Nicholas has been in touch, he’s sent in another N scale layout on a door:
“Hi Al.
This is my first attempt at layout building for over 40 years.
It’s taken me about 12 months to complete. Most of the scenery is home made. Although some trees are bought, most are just dead flowers from the garden coloured.
All ground cover is sawdust coloured, fire ash or grit.
Tunnels are rainwater pipe, plastic bottles or polystyrene.
The base is made of a door with 2” insulation board on top as are the hills. I also used expanding foam.
Tunnel entrances are hand made from plaster of Paris.
The lighting is all battery operated. I think I’ve gone as far as I can now with this layout, So will break it up to start a new project soon. I wasn’t happy with the track laying so I will concentrate more on that next time.
If it can help anyone with ideas. Great.
Nicholas”
And this came in from Dennis which brightened up my morning:
“While not model railroad pictures…these are from Spencer NC – Transportation Museum.My thought is some of your fans might see something they might try reproducing.
These are only a small few of photos I have taken from several trips I have made to the Steam Works over the past few years.
I must say, that your contributors have impressed me with their talent and ingenuity. Keep the emails coming.
Dennis”
I loved Dennis’s pics, so I thought you might too, which is why I posted them. Now on to Dave:
“Hi Al,
just uploaded this video showing my 2 Deltic fitted with the em2 speaker, sounds great, also tried running in consist with a good few coaches in the rake, also showing the Millers Engineering Neon sign I bought from USA, and now fitted with a 4.5 v plug in transformer, works great and I sort of love the odd flashing lights on a layout ..LOL
That’s all for today, folks. A big thanks to Nicholas for showing us another N scale layout on a door – there’s quite a few on the site now, and to Dennis and Dave.
Jim’s been in touch with his 4×6 train layout. But first, we start with Gordy:
“Things I have found useful:
Mix latex paint with wet Plaster / Basecoat, same color of scenery if chipped will not show. When applied, sprinkle fine mixed scenery material (sand, leaves, wood chips, twigs)
Chop up in an Old Blender.
Leave gaps/( loose Joiners) for tracks to expand / contract track gets out Of gauge on curves & switches.
The greatest frustration is to have derailments in an operating Session. (Losing an ore train, with loose iron ore is really bad — worse in tunnels, you can’t reach)
After years of running trains, when we dismantled layout, we found some ore cars inside the tunnels.
Good wiring, 16 ga. minimum Size, clean joints, use 60 / 40 solder with liquid rosin flux, DON”T MOVE JOINT UNTELL SOLDER HARDENED!
Cold solder joints are a railroaders dilemma (and electricians ) use color code – or have fun tracing wires. Same on circuit boards. Engines etc.
Make use of weeds, some bushes makes fine Trees, spray with cheap hair Spray, sprinkle with Leaves, (Model Woodland Scenecs eg.)
Easy way- (Shake & Bake Method ) Put Sprayed Tree, in Plastic Bag with Foliage, and Shake.
Gordy”
“After 40 years of being away from model railroading, I jumped back in on or about January of this year.
I’ve purchased some engines. 15 received so far, and about 50 pieces of rolling stock, more coming.
Not being as proficient as my colleagues on this blog, I bought folding tables, 2 x 2 foam board, the easier to take apart my dear and have raken over a good part of our sun room.
My usable space is 7’5″ x 15″0″ and this is what I have accomplished so far.
Ken”
I love what Ken has done – purely because it’s making a start, and that’s what it’s all about. Now on to Jim:
“Al,
Attached are 6 photos of my layout and the start of my paint job on a N scale GP-35.
My layout is 4feet by 6.6feet with a yard and round house off to one end with a lift gate to a door to the rest of my garage.
Jim”
Next up, a quick vid of Tom’s stunning layout – really enjoyed putting this one together:
Charles has been in touch with his coal dump pit scratch build:
“I recently bought a Walthers Northern Power and Light building kit to assemble and use on my modest 4X8 layout I am building.
I would have liked to have used the complete coal dump pit that came with the kit but since there was a 2X4 sitting edgewise directly under where the coal dump pit was to go I couldn’t (or didn’t) want to use the whole thing.
So I decided to use what ever amount of the sides and edges of the pit that would fit with the top grate and have it sit on top of the plywood base.
I knew the cork road bed was 5mm (or 3/16 of an inch) high and the top grate had slots for the track to set into so I measured on the side of the coal pit slightly more than 3/16 of an inch from the bottom of the slots that the rails would go into and scribed a line all across both sides of the pit and cut along that line and both ends with a Dremel tool using a thin cutting disk.
I then cleaned up the edges of the melted plastic and did a trial fit into the section of road bed I had cut out for it to fit into. Of course it was too high which is what I had planned on. If cut too short then you would be left with a gap between the edge of what was left of the pit wall and the plywood.
I then sanded by hand with sand paper in a sanding block and would sand a bit and try it for fit then sand some more. Need to test often. When I finally had a perfect fit I painted the area directly under where the unloading grate would go with black paint.
BTW: the pebbly surface left from removing the cork road bed resulted in it looking like little lumps of coal which l thought was great. When finished I put everything together and had what I thought was a great looking representation of a coal unloading pit without actually having a real pit underneath.
I thought perhaps some of your readers might like to know how I went about accomplishing this.
The first two pictures show just how little is left of the coal pit once it was sanded down to fit. The next picture shows the pieces ready to assemble. The next two pictures show the finished assembly. And the last picture shows what was left of the pit that was not used.
Charles
State of Missouri, USA”
And now on to Mike, who has made these marvellous creations:
“Hello Alastair:
I have a friend who collects aircraft. In fact he has a large glass shelved case with 40 airplanes in it. He has a couple of Spitfires (my absolute favorite aircraft from WWII).
I decided to build a control tower similar to one’s I found on the Internet. My mum’s family were from Essex, so I chose a field there. The only purchase was the windows. Everything else was from materials laying around in my scrap. A lot can be done with a little.
I found this display case in a second hand antique mall. It is perfect for keeping and displaying my locos dust free.
After building for others for the last few years, I finally started working on my own layout. Progressing slowly to plan.
I include three of the scratch built structures that I am incorporating into my own layout. My era is 1950 and prior. I am traveling to our Midwest (Nebraska) to meet up with my cousin. He was the chief designer for the Lincoln, NE museum.
We will spend two days traveling around the state looking for and photographing, taking dimensions of old wooden structures to scratch build. The best part of model railroading is building structures….
Cheers, Mike from Clermont, Florida”
“Hi Al, just received my Deltic PD1 back with sound and EM2 speaker fitted, great sounds now from a very nice looking Loco.
I also have the other deltic which is under repair just now, but imagine the sounds from 2 of these Beasts roaring around the layout?
All The best
Dave”
A huge thanks to Charles for his coal pit scratch build, and to Mike and Dave, I really did enjoy putting this post together.
Fingers crossed I’ll have a better week than last time (we all get them, don’t we?)
Everything seemed to go wrong for me, and I know some of you, for some reason dropped off the list. Hopefully you are back on now.
If you missed any of the posts, these links should get you up to speed:
