Model railroad layouts plans

Brian’s blown off the dust on one of his Walthers HO scale buildings:

“Hi Alastair,

made a change from my usual wooden buildings and assembled/kit bashed a plastic building.

This is a Walthers HO scale plastic Sunrise Feed mill one that I have had stacked away amongst my unbuilt kits for a very long time.

I really liked this kit and said to myself that I would build it someday.

This is what it would have looked like if assembled as per the instructions.

I temporarily assembled the main building to see what needed to be done if I wanted to modify it.

I placed a card stock floor in it in case I decided to open a door or two later on in the build. (Another mistake that I made, should have cut out the door first).

Satisfied with it so far, I sprayed it white and would weather it later.

The roof was cast in black plastic and I was not happy with it looking the way it did.

I sprayed it with a coat of Matt grey and once that was dry, I sprayed it Matt black. Again when dry I used a very old worn sanding block and proceeded to lightly sand it to bring out the edges of the tar paper. Small top roof sprayed but not sanded yet.

Added my usual weathering techniques to the roof and main building after all the windows were inserted.

I rusted up the metal (plastic) parts ready for the final weathering. The wood (plastic) deck got the same treatment and the chimney on the side office was added. The foundation was painted a concrete colour and weathered later.

Signage was added in the following photos.

Need to add more details once placed on the layout.

The next part of the build was the (I call it the storage/warehouse) that would go next to the above on the left hand side.

Because this building would be next to the main building, a full wall was not in the kit. No problem to me, I matched the siding of the main walls and found the same wood siding in my stock of wood.

Marked it out using the opposite side as a template and then glued the structure together. This is where I made another mistake, forgot to cut out the door on the front side but managed to do so without any damage.

Same method used here for the roof. Sprayed the black roof with grey paint and once dry, sprayed It with a red paint. Before the painting was done, I cut a few joins and lifted the corners on the tar paper to represent different lengths. I sanded the roof again using a fine sanding stick to bring out the edges. – Note the elastic band keeping it together to make sure it all fits together properly before gluing it together.

A flaw in the moulding process was quickly patched to show repairs on the roof.

The structure was sprayed yellow for a change. The foundation will be painted a concrete color and weathered.

A dummy floor was added inside and a few details put close to the open door. The wood deck on the dock was added as well as pilings under it. Details were added to the deck ready to be weathered.

Finally I will add signage to it once I have figured out a name for it.

Waiting for the sign writer to add his bit on the roof sign.

I was not that happy working with this plastic kit and in future will stick to scratch building in wood.

Until next time – keep modelling.

The HOn3 guy in Knysna RSA”

A big thanks to Hall of Fame member, Brian for sharing his Walthers HO scale kitbash. I do love his stuff.

And now on to another Hall of Famer, Dave:

“Hi Al..

I have been having a few track problems after the hot summer weather due to expansion etc, its something we all get and is a constant part of keeping them running smoothly doing repairs.

I have shown on here replacing some track adding new points and also soldering between joints on the points (crossovers), something I don’t usually do, but this has left it running far smoother, so something I shall probably do in the future.

Also I show laying ballast, then adding grass ,and then using my CMX track cleaner

Regards

Dave”

A huge big thanks to Brian and Dave.

That’s all for today’s missive.

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 Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

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.

It reminded me of Allen’s power plant: HO scale power plant.

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.