Model railroad layouts plans

John’s been in touch to add to the collection of model railroad Christmas layouts:

“I have some pictures of my temporary Christmas Village/Train layout.

We set this up starting after Halloween and try to get it done by Thanksgiving. We then enjoy it until late January when we take it all down, box it up and get it back into storage.

We have been doing this in some form or another since 1986. It started back in California where we had a bay window shelf that needed a bit more Christmas spirit.

There was a shop in El Toro that sold plaster of paris buildings depicting Santa’s North Pole buildings, trees, and characters. These came as bare white castings that needed to be painted. My wife, mother-in-law and I decided to each buy a building and give it a go.

We started with Santa’s workshop, a Mr. and Mrs Claus home, a barn and several characters, trees, and assorted accessories.

Over the next couple of Christmases we had completed a nice little village scene that worked well on the bay window shelf.

I do not have any digital pictures of this display but probably have some slides or other pics up in the attic. After moving to Texas in 1991, my wife discovered the Department 56 Dickens village series and we started the new collection.

After a few years we had enough of the Dickens village pieces where I was able to set up a board layout on the floor with a cut out spot for a tree with removable pieces that allowed us to slide a decorated Christmas tree into the right side of the display, then put the board pieces back in place.

We had purchased a Dickens Village Railroad set that used HO gauge track and railroad cars that were scaled to fit better with the Dickens Village.

This was a limited edition set By Fleischmann’s Magic Train series and I set up a layout that would wind through the new Dickens Village and then around the tree to Santa’s North Pole village where we had set up all of our hand painted items that we had brought with us from California.

We eventually gave the hand painted items to my wife’s daughter, her husband and our three grandchildren. It has been about fifteen years since then and I don’t think the original set has survived.

I did however, keep one small item from the original North Pole village we had created that I proudly have put to use in our current display.

A small sitting elf character has been put to use as the engineer in the CCVR engine of our original train.

Best regards,

John”

A huge thanks to John for sharing his model railroad Christmas layouts, and it seemed right to save it for today.

That’s all for this time folks, except for one last thing – I’ve had a few messages that the ebay cheat sheet hasn’t been firing on all cylinders over the last day or so.

I’ve updated the code and it should all be fine now. Please do have a look and let me know.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if your Christmas presents won’t keep you entertained today, there’s always the Beginner’s Guide.

Best

Al

Cary’s been back in touch with his G scale train models:

If you want to get up to speed, his last post is here.

“I’m eight years now into my Garden Railroad and have had trains running the last two years.

My layout is now down for the winter months and it’s time to consider maintenance and next steps. Here’s some things I’ve learned about having an outdoor model railroad.

I’m using track power and soldered jumper wires across every track section. This is working very well.

I’m finding that I need to clean the track every time I run trains and then about every hour or so. I’ve been using drywall sanding screens on a sanding pole and that goes pretty quickly.

This year I started using my scratch built cleaning car. Once the track is clean enough for a locomotive to run(sputter) around the track, it takes about 5 laps of the track cleaning car and the locos are running smooth. It’s full of gravel for weight and the cleaning pad is spring mounted.

At this point I can’t see going to full battery and RC control. I can see building a battery powered track cleaning locomotive, especially now that I have a successful cleaning design.

My buildings have been outside for two years now and the weather is taking its toll. I used fiberglass and concrete board for the bases and concrete board and shingles for the roofs- these are working well. I used maple plywood for the side walls and hoped that several coats of exterior house paint would protect them, it has not. The plywood is delaminating.

Ralph’s General Store, this is how it looked after completion, it was my masterpiece.

Here’s how it looks after two years of weather.

I have several buildings in this condition, I think I can clean them up, add some reinforcement and get another few years out of them.

For future builds I’ll be using something else for the sidewalls. Additionally the buildings need to be simpler, fewer details and pressure washer friendly. As my layout fills in with plant life, I might find that fewer, well placed buildings will be more scenic and less maintenance.

Here’s some improvements I made to my layout this summer.

More retaining walls and ditches, still trying to control drainage, slowly getting there.

Roads, Crossings and Moss which is great for scale grass

The main goal for summer is more plant life. So far I’m trying to relocate plants from other parts of my property but there’s only a few decent species to choose from. There is one huge advantage, if it’s already growing here in heavy shade and the critters haven’t eaten it, then there’s a good chance it will survive on my layout.

Cary in Kentucky”

Some posts just make you feel good. A huge thanks to Cary for sharing his G scale train models, and there’s something about Cary’s that is very fun: I think it’s the size of a project.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

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

Best

Al

Heinrich has been in touch with his HO scale Christmas train:

“Hello from sunny South Africa!

Now, we will never have a white Christmas in South Africa, but I can model my European experiences. With the assistance of my darling wife, Susan!

The idea of our Christmas tree layout started back during our Covid 19 lock down.

We had a Christmas holiday booked in the Black Forest of Germany, but soon realised that the world was going to be in chaos and made alternative arrangements.

The holiday plans were subsequently scrapped and we started work on Plan B: Staying home and bringing a white Christmas to Johannesburg!

We took a spare piece of ISO board I had laying around, fixed two radius tracks on it and started planning…. of course, everything had to be designed around the Christmas tree!

Here are some pics of how we started, and pics and a video of the final result.

Merry Christmas!

Heinrich”

Latest ebay cheat sheet is here (goes mad this time of year).

A big thanks to Heinrich for sharing his HO scale Christmas train – an utterly wonderful Christmas layout.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as me. I do enjoy seeing them, so much work goes in to them, and yet they are only on display for such a short amount of time.

However, as Christmas decorations go, they are hard to beat.

You can find more model railroad Christmas layouts here.

There’s also Daniel’s model train Christmas story too.

Old Taz gives you the heads up on planning one with his Christmas window layout

Please do leave a comment below and let us know what you thought.

That’s all for this time – please do keep ’em coming.

And if you want to make today the day you start on your very own layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al