Model railroad layouts plans

Rob’s been in touch with his vintage O gauge trains:

“This O gauge layout has been over 25 years in the making and, like all model railroads, can never be finished.

Some of the locomotives were Christmas presents from the early 1950s and some are less than a year old.

There are scratch built cars, structures and a “Doodlebug” along with numerous scenes along about 300 feet of track in two attic rooms.

The Pine Island Railroad runs from the city of Basura (Spanish for garbage) out passed a dirty industrial area into the countryside. There is a town along the way named Katonah (where I grew up in N.Y. State) and a flag stop at the small resort settlement of Pine Island.

Various scenes along the way, some not shown in these limited views, show life and activities in the towns, farms and forests.

We have busy crowd scenes at the Union Station; kids playing basketball in the back streets or baseball in the park; a family farm is working the land and selling produce in a roadside stand; hippies are getting busted for a growing a greenhouse full of pot; a flying saucer has landed drawing the whole neighborhood over to see, and a hapless railfan is oblivious to the cougar and alligator creeping up behind him.

Soon I will send you some more photos, I hope you enjoy them.

I live in Southwest Oregon in the Siskiyou Mountains. The nearest town is Cave Junction, about 10 miles away, and the nearest railroad is the storied “Siskiyou Line”, formerly Southern Pacific, which runs through Grants Pass and Medford, connecting the mainline at Eugene, OR and Weed, CA.

As a child, I grew up with the New York Central back east.

peace and joy,

Robert”

My word, what a layout: 25 years of fun!

A huge thank you to Robert for sharing his vintage O gauge trains. Loved it.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And don’t forget the The Beginner’s Guide is here if today is the day you take your first step towards your very own layout.

Best

Al

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

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.

Eric’s been in touch with his HO scale town update. His layout is really taking shape now:

“Well Alistair Part 6 is here

I mentioned in past post about ladies of the night waving down cars well that is here.

The fire in the old warehouse is getting out of control. The fire department is unable to respond due to police activity on the Westside of the building.

Then there is a little twist ….

One of the bloger followers wanted crime in the town well here it is , there was a clue in a past post photo with police cars blocking the street and officers out and with a police dog 🐕.

The talk around Town Maxville is the guy with the knife stabbed the guy on the ground and the other guy with a gun on a lady. Both may have started the fire in the vacant warehouse for profit.

I threw some extra pics of Town Maxville.

I will send YouTube videos in part 7 which will complete Town Maxville, well we will never know what else could happen.

Thank you Al and everyone that has been following Town Maxville

Eric the Firefighter St. Louis, MO area.”

A big thanks to Eric for part – his HO scale town is looks fab.

Have a look as his first post and you really get a feel of what he’s done:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

“Hi Al,

I have uploaded the long awaited video of my Heislers double headed pulling a fully loaded log train on the way to the sawmill.

I will have to get used to using the camera properly as well. It is not easy to use a tripod while following the train.

It was only after I uploaded it and watched it again that I saw that the two Heislers were running on two slightly different speed settings.

I will have to change that and do another one in the near future of them running all the way to the sawmill.

I will also do one of my two Shays double heading.

Brian”

That’s all for today folks. Thanks to Eric and Brian.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you poke boredom in the eye, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

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

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.

Donald has been in touch with his first layout, and have a look at the HO scale figures he has added.

A first layout is an achievment in itself, but adding figures to it really does bring it alive.

Adding people and creating simple ‘mini scenes’ is simple enough, but what a difference it makes:

“Hi Al,

I’m Donald, I’m new at this but, I’ve been a train lover for 60 years. This is my first HO layout.

Most people I’ve sent pictures too said they love it.

I hope you and the master layout builders find it interesting also.

Thanks

Donald”

Now on to Paul:

“Hi Al,

Way back in September I wrote to you with details of a T-gauge layout I’d put together.

It was fun to do and it’s possible to fit a lot of stuff into a very compact space when the engine is the size of a matchstick. That was the issue though, it’s a very fiddly scale to work with and with eyesight not as good as it used to be I took it apart and started again, this time in N gauge.

The board size is only 72cm x 55cm though. Unless I built a diorama (and there have been some good ones on the site) I needed to be economical with the space available. I settled on a double track tram layout with turn-backs at each end, and with intermediate stops along the way. A single tram plies the route end to end and then makes the return journey.

The track, power unit, sensors and controller (which detects which sensor has been triggered) are all Tomix. This layout is so small that I might even get round to putting some scenery on it – that would be a first for me – but we’ll see how we go.

This is the construction sequence if it’s of any interest:

My carpentry skills being somewhat rudimentary, I put together a baseboard made from an old bathroom cabinet:

Underside:

Top

I covered it in cork sheeting so that things wouldn’t slide around:

This is the layout:

And here it is put together:

Because the curves are all tight radius (17.7cm and 14.4cm) only short wheelbase vehicles (like trams) can negotiate them.

It’s not the most exciting layout, but if you nothing else to publish (I know your inbox is sometimes a bit empty) this might fill a an empty day 😊.

All the best,

Paul”

That’s all for today.

A big thanks to Paul for sharing his HO scale figures, and to Donald and Dave too.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today’s post has inspired you, and you want to make a start on your own layout, don’t forget The Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

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

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.