Model railroad layouts plans

Kim contributes a lot to the site, and here’s his latest:

“Hi Al. A popsicle stick greenhouse cut sanded painted with light installed. Ho scale”

“Hi Al.I picked this set up on ebay for $3 free shipping.you can desolder the lights out or cut a section free to use in coaches and homes and such.even use to add extra lighting to your locomotive.The wheel is 12 volts and there is a lot of led’s.I used a almost dead 9 volt battery to lite them up.Comes in many colors.”

“lol Hi Al.I made up this hmmmm garden thingy lolwill cover it alittle with plants.”

“Just a photo of a pool i put next to one of my windmills filling up.

Kim”

“Hi Al,

I am sending you these photos, maybe you or someone may find them interesting.

On a recent Grand Pacific Tour of New Zealand, we stopped at Oamaruru in the South Island.

It was there I came across these locomotive remains, the locomotive had been tipped into the sea many years ago after it was withdrawn form service, it was recently recovered.

There is workshop there that belongs to the Oamaruru steam and rail society, they let me have a look inside the workshop.

They operate trains on the old line to the wharf, which is no longer used.

Paul”

Paul’s pics reminded me of the train graveyard in Cuba (that post is here), which I found fascinating.

I’ve also been a mailed a youtube of it:

Quite sad to see them in such a state!

Keep ’em coming.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

“I just started this layout in January this year. It’s on two 4×8 sheets off plywood and foam.

Tom”

“Hello Alastair,

I enjoy all the movies. I am having problems with windows 7, but I cut this down after it was too large to send to you.

Sorry is is so short. The leaky creek is a twenty five foot long loop at the side of a recreation room and the opening allows someone to get at the refrigerator and bar for the rec room. Another sections rolls out for storage. Your fans seem to enjoy movies, so here is a shortened one.

Photos you are from the motor swapping done on the Hallmark E3/6.

Bob from Hamiton Canada”

Just loved Bob’s entrance to his layout. Very slick. Bob has also written a book – I have asked him for more details.

And I thought Tom’s mountain work was very impressive too.

That’s all this time.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

“Hi Al

My tip is a modified version of a process, for making Z scale pine trees. Instead of twisting wire and chenille fibers in a drill, I got a long piece of a “giant chenille pipe cleaner” (see pictures ) which is 6.5′ long and 1″ (~18 scale feet) in diameter.

My local craft store carries these and it has fibers already twisted in wire. For a 40′ tree, I cut off a piece about 2.5″ long then remove about 1/2″ of fibers on one end to form a trunk.

The cylindrical shape is trimmed with scissors to form a typical pine tree shape then sprayed with hair spray and sprinkled with Fine Turf. Different trimming can vary the shape of the tree, so they don’t all look the same. If it will be seen, the “trunk” can be coloured with a furniture touch-up pen. The process takes about 5 minutes at most.

Hope this is useful to others.

Larry”

“Hi Al,

Thought you might be interested in the layout I’m building. It’s N gauge and modelled after Southern Germany in the 70’s & 80’s. It’s in a purpose built room attached to my wife’s craft room (which is located in a large shed ) with an adjoining door to take advantage of her A/C, and a door to the shed.

The room is 7 metres by 9 metres and I decided to build the layout in an “L” shape. Because of the limitations of the room the main framework was made with runners, made from drywall supports.

Then the actual layout framework was fitted with 16 castors made to take a total weight of 240 kilos. This allows the layout to be rolled forward for access to the back.

The layout consists of three main circuits all interconnected, one with a reverse loop incorporated. The height of the tracks raise from base level to 4 inches. The minimum radius is 15 inches. There are 12 electric points, 2 crossovers and 2 double slips. There will be multiple tunnel sections so infrared detector circuits were made to track the trains through these areas.

From the start of building the room till now has taken just on 12 months. I decided to go with DCC and after some trial and error I came to grips with it. I have a Tomix track cleaning car which is DC and I’d read that conversion to DCC was problematic, so I made the layout to operate on either DC or DCC enabling the cleaning car to be used with a DC loco.

Obviously the DCC locos are removed for this exercise. I made large clearly marked connectors for power supply so there’s no doubt about which power is being used. If you’re interested I’ll keep you informed as the layout progesses. You may remember the chair I made to do the wiring.

Regards

Roger”

I remembered Roger’s chair. Superb!

That’s all this time folks. Please do keep ’em coming.

Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al