Model railroad layouts plans

The very talented Dan has been back in touch, this time a solid tip on soldering HO scale track.

Talk about belt and braces – no wonder he’s had zero derailments or wiring issues.

It just goes to show a little planning goes a long way:

“The value of thinking ahead.

This series of photos will demonstrate that a lot of planning pays off. I knew that I would have a lot of tracks under the main layout.

There would be two mainline racks as well as three storage/staging tracks. The storage/staging are divided in half so six trains are in place. They are long enough to hole 30+ length trains.

This part of the construction process does not show up when finished. You might spend a couple of hours wiring or soldering and it still looks the same. I don’t have any images of the track laying process.

I will describe the process.

Every rail joint was soldered. Then I soldered wire jumpers between each joint. This way I knew the connections would last even if a solder joint might break. That can happen over time. I cut the blocks in where needed after the soldering was done.

A hard part came next. Waiting to put the ‘top’ over the lower tracks. Once done the lower tracks would not be fixable. To make sure everything was good to go I waited for two heating and one cooling cycle to pass.

The track work was done during the first heating cycle since it was winter when I did the work. I began putting the upper level on about half the way through the next winter. I have had 0 wiring issues and 0 derailments under the layout.

I had a response to my last post asking about derailments in the tunnels. The tunnels are short and there is access everywhere. I will show access to the entire layout.

I am entering a very busy period over the next month or so. I have a crew of 3 who will help me set up a G scale train at a local conservatory. The conservatory sets up the tables for us. We put down the track and do the wiring.

It is a rather simple track plan and flat. There is also a train around a large Christmas tree. We also check out the locomotives and rolling stock. One of us is always on call to check out problems during the run from Thanksgiving to New Years.

My model railroad club helps set up a 24 by 12 HO train display at a local bank. I spend the entire month of December at the bank. This will be my 32 nd year for the display. It runs during banking hours. The track curves have been replaced 2 times over the years. The outside rail wears thin.

I have gone through at least 20 locomotives. I change the locos daily. The newer locomotives require wheel changes over time. The newer locomotive wheels have plating on them. This wears off and causes micro arcing. A main source of the black gunk on the track.

I clean the track every 5 days during the time it is on display. I use the higher % alcohol to clean the track.

I will be working on some videos of the Santa Fe and Boston & Main layouts. I will send them to Al when I get them done.

I used several ways to finish the layout look. I have interesting friends. One worked at a mill that did molding work. I got the cut offs. I made a basic frame work and used luan plywood and the molding to hold them together. I also used the fixable Masonite for the curved places you will see.

Where ever the access to track was not required I used solid work. The layout is fully accessible for storage etc.

These are the local block panels. There is no track behind them. The phone jacks in the photo is for the Hogger walk around throttles I use.

Soldering HO scale track:

This panel is for the lower track. The run through and the storage/staging tracks. The colors represent east and west tracks.

I use LED lights to show occupancy of all the tracks. There is an LED at the end of each block. If either of the LEDs is red the track is occupied.

I use magnetic reed switches. The never fail. (40+ years so far) They came from a Western Electric Long Lines phone company. A panel was being removed for a more modern system. A friend who worked there gave it to me. The reed switches were removed by me and I have found a lot of uses for them in my layout and in making special effects in my planetarium. The magnets are ceramic. They came from a batch of experimental magnets. Another friend worked at a company developing them.

All cabooses, last cars on passenger trains, and locomotives have these magnets under them. The clear all crossings. The car weights are magnetic. It is just the cabooses that look like this. the other magnets are flat.

The reed switches are normal open. When a magnetic field passes over them they momentarily close. When parking a magnet (car or loco) over the LED it goes from green to red.

The business part of the panel. One of my brothers worked at a place that made x ray suites. The panels are cut offs of the panel material. There are rotary switches for the up to 5 possible power supply to individual blocks. I have records of each panel. This is also an access to the lower tracks.

A little farther along the layout.

Here you can see the panels that drop down. On the right you can see the Hogger power packs. I wanted a walk around system. (This is way before DCC) MRR had some articles about how to make them. Parts were very hard to find. This was the answer. They were very expensive.

However, I did not want scrimp and then have to replace power supplies over and over. These have lasted 40 + years. They have been out of business for a long time.

I use the ceramic magnets to hold the panels in place.

Here I made sliding panels for access. There are long pieces of 3/4 inch spruce wood. (I had some on hand from another project.) The panels are luan. This is a thin plywood. The part that makes the sliders is interesting. They are made from two panel edge protestors. They are “J” shaped glued back to back. One set at the top and one set at the bottom. They are fastened to the spruce strips and then you have sliding doors! Not expensive at all.

Behind another drop down block panel.

More sliding doors.

Behind the door in photo 14. It is tight but reachable. In the photos you can just see a string of white Christmas lights. The lower tracks all have lighting like this.

A part of the lower tracks. Very hard to see to the right of the caboose is a reed switch. To help see it the caboose is over a switch.

The panel for Burnt Lake. And, something very important. The yellow and red lines are the main lines coming up or down to the lower level.

You obviously can’t see the trains because of the scenery above the track. The row of red lights are connected to magnetic reed switches. As a train passes over on the way up or down they light up momentarily, allowing you to see the progress of the train. Especially going up. This prevents anxiety and the urge to give the train more and more power. It never looks good to have a train blast out of the tunnel at light speed!

Something also that is very important. Since, the loco and the LAST car have magnets you know your train is still complete!

The view behind the panel. This area is also very open and accessible by ducking under this part of the layout.

The area behind the engine facility has a pop up space to access the track there.

Last but not least: the Golden Spike. There is a monument and a gold painted spike for all to see.

Thanks for looking.

This will be my last post for a while. I hope you like them, and I enjoyed the comments, of course.

Thanks.

SantaFeDan*”

A big thanks to Dan for sharing his soldering HO scale track tip of additional wire jumpers – the phrase that sprung to my mind after reading his post was ‘Prevention is always better than cure’.

I did enjoy seeing the parts of the layout usually hidden from view because it gives a complete picture of the what’s involved to enjoy your trains.

If you want to see Dan’s layout in all its glory, you can see it here:

Model train Santa Fe

In fact, when I was looking for Dan’s previous posts, I was surprised at just how many there were, and how helpful they are all too.

So I thought there was only one thing for it:

Please welcome Dan to the Hall of Fame – where you can see a list of all his posts.

We’re lucky to have people like Dan in the Hall of Fame to share all they have learned over the years.

Dan’s posts are always helpful, and I have found over the years, it’s the helpful posts that cajole folk into making that start.

I know the Beginner’s Guide has been a first step for some of you, so I asked Dan about it, and he said this:

“The Beginners Guide is a good place to start. A suggestion might be to try out one of the topics on a small trial basis.

As an example: a pond. Before jumping in on your layout do a practice small one. If you like the way it turned out go ahead and put a bigger one on the layout. Absolutely all of my scenery work was tried out before the “big” one got going. I still have the beginner photos.

As to the cost cutting tips. Never throw away something with possibilities. An example might be short left over pieces from a kit. I have several boxes of sprues. Kit pieces left over are never thrown away. I have built whole structures from left overs.

Go to train shows and pick up grab bags. I bought a bag of “people” at a show. There were at least 100 in the bag. It cost less than $5 when I got them. The folks are everywhere on layouts I have worked on. This way I don’t worry about cutting off an arm or leg for a figure to fit a specific place.

Dan*”

That’s all for this time folks – a big thanks to our new Hall of Fame member, Dan, for another helpful post.

It reminded me of Fred’s: Soldering advice for your layout.

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

Best

Al

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

Michael’s been in touch with O scale truss bridge:

“Alistair and all:

I thought it was time I provided an update on my O Gauge Slide Rock Bolter Railroad.

I always include a track plan schematic; it helps orient people to the layout; pictures alone never seem to adequately convey the whole layout.

In my last update I described how I was experimenting with 3D printed parts to scratch build O scale buildings.

The primary reason for scratch building being the difficulty I had finding suitable buildings that did not cost an arm and a leg. I have since scratch built three bridges for my layout and a large coal tipple.

O scale truss bridge 1:

The entrance to my layout is through a gap spanned by two lift-out bridges.

The first bridge started out as a 1x3x30 inch piece of lumber just to get the tracks working.

I then decided to convert it to a 30 inch girder bridge. All of the girders are 3d printed and then glued according to the bridge design.

The design is from scratch although there are obviously many prototypes and books to copy from.

The original piece of lumber is hidden within the 3d printed parts and provides strength and stability.

For quite sometime the girder bridge spanned the gap without any additional scenery. If you search around on thingiverse.com it is easy to find designs for individual parts that can be easily modified and scaled to fit almost any requirement.

O scale truss bridge 2:

Then I decided to add a second bridge spanning the entrance.

For this bridge I wanted to incorporate a vintage Lionel girder bridge that I have been lugging around for almost 60 years.

The catch was that the Lionel bridge is only 18 inches long and the gap is 30 inches. This required building a combination bridge with two plate girder extensions on either end of the vintage Lionel bridge.

Of course, without concrete supports the plate girders would just be levitating in the air. Therefore, I also had to build some scenery with concrete supports and a river.

The river and the two bridges all lift-out when needed. The moose is 3d printed. The riverbanks need more detailing but they are good for now.

O scale truss bridge 3:

Next, I built a long plate girder trestle, which is really a “bridge to nowhere”.

The trestle is 10 feet long and is used to store up to 12 pieces of rolling stock when they are not actually running on the layout.

At any given time, I have about 75 unique pieces of rolling stock on the railroad and the storage trestle acts as a fiddle yard.

The cars on the trestle sit on original (rusty, dirty) Lionel 3-rail that I have had for almost 60 years. The trestle is located on the wall west of Trinidad.

I am considering building another storage trestle on the wall north of Trinidad. Trinidad is the main location where trains originate, stage, and terminate on my railroad.

The trestle is scratch built from 3d printed parts. Using the printer, once the design is set, you can just crank out parts repeatedly until you have all that are necessary to build something of any length. Nice! (It can take a lot of time to print everything – several days, up to a few weeks…)

Coal Tipple:

The coal tipple is located at Primero. I wanted a fairly large building to provide some “wow factor”. It needed to be customized to my particular layout configuration.

The building is scratch built and has an overall footprint of about 25×32 inches and is 11 inches tall (100 x 128 x 44 scale feet).

It spans three tracks and has coal loading booms to two of those tracks.

The inspiration for my design is the Nuttallburg Mine in West Virginia. I located some nice drawings of the complex and used them as a guide for my design. (Google search for “Nuttallburg Mine Library of Congress”).

My design is only very loosely based on these drawings. I took many liberties to customize the tipple to my exact layout configuration.

For my layout, there is a large processing building parallel to the tracks with the attached tipple spanning the tracks.

The coal booms are covered as in the prototype. In the prototype, the booms could be raised and lowered into the coal cars and conveyors used to fill the cars.

In my version, the booms are fixed at a height that does not interfere with the model trains running beneath the tipple.

I have added two large loading docks at the east and west end of the processing building for equipment and resource loading.

One of the docks is curved to match my track layout. I did not include the coal silo from the prototype, instead I designed in a much larger processing building.

In the future, I plan to add a conveyor from a mine shaft-head building located elsewhere on the layout and feed it directly to the processing building. A similar arrangement exists on the prototype.

As a final note: the vast majority of the trees on my layout use 3d printed armatures of my own design – I’m using the 3d printer for as much modelling work as possible.

One of the huge advantages of using the 3d printer is the cost savings. I spent less than $20 on materials for each of the three bridges and less than $40 on materials for the coal tipple, even when considering all the trial and error necessary to get the parts to fit together perfectly.

I can print and fully flock 13 inch trees for about $1 each. You just can’t touch prices like that using pre-made parts. And with a good paint and weathering job, I can’t tell the buildings are plastic.

The coal tipple was a bit tedious every once in a while and did take a lot of time to print.

However, it wasn’t very difficult in the final analysis – everything is just squares and triangles scaled to the right size.

Throughout, I used the very simplest brain-dead piece of freeware software that came with Microsoft windows – nothing fancy at all! Anything the slightest bit complicated I probably found on thingiverse.com and modified to suit my needs.

Background info: the Slide Rock Bolter Railroad is named after a mythical backwoods creature that barrels down steep Colorado mountains feeding on unsuspecting miners, hikers, hunters, and tourists.

The layout is 3.3 scale miles of O gauge track over a 38.5’x17.5’ footprint.

I run vintage Lionel stock and prefer Santa Fe and Denver Rio Grande roads.

I have the Lionel 736 Berkshire and associated vintage railcars my grandfather gave me when I was five years old.

The cities on my railroad, Primero, Segundo, Jansen, and Trinidad, are real locations on the Primero Branch of the now defunct Colorado and Wyoming Railroad. The printer I use is an Anycubic Viper.

Enjoy!

Thanks,

Michael”

(You can see Michael’s last post here: 3D printed O scale.

A huge big thank you to Michael for sharing his O scale truss bridge pics – you all know how much I like an update.

It seems 3D printing is becoming a bigger and bigger part of this hobby as time rolls on.

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.

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

Andrew has been in touch with his take on model railroad grass:

“Dear Alistair,

Please find attached photos from my new inglenook shunting layout. My first was sent to you and you kindly featured it on your site. Subsequently I sold it on Facebook and have started again.

I wanted to create wild overgrown grass areas without purchasing static grass etc.

Much of the enjoyment I get from building a model railway is doing so for as little or no cost – I am retired so my budget is limited, my time is not restricted and hopefully innovation will keep my mind active.

When mowing the lawn (yard here in Oz) there are always cuttings on the blade guard.

These dry out with the heat of the engine. These are collected and sorted to remove leaves and other detritus.

A selected amount is placed on cling film and soaked with PVA glue and allowed to dry.

It easily peals off the cling film when dry and may be glued into place on the layout.

Best wishes to you and all who follow your blog.

Andrew

P.S. It’s work in progress as you can see. The cattle pens are from used matchsticks cut into 4 lengthwise”

A big thanks to Andrew – model railroad grass comes up a lot on the blog for the simple reason most scenes have grass on them somewhere.

The one that springs to my mind by a country mile is John’s grass ‘how to’:

Add grass to layout.

Then there’s Gary’s:

Model train grass which also looks great.

And there’s Rob’s and Dave’s posts also:

Static grass.

Static grass applicator.

Now on to Peter, because you all know how much I like an update:

“Many thanks for posting by first layout about 18 months or so ago, a 18” x 8” shelf – switching layout that I had a lot of fun building.

Your constituents appeared to like it and I mentioned I was going to build another bigger and better layout. It’s about time to share my progress.

I’ve stayed with the fictitious town of “Amaranth Falls”, this time around it’s much bigger and better.

It is again inspired by the TH&B – the Toronto Hamilton and Buffalo Railway – which was eventually absorbed into the Canadian Pacific railway network in 1987.

I’ve incorporated a number of features and industries that the TH&B served, most notably the Port Maitland marine terminal on Lake Erie, the Canada Cut and Crushed Stone facility near Hamilton and the Aberdeen Yard also in Hamilton.

I’m working my way through the layout stages, but I thought your followers would like to see my progress to date.

I’ve included a layout schematic and one overall photo with descriptors – yes a lot of family and friends are featured with business here mirroring their actual careers and business ventures.

It’s a bit whimsical but I do find this part of the fun.

Thanks again for your wonderful work in sharing the great ideas and layouts everyone is working on.

Peter”

(Peter’s last layout is here if you want to have a peek.)

A big thanks to Peter – please do leave a comment below on your thoughts!

Thanks also to Andrew for his take on model railroad grass. After all the years I still take delight in seeing the different ways of doing things.

I think Tommy from a few posts ago with is HO scale tunnel said it best:

“There is no wrong way, there is no right way.”

That’s all for this time, except that I have discovered one or two of you missed some mailings last week.

It was my fault entirely because it was just me pressing the wrong buttons. If you missed them, here they are:

HO scenery for model trains

N scale river

Double level HO scale layout.

That’s all for today folks, please do keep ’em coming though because it’s awfully quiet this end.

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

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

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