details like the pipe flanges at the proper thickness, and maybe even the mating bolts, a pair of half inch hoses running down my dam may actually spoil the effect.

Artistic license is necessary. Or maybe I can find a source to do it in brass. Iʼve just discovered etched brass fire escapes for my buildings, and I love them, but maybe it should become the “damn penstock!”

For the fellow who asked about track height, itʼs all on the same level. I dropped the level of my river/ravine to accomodate the dam by building a lower section of the bench work thatʼs about a foot lower than the rest of the benchwork, which is 48” off the floor.

Itʼs fatally incongruous though that I actually wound up with a river thatʼs below sea level! But since Maxwell Falls exists way down at one end of the layout, nobody has yet noticed this but me.

And for the guy who wants to get in his truck to come see the layout…youʼre welcome (and anybody else) any time. Even if youʼre trucking in from Cape Town! Just get in touch first, thatʼs all I ask.

Fred”

A huge thanks to Fred (Here’s the link to his original post again).

Stunning stuff – and I so love his comment that I think really captures the spirit of this hobby: “…all I can say is that the fun part of this hobby is that we are first our own critics”.

So if you fancy being your own critic and having a whole heap of fun, don’t forget the Beginner’s Guide to point you in the right direction.

Now on to Hall of Fame member, Dave:

“Hi Al

just a short video showing using the Mobius Camera for taking line side footage.

Also things do go wrong even on my layout… well who doesn’t have derailments ?

Regards

Dave”

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.