Model railroad layouts plans

Brian’s been back in touch, this time showing us his modifications to his HOn3 turntable:

“Hi Al.

Some time back, someone on the blog asked how I modified my Atlas turntable to be powered from underneath it.

Here are two modifications that I did to two separate Atlas turntables. Below is the actual Atlas turntable.

Below is a photo of the Tamiya Gearbox that I used. (purchased from a radio control shop) part number 103 – universal type, mounted onto the underside of the turntable.

A very quick and simple mounting with a metal shaft supplied with the gearbox through to the top side where the plastic shed would be placed.

I replaced the supplied plastic corrugated shed with the turntable to a more fitting shed that suited my era. Happened to be the exact size. Photo below shows it in place on the turntable.

The new gearbox is less noisy than the existing one and more reliable with gearing instead of a rubber band drive.

I am very happy with the result.

The shed can be seen on the left hand side over the original drive plate as shown above.This one was added to the upper level of my layout many (about 12 – 15) years ago.

A surrounding ring was cut from plastic card to cover and hide the original track placement guides and will be covered with ground cover eventually.

Next, I decided that I needed another of the same type turntable on the lower level of my layout beyond the harbour to be able to have the locomotives running in the forward position. The lower level being point to point and has a turntable at the other side.

That one was a modified Heljan ‘n’ scale one as seen below.

One of my friends in our WhatsApp group had a spare Atlas one which I obtained from him for the new location on my layout as seen above.

I did a lot of thinking about this one and decided that it needed to be an “Armstrong “ type which with be manually operated. (By hand)

I did not want to cut a hole in the layout for it to fit in as a jig saw (or any saw) would have caused too much vibration and jolt all the surrounding buildings and details.

A start was made by adding HOn3 track over the HO standard gauge track and short wires would be soldered from the track below to the one above it. Here, the motor base has been removed (right hand side) and all the associated gears. In doing this, the turntable no longer uses the “Geneva “ system of locking it in place.

Below I added wood side supports for the “A” frame that would be over the track.

Below I added a wood deck over the existing plastic one.

fter a bit more thought, I figured that the outer circle would have to be removed to lower it into the cork roadbed.

After carefully scribing the under side of the outer ring, it popped off and minimal cleaning was required to the table itself. This is the outer ring cut off shown below.

The photo below shows almost everything in place ready to be placed on the layout. Note the NBW castings added. Still need to add more. The cables to keep it level will be installed next.

Cables installed below

The last item to be installed is the arm on one side of the top the turntable next to the track to be able to push the table around. I used 14 mba brass nuts and bolts which look pretty neat.

With this modification, it spins nice and freely.

Very pleased that it has worked out as I was very apprehensive about cutting up a new Atlas turntable.

The new turntable is right at the front of the layout therefore easy to operate without knocking any of the surrounding buildings and detail.

Once it installed, I will post some new photos of it in situ.

After biting the bullet and listening to other modellers about the colour of my facia boards, I changed the colour to a medium grey. (Don’t know what I was thinking way back then) with the green.

Once again, big thank you to Al’s excellent work on the blog.

Brian – the HOn3 guy in Knysna RSA”

A big thanks to Brian. Some clever stuff going on there with his HOn3 turntable. If you want to fast forward and see how it panned out, it’s here: HO turntable conversion.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming – it’s still very thin on the ground this end.

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.

Dean’s been back in touch with his latest missive – plaster cloth mountains – and they look great:

“Al, from Dean from New Mexico.

Here is the next installment on my Conejos Valley Railroad layout construction in which I continue the scenery and build a mountain. I’m using a slightly different construction technique compared to how I built the hill in the last installment.

But first, some history if you don’t mind. When the Spanish moved into the new world, they quickly populated Mexico, then moved north to as far as central Colorado (as evidenced by place names such as Alamosa, Salida, Buena Vista, and Pueblo). Towns such as Durango, Antonito, and Chama were named by the Denver and Rio Grand Railroad when they came through and set up the towns as railroad towns.

I picked the name, Conejos Valley Railroad, as it is a real river valley in southern Colorado and is a conceivable place for a real railroad.

What’s in a word! Conejos, means rabbits, and people like me pronounce it conehos, although the Spanish j is more uvular. In an earlier blog, someone (with tongue in cheek) noted a similarity between conejos and cohones. Spanish is all about vowels and here are some examples:

Conejos — rabbits

Cahones — drawers (in cabinets not pants)

Cohines – cushions

Cohones – look it up!

On to important things.

I started building the mountain using layers of cut and glued Styrofoam. But as it got higher, I wanted more internal space, so I switched to an alternate method using plaster cloth over tape and wadded newspapers.

In retrospect, I should have used more strips of tape as the resulting hill was too bumpy. Tunnel entrances were cut from the Styrofoam.

The formed mountain was covered with two layers of plaster cloth soaked in water.

Rock castings (using Hydrocal) were placed into the mountain and plaster mixture was placed between them and carved to form more rock formations.

Incidentally, I waited too long, and the set plaster was very difficult to carve.

I painted the areas representing dirt with my usual paint mix, and then spotted the rocks (with Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber) and colored all the rest of the rocks with Black.

All stains were acrylic artist’s paints highly diluted in water.

I then coated the surfaces with dilute White Glue (1 part plus 1-2 parts water) and spread ground cover somewhat randomly over the wet glue.

I used my usual Earth, Yellow Grass and Green Grass Fine Turfs (all from Woodland Scenics). I used minimal Green mostly along the river bed.

Finally, I glued (with White Glue) Light Green, Medium Green, and Dark Green clump foliage (Woodland Scenics) to represent trees and bushes.

I’ll add deciduous trees along the river when I form it and the waterfall through the valley.

The stained tunnel portals were fastened in place with Joint Compound. And here is the final result. After cleaning the tracks, I ran some trains which you can see below.

Next, I’ll add a small central hill, streets and roads for the towns and industries, and finish the river and waterfall.

Thanks, Al, for all your support.

A big thanks to Dean for sharing his plaster cloth mountains step-by-step.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming I’m nearly out of stuff to post…

And if today is the day you get going on your layout, just like Dean, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

Brian’s been back in touch with a cautionary tale on track curve radius:

“This saga started nearly ten years ago when I retired and decided, with the financial manager’s consent, to build a new ‘engine’ shed in the garden to house an N gauge railway,
which you will have seen in previous videos, and shown again a few days ago on Al’s daily ‘blog’.

It was all planned back then on paper incorporating mostly Peco set-track curves giving the maximum curve radii in the available width of the layout – Peco curves No.1 ST12
and No.2 ST15.

As the layout was planned on three separate levels, I did use some flexible track to make the curves on the lower level to reduce joints (and possible long term
problems).

Now despite what everyone says about layouts never being finished, within 18 months Grandpa’s Wonderful Railway (GWR) was complete with scenery and running smoothly to the Grandchildren’s delight and that’s been the case for several years since.

However, things started to go awry back in 2021. That year, Kato released their Hitachi Class 800 five-car model in N gauge, in both UK operator liveries, GWR (Great Western Railway – Intercity Express Train) and LNER (London North Eastern Railway – Azuma).

The Class 800 (Electric/Diesel) trains came into service in the UK in 2017 for GWR and 2019 for LNER. I had to have one on Grandpa’s Wonderful Railway!!!!!

Mine arrived, and as expected with Kato (you may remember my Kato Orient Express post/video on Al’s blog) the engineering and detail were exquisite. Out of its presentation case, and on one of the bottom level tracks, it looked great.

On the parallel track in the other direction was a Virgin HST (Class 43). They both disappeared into the tunnel but didn’t come out! Investigating, the two trains had made contact on the curves at one end of the circuit and derailed.

I had reduced the radius on one of tracks in order to form a reasonable size inspection ‘hole’ in the baseboard for me (or one of the Grandchildren) to clean the track from underneath.

I hadn’t had problems before on these curves with other trains, so it was obviously down to the Class 800 longer units. The only solution was to run each train on that level separately, one in the station and the other operating – not a major problem.

When Al put up one of my previous posts recently, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a video of my Class 800 running and give a cautionary word on ensuring curve radii are maintained on parallel tracks.

So, in an effort to identify exactly what I’d done and give accurate information, I went out to the layout this morning to do that.

Unfortunately, in eradicating spiders’ webs from the offending corner the hand held vacuum cleaner nozzle clipped the track and dislodged the flexible track joints which formed the curve! The track separated, sprung out of the sleepers and is now ruined!!

On a readily accessible part of the layout, a repair would be reasonably straightforward, but the damage is to the lower level circuit, and very difficult to work on. I’ll now have to think of a way of repairing the damage without removing the baseboard, track and scenery above it.

Morals of the story –

1. Make sure that you maintain recommended spacing between parallel curves for various trains. Ideally, try and include the maximum radius possible.

2. Make sure that you have access to any hidden track for clearing derailments and cleaning track.

I hope you enjoy the Kato Class 800 video I’ve included.

Best to all.

Brian, Wokingham, UK”

A big thanks to Brian for sharing his track curve radius advice – parallel curves feature quite often on the blog, clearly the are particularly troublesome.

Please do leave a comment below if you have any advice to share.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming – it’s still looking like I might be putting my feet up in a day or so.

And if today is the day you get going on your layout, just like Brian, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.