Model railroad layouts plans

Lawrence has been back in touch with his steam HO scale.

(If you missed his first post, it’s here: Lawrence’s HO layout.)

“Al

An update to my layout.

I started last summer a complete novice. And now I am paying for that lack of knowledge. I did not know to solder all the track joints. So now I am going back and soldering them, and in most cases, means repositioning the track itself a little bit.

Slowly as I can afford it I am getting autos, people, and animals. I have made all the trees, about 400 of them.

If a lot of the buildings look familiar, yup they are from Al’s gallery. I used 0.04 styrene sheet for all of them. Including dividing the inside of the buildings for future lighting.

In my previous set of pictures, I had put the track down and then redid a lot of the track to work with steam engines. Well until two weeks ago I only had one steam engine. It was a passenger engine and coal car. I had both tracks working 100% both ways.

Two weeks ago, I got my second steam, freight engine and coal car. The new one is four inches longer, so guess what! Sixty percent of the curves are marginal off for the new engine. As you can see with one of the pictures I lifted one full curve and realigned it to allow my new engine to run.

Most of the scenery is pretty much done (ya sure thing?). The farm layout has wheat, and corn fields, cattle and horse grazing.

The mountain pass has a motorcycle club riding in. The group fits the time era of this layout as the are the Boozefighters MC which is the first motorcycle club established, in 1946.

Have included an area for camping and hunting. Unhappy the hunters I could get only used guns as I hunt with a longbow.

The lake is two layers of about five eight inches deep of deep water. I did it that way so I could use a trick I learned on here. After the first layer of deep water had hardened I added the rice for the fish, glued in. then added the second layer of deep water.

The fish are inside the water and with the light they have a shadow on the bottom. The boat also has its shadow. And for those that watch Doctor Who you will find a Tardis.

I added the basic drawing of the layout. A couple of future plans to add this coming summer.

I did not add the electrical design for the lights. I have a long way to go before I get there. But the power supply has been build from a computer power supply. From left to right is 12V at 32 Amps, 12 V at 0.5 Amps, 5V at 18 Amps, 3.3 V at 18 Amps and ground. Then there is the power on switch, and power light. The three-position switch if for front of buildings, sides or back of buildings, and street lights respectively.

I learned a LOT both by doing and reading all the stuff sent out by Al. I want to thank Al and all the rest of you for passing on the great layouts and knowledge.

Lawrence”

A huge thank you to Lawrence for sharing his steam HO scale layout.

It’s wonderful to see a layout come to life, and even better when we all get to learn from the odd mistake too.

It’s also nice to see the printable buildings on a layout too. Lawrence has done a particularly good job on the barn.

Lawrence’s post also reminded of Paul’s:

Steam model railroad.

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.

Barry’s been in touch with his model railway power station scratch build:

“Hi Alistair,

As an avid reader of your e-mails, I thought it was about time I added some material.

I have a high detailed sub station with transmission towers but nothing to feed it power, so I decided to build a power station, and what more iconic than the Battersea power station.

Couldn’t find any suitable kits, so I decided to scratch build one.

I got hold of a set of the original plans and proceeded to scale them.

After wasting a couple of days building the towers, I realised they they were way too flimsy even with reinforcing, so second attempt I used stiffer brick card and machined timber formers for the top of the towers to save all the cutting.

Then I started of the laborious task for marking the windows and cutting them out.

Then it came to glazing them all with some nice windows I managed to scam off Metcalfe Models. Dressing the top of the towers and gluing the front and rear walls to the towers. Then came to side walls completing the main building.

For the smoke stacks I used a suitable wooded dowel and tightly would and glued regular reflex paper.

I then found a suitable striped cement pattern on the web and printed that and glued onto the paper tube. Next I had to figure out how to make the conical bases for the chimneys. I tried making the out of stiff card, but a dismal failure, I really needed a lathe, so I went and bought one! I had all my old lathe tools from my engineering days, so turning them was easy.

Next was the final assembly and all went well. You can see all the progress photos in the photos along with the final finished model. It just needs some weathering on some of the edges.

It’s a large model, but pretty well to scale, and 400mm wide and over 400mm deep.

Just waiting on a couple of Heng Long smoke generators to connect to tubes going up the chimneys.

Enjoy the photos.

Regards

Barry”

A huge thanks to Barry – can’t wait to see the weatherd version of his model railway power station.

It’s wonderful seeing what you all get up to and how you overcome the issues of your layouts.

That’s all for today.

Please don’t forget the Beginner’s Guide is here if you want to get going on your own model railway adventure.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

I have a collection of your model train layout builds today.

Do you know, after all these years, I still enjoy seeing what turns up in my inbox:

“Hi my name is Herb from Melbourne Australia I miss receiving your emails, so i will send a couple of pictures of my layout.

Not much too talk about, & i don’t model any spefic era as my son is austic.

But we get out there & have a great deal of fun & father son bonding time & i believe that’s what’s life is all about.

Plus we get out from under my wife’s feet well that’s all for now.

From Herb & Rick in the land down under.”

Now over to Rob:

“Alastair,

I am located in Up-State New York, USA, but my OO layout is the North country (imagined) portion of the West Coast, Scottish Border, portion of the pre-Nationalization LMS. As a result I have to scratch build most of my buildings from heavy card stock. I reference them from photographs from the mid 1920’s and there are a lot of stone cottages and farm buildings.

To give them the right look of white washed, rough cut stone, I have found that I can use a product called “White Out”. It is a correction fluid used to mask errors on written or typed materials. I use it to “paint” on the stone pattern, building up random “stones” to give the walls of the cottages the right look. This is then given an over all wash of white acrylic water based paint. Then I finish it by weathering it as would be done for any structure. I have tried using the embossed plastic sheets, but found them to not be to my liking, as they are too “predictable”.

To do the roofs and sides of farm and industrial buildings, sheds, and the like, that use corrugated iron sheeting. I lay down a thick coat of Elmer’s “Carpenters Wood Glue” on heavy paper stock. Let it start to set up (2 or 3 minutes) and then pull a fine tooth hair comb across it. The result, when fully dried, is a very useful representation of corrugated iron sheeting that is easily cut to shape, painted, and given proper weathering.

I suspect that these are not unique ideas about how to create specific effects for scratch built structures, but I thought I would pass then on, as they may help some other modelers with similar challenges.

In closing, I have followed your postings for a number of years now and found them to be both helpful and inspiring. I can not tell you how much I appreciate what you bring to model railway building…. THANK YOU!

Rob
Endicott, New York”

Next up, Frank:

“Lee I have been receiving your messages for over a year and really like them. Many tips have been very valuable.

In June of this year I started to build a new layout modeled after a small Connecticut town where some road work was going on. One piece of equipment is not to scale because I cannot find it . Finishing up a few scenery issues and fine tuning the running two trains. I might add a few smaller buildings but not now.

Notice your card structures in the background.

Also solving a few small electric issues .

Great fun.

Thanks for all you do .

Regards

Frank”

It’s always good to see the printable buildings on your layouts.

And now on to Bob:

“HI AL … plan to keep your layout flexible … do not make everything so rigid that it becomes too much trouble to make modifications …

allow for the rearrangement of some scenry (trees) and layout accessories and buildings … minor adjustments to track … maybe add a siding …

the whole concept being similar to rearranging furniture in your home to offer a new perspective … I have found that this approach gives me new incentives and extends the pleasure of the hobby by working the mind …

always have a theme in mind for your layout … give a function to different parts … city … industrial … rural … give the trains a place to go … for me it was the small town USA … along with coal, oil / gas and freight …

FYI, the Gulf oil tanks on my layout were made from coffee cans … 6 1/2″ in diameter and 6 1/2″ tall …

my layout is a 6′ x 18′ dog bone, 3′ wide in the middle … 90 sf of table top surface … runs two trains, over and under action with bridges … four sidings … fun to run

BOB”

A big thanks to Bob, Frank and Herb.

I so enjoy seeing your layouts – some love the scenery part, some just love running trains. There is no wrong way to enjoy this hobby!

Tootling along at your own pace is the best way to learn how to build a train layout. They are never finished – and the ones that are very nearly finished inevitably turn out to be the draft version for the next bigger and better one.

It’s all about making that start… remember it’s the start that stops most people.

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.