Model railroad layouts plans

Brian’s been back in touch, he’s been adding to the HO scale train buildings on his layout:

“Hi Alastair,

Please keep up the excellent work you are doing on your blog. I am sure that this is very much appreciated by all your followers. I do not always comment on them but read all of them and save to a folder.

Herewith an article of two kit rebuild/kit bashing plus some work on/under the layout.

I added a few more pictures at the end of the article of the never ending work around layout room.

Many many years ago I built this Pola (a European kit manufacturer) as it came out of the box with no modifications to it other than paint and weathering.

I pulled it out of my cupboard and decided that I can use it on my layout but it needs a complete rebuild.

This is what it looked like with the old roof after cleaning all the dust off it with a few details on the boring looking platform in front of it.

The first thing that I decided was to re spray it grey and the doors and windows green, add an interior of some sort.

As seen below, I marked out a double door opening to make a front loading/off loading building. As an afterthought, I did not like the grey paint scheme.

I delved into my bits box and found a double door resin casting which I promptly split in half to fit the new wider cut opening in the front for the Goods to be added. Apologies for the poor picture quality.

Next I test fitted the opening with the doors. This was before the repaint to a brick colour.

Next the building received a coat of brick coloured paint and the doors were painted green. The windows were painted an olive green.The two decks were roughened up to show lots of wear and tear. The weathering process will follow.

A name for the industry is still to be determined. Possibly an engineering works. I will print an appropriate sign once I have figured out what to call it. The deck has been painted and weathered as well as the doors.

Starting to add the details around the outside and inside the building.

Added a small tank to the side deck. I will still add more details to it.

Below I have added one of my resin cast stores (a lean-to) to the side of the building.

I was not happy with the original roof and found a spare one from a similar kit at a friend’s place which he kindly donated to me and this made the building look much better. (The old original roof that was removed was saved and will be used elsewhere). This building is now ready to be installed on the layout.

While I was scratching around in my cupboard, I found this station kit (a cast plaster one and cannot remember who made it) that I built about 40 plus years ago. This photo shows the finished product.

This is what I found in the cupboard amongst a lot of unfinished buildings started many years ago. (What’s new? and I am sure that a lot of us do this) I also found a damaged HOn3 box car.

The remnants of a previous attempt at building a small station was also in there. Does not look that good and no wonder I did not complete it.

I decided to add the two together to form a small passenger/freight station for the next section of my layout on the lower level. Two pieces of cork were glued together to give me the base at the correct height.

I had some random stone castings that I used to surround the base.

A wooden deck was added, roughed up, plank lengths scribed onto it and then stained and weathered. More of my casting details was added to the end of the platform.

Added details on it from my bits box to finish it off. This is where I really appreciate having spent time (an hour or two) on painting castings for my bits box that are ready to place as I build new (old????) structures when needed.

A small dock crane was added to load/offload goods. Figures were added as well as some details on the right hand side of the station. It is now ready for placement on the layout.

The Pola building took me four days to complete and the above station about seven days.

The next big project is to mount 28 Blue Point switch machines, under all the points. (Turnouts)

This is where I was fortunate enough to think ahead when I built my layout to allow for access under it. I mounted casters on the bottom of the cupboards to allow them to be moved to be able to work underneath it as seen below. Work in progress.

This photo below shows the tight space I have to work in/under at the corner.

Topside the wires from the Blue Point switch machines can be seen coming through the points above.

Slowly getting the track back in place except for the dropper wires to the buss wires underneath. The white piece top middle is the supplied template to use for positioning the point motors underneath.

This is as far as I am right now.

Until next time.

Brian – the HOn3 guy in Knysna.”

A big thanks to Brian for sharing more of his HO scale train buildings.

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

Eric’s been back in touch with this simple N scale layout:

“Hello Alastair

I am still here and well. I retired from the Fire Department last April after 41 yrs and 9 months. A year flies buy when your playing with trains.

I am sending the small size N scale layout pictures from the beginning. I will update over a period of time.

I named it “Flying By The Seat Of My Pants” due to I got this Thomas the train table and I had to do something with it right?

So I bought some Kato track, 7 turnouts and some supplies. That gave me a good start. It took a while due to many thoughts I had. I didn’t want to move on it to quick.

Beginning the simple N scale layout process.

It was constructed on 1″ foam board. I built up area’s with smaller pieces to make rock / raised areas.

I started doing the cover up of foam board by painting it with Woodland Scenics earth color paint. After the second coat I then sprinkled in the turf in the wet earth color where needed.

I dug out a small lake / large pond in center of layout.

I then layed out the track plan with some changes made to it a couple times. One of the changes was I cut through one of the mounds for a spur.

I then started mounting foam board for the mountain witch will have a tunnel thru it.

Starting laying the N scale track by the plan. I wanted this layout to be busy track wise with minimum of three different routes plus the spur.

After track was layed I then began gluing it in place and digging out the foam where the wires lay for the turnouts.

See part two for the process of building the mountain on the layout coming soon.

Thank you Alistair for all you do for this great hobby.

Eric The Retired St. Louis Area Firefighter”

Simple N scale layout:

A big thanks to Eric for sharing his simple N scale layout. It just goes to show, it doesn’t have to complicated to have fun.

It reminded me of Bill’s: Cheap N scale starter.

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

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

Dean’s been back in touch with a step by step on his N scale roads and streets:

“Al, cheers from Dean in New Mexico!

I recently made some more progress on my N-scale Conejos Valley Railroad and have completed the road system for the entire layout.

This includes all major roads and streets (concrete and asphalt) and a few small lessor roads (gravel). I’ll show your readers here how I did it.

I used Woodland Scenic road tape to define the major roads and their Smooth-it for the pavement. I used their gravel (finer than fine ballast) for the lessor roads.

First, I moved around some buildings that I wanted to use until I liked the arrangement; this was done before I started pouring roadbed.

Readers of my Scenic Ridge railroad will probably identify these buildings since I stole them from that layout temporarily. I’m going to rebuild them at leisure.

Here’s the arrangement I ended up with showing the building placement. Some of the buildings (six in the main village area are Woodland Scenic kits, and some are ones I built using my 3D printers).

Here’s how I put down the road tape to define the foundation for the engine house. I put down a lot of masking tape to protect the surrounding areas.

And here I’m pouring the Smooth-it material, mixed according to the instructions (one part water to two parts powder).

After all the roadways and streets had cured, I cleaned them up with scrapers and sandpaper blocks. I then painted them with acrylic paints:

concrete: Apple Barrel (Amazon) Granite Gray

Asphalt: ditto plus 20% black

Finally, I aged the surfaces with graphite or chalk, and striped the pavements with very fine black or white pens.

Here’s what the gravel roads looked like.

N scale roads and streets:

I made the bridge across the river again using my 3D printer.

Here are some more photos showing the results for this N scale:

I’ve also been finishing up the track ballasting and adding scenic turf to the open areas.

Thanks for everything you do, Al, and thanks to my viewers!

Dean”

A huge big thanks to Dean for sharing his N scale roads and streets ‘how to’.

(You can see Dean’s last post here: N scale passenger station.)

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 More N scale layouts here if that’s your thing.