Model railroad layouts plans

If you missed Arnie’s incredible video last time, it’s here.

And here are the answers to your questions on it.

A big thanks to Arnie!

“Hi Al,

Many thanks to you Al and all the many readers for their continued, highly supportive comments and feedback. If I may, I would like to briefly address some questions often asked of me:

• The layout is rectangular and measures 8 feet by 5 feet (I am attaching several photos of the entire layout from several angles to more clearly give you the actual size perspective.)

• It took about 2 years to build, but additions and modifications continued over the past decade till the present.

• No. I don’t live in the Susquehanna River Valley (SRV) region (I live on Staten Island in New York City). But I chose to roughly model the SRV after coming across a layout plan years ago. I then juxtaposed crude or fanciful representations of actual locales (e.g., Susquehanna, Susquehanna River, Starrucca and its Viaduct). However, these locations do not exist in the real world in physical proximity to each other as may be implied on the layout.

• Scenery was predominantly created using a multitude of Woodland Scenics products (from rock molds to turf/ground cover to water simulation…)

• And an appreciable amount of extruded home insulation foam was carved and used to form the various elevations on the layout and for underlying support for track and rock faces. Rock faces attain a realistic appearance by applying various shades of stains and acrylic paint washes.

By the way, none of my techniques is a deeply guarded secret. I would be happy to share and provide anyone with How-To-Do instructions on any area of interest stimulated by my layout videos.

And as many continually ask for more videos, I recommend going to my Youtube channel (privprac48) where many of my videos are available for viewing.

Thanks to all again,

Arnie”

“Hi Al , have been on holiday up in Scotland , now returned and showing off my class 3 Loco won in a draw , I show how to fit the dcc decoder , and then some beautiful coaches I have bought to match up with the class 31 that I purchased earlier.

Regards

dave”

Thanks to Arnie and Dave. And please 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.

Arnie’s been back in touch.

And my word, he’s made a wonderful video.

Yes, it’s a little longer than most, but very much worth making the time for.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable 22 minutes, I promise:

“Hi Al,

It’s been a while since my last contact and submission to you. However, I just completed a new video I thought I would share with you and the readers.

It’s entitled, “Life on the SV&S – Past and Present.”

It’s a sort of fictional historic perspective of the Susquehanna Valley on my N scale layout; the locale, its people, scenery, wildlife and the trains that have traveled the region from the steam era to the present.

I apologize that it’s significantly longer than my previous videos.

I composed it of ten small segments, but decided to put it all into one comprehensive video in order not to lose the sense of continuity I wanted to capture.

I hope you and the others will agree with my decision when you see it and I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks,

Arnie”

Hope you enjoyed it as much as me – it’s a stunning video.

Please do leave your comments below!

That’s all for this time peeps.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you finally get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

“Hi Al.

First take the signal and pop out the red lenses.

Now carefully drill by hand with a drill bit with black electrical tape to act as a grip on the drill bit.

Carefuly drill out the hole to make a tiny bit bigger than the led diode. Careful not to touch or damage the lens cover.

Touch the signal head with black paint to make brighter and darker looking. now slip in the 3mm red flashing led,one on each side and line up the negative and positive leads to each other.

Now bend the positive post to cross the other positive post. snip off just anough positive post touching each other so it make contact to each other.

Bend the post close to the diode itself. Now do the netgative. Okay you have the positive crossing the other positive as in photo as well as the negative. Now you have both led’s installed and eack post is bent to touch positive to positive and negative to negative.

Take phone wire and slip the positive wire under the positive lead’s and solder very fast as not to melt or heat to much.

Take the negative and do the same. Keep the wires in line so they will trail down the post of the signal. now if you noticed at the bottom of the signal post there is a tiny slit. I pushed the positive wire and negative into that slit.

Where you slip the signal into the slot of the crossing, make another tiny slit and push the signal post into place and presto your done.

Now when you apply low voltage power to the wires they will start.These are 1 second flash diodes and wont work at the same time.and if they do it wont be a sec before they will work seperatly.and if they do flash in sink cut power and add power again and that will throw them off.

You can hook them to work with your rail signal’s to go off when they do. Or can let them run all the time as a static working signal. So easy to make,and works super.Im also making yellow warning flashing street lights.even made a green yellow red stop light with flashing diode.I sent in this photo to show the slit I make and how it is wired.any question’s ask me okay.

Oh after done you can paint the wires silver to hide them as the post is silver too.okay my friend be back with more fun lol

Kim”

And a big thanks to Kim.

Please keep ’em coming.

Best

Al