Model railroad layouts plans

Mike has been in touch with his N scale oval layout:

“Hi Al,

Just completed a small N-Scale project over the holidays. 2X4 platform, a simple oval, paper houses, foam mountains. It’s my first N-Scale so nothing fancy just getting my feet wet on this one.

Best,

Mike”

And Cameron’s still beavering away (here’s his last post):

“Dear Al,

Yet another instalment.

With the three main building out of the way I moved onto the other minor structures. It may seem counter intuitive to build all the buildings and structures ahead of the scenery but on a small layout I find it helpful.

This way I can experiment with subtle changes to the locations of the structures before they are fixed in place. Even on a layout like this, where I am essentially copying a real location, there is still a bit of artistic licence.

The additional structures include a stock pen, power pole, loading guage, fences and trees. The stock pen is plastic but the other elements are largely brass and metal.

I found with my last layout is that scenic items like, trees and posts tend to get knocked around a bit as you are using the layout. By soldering these out of metal I can make sure they robust enough to handle my children’s enthusiasm.

The trees are made using wire from electrical cable twisted to form the truck and branches. I then take a small length of hemp or brown string and chop it up into small fibres only 3-4mm long. I brush a bit of white glue onto the very ends of the branches and scatter the fibres on top.

The visible parts of the truck are then coated with a mixture of plaster and white glue to hide the twisted wire. This assemblage is then sprayed with some grey/brown paint. Once dry I spray the tree with some contact cement (Quick Grip is the product in Australia) and sprinkle on some fine Woodland Scenics ground turf.

You can repeat the last process until you get the desired effect. Believe it or not it is easier than it sounds and best of all is a very cheap alternative to ready made trees.

The wire boundary fence is made from square brass stock with thin wire soldered onto the uprights.

Cameron”

Fantastic stuff from Cameron and Mike. Of course, I’m biased, but I loved seeing the printable buildings in Mike’s layout.

If you’d like to share any tips or pics (or whatever) please just hit reply to any of my mails. If you’re attaching pics, probably best not to send more than 3 pics per mail, otherwise they get lost in cyberspace. But send as many mails as you like to get them over…

A big thanks to Cameron and to Mike for sharing his N scale oval layout.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you stop dreaming and start doing, 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.

Cameron’s been in touch again, showing us how to build ho scale buildings from scratch.

If you missed his last post, it’s here.

“The prototype that I chose to model (St Kew Highway) had three buildings. A small signal box, a goods shed and a private owners store shed. This is one of the great things with such a small layout, there is not a lot of buildings to make.

What became more of a challenge for me was that none of the buildings on my prototype were available as plastic kits. I decided to use this as an opportunity to learn how to scratch build.

The first one I started with was the goods shed. Fortunately for me the original architectural drawings of this building were available on the web. I used these along with black and white photos of the original shed to piece together the structure.

The model is made using Wills plastic sheets along with Evergreen styrene sections and plain styrene sheet. It was very rewarding working up a building from scratch in this way.

Perhaps the greatest challenge with this approach is painting. All recorded images of the buildings were in black and white. To solve this I collected more recent colour images of buildings in the same part of Cornwall to replicate the colour of the stone.

For the elements of the building that would have been painted originally I sourced a copy of the Southern Railways painting specification from the 1930,s which provided a comprehensive specification for the paint colours and locations.

I’ll give more detail on the other buildings in the next post.

Cheers

Cameron”

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And Cameron’s post encouraged John to send this in too:

“I am nearly complete with another layout and should be sending you pictures shortly.

It is another HO scale Inglenook designed for American pattern equipment. I hope my little layouts can inspire others who fear that they do not have time, space, or talent to build something they can enjoy. One of these days I hope to be able to order some of the very nice models so that I can send you something different from my usual fare.

In the meantime; here are some pictures of a recent project in O scale… It is a little freight house made almost entirely from cardboard salvaged from soda can boxes and cereal boxes…

Sincerely,

John”

A big thanks to Cameron for showing us how to build ho scale buildings from scratch. And to John – can’t wait to see the updates.

Don’t forget there’s lots of scenery you can make from the printable buildings – here’s a quick video of a scene John put together:

Quite a few of you asking about bus wires in the last post, and as always, there’s been lots of replies posted. I do love reading through the all the comments, questions and answers, so please do keep ’em coming.

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.

Cameron’s been in touch with the start of his Inglenook shunting puzzle:

“Dear Al,

It’s been a while since I’ve been in touch but fear not it has not all been idle time.

During the last 12 months I have been working on a small shunting layout called “Lanarth”. Over the next couple of weeks I will email through the commentary and progress photos I took along the way.

The story starts at a model railway show I attended last year. One of the gentlemen at the show had a small shunting layout based on an Inglenook Shunting Puzzle. If any of you get the chance to try out an Inglenook shunting layout I would highly recommend it.

They are a lot of fun to operate and have the benefit of being quite compact. Google “Inglenook” and you can get all the details and track plans. Needless to say I was hooked and had to have one of my own.

I had already started to have thoughts of doing a larger layout set in North Cornwall at some point. I had also collected some LSWR rolling stock and a Beattie Well Tank locomotive that suit that region.

After a bit of research I discovered an older station called St. Kew Highway that had a nice compact goods yard that I thought would lend itself to the shunting layout.

Using the inter-web I found old photos and plans of the station and started to amass the research material I needed to complete the layout. Since I was not slavishly duplicating the station I have called my layout “Lanarth”, named after an old farm next to the original station.

The final layout is 1′ x 4′ which is great because I can fit it on top of the side board in our dining room.

With a track plan sorted and some research sitting behind me I got on with the base board. This is always a great starting point with any layout as you seem to get a lot done in a small amount of time. The base board is 1200x300mm.

For its construction used 9mm marine ply top with a 42x19mm pine support frame under. My last layout was built on with an MDF top and
35x70mm pine frame.

This ended up at 200kg and proved to be very difficult to move. The marine ply has proven to be very stable and quite light. I also wanted this layout to be contained within a large box. The idea here is to protect the layout during transport and keep the dust if it.

Rather than doing this after I had completed the layout I made the box first. This way I was able to bit fit the base board and box together without worrying about damaging any scenery.

The box is made with 6mm ply and 42x12mm framing. The front edge of the box has the ply built up to look like it is much thicker than it actually is.

Cheers

Cameron”

A huge thanks to Dave and to Cameron for sharing his inglenook shunting puzzle. Can’t wait to see his updates.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if you’re still sitting on the fence about whether to start, 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.