Micro-Layout in HO Scale (and a bonus layout in N scale)

Who says layouts have to be big?  I hear people say “if I had room, I’d have some trains”.  What they mean is if I had room, I’d have an oval for trains.

Those folks need to check this layout out.  Spotted at the International Railfair in Roseville, CA about 2 weeks ago, this layout has 3 industrial spurs, a sector plate that allows the locomotive and one car to move between tracks, and requires about 45 minutes to complete an operating session.  The spur closest to the backdrop reaches a hidden opening in the backdrop that allows loads to be moved on and off cars spotted at the opening.

According to the owner, he built the layout from scrap lumber and parts, with only about $50 of new parts for shipping containers.  The scrap all came from his main home layout.  However, in my opinion, a small layout like this would be perfect for someone in an apartment, a dorm room, or with limited resources.  One small locomotive and a few cars, a power pack, and you’re basically out of the armchair.

Bonus Feature:  “Food Train Layout”

At the train show, my wife found a “Terrain for Trains” plastic-formed layout.  Since I gave up my N scale plans about a year ago, she’s wanted to find a way to run her “Food Train”.

You see, she’s a baker.  The fact that she loves to bake had lead her to collect N scale rolling stock with food-related products or decoration.

Tis being a light week, we’ve ben working on the new 3 foot by 5 foot layout in the evenings (my ow Yosemite Valley layout is waiting for a Boy Scout event to occupy the layout room one more time in early December before the benchwork starts going up).

Here is a shot of the little laout.  By the time we tested the track last night with a GP7, we discovered that all the turnouts were bad and need to be replaced.

Keep watching, I’ll post pictures as we make progress.  This is going to be a family project, so you’ll get to see our different interests occupy different spots on the little layout.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-Jeremy

Let’s Build the Ashford Tower!

It’s about time for another structure article. Therefore, I’ll be building the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh’s “Ashford Tower” that’s offered by the great, but not well known manufacture known as Railway Design Associates. Their excellent structures are very similar in construction and molding quality to the popular DPM kits, and their kits have plenty of realistic character without looking like a characture. I bought my tower kit off of eBay directly from their online store for $20.00 and free shipping.

The kit itself is really quite nice and comes with plenty of extra details, obviously from other kits they offer. For any model railroader, this is a huge benefit to get so many neat detail parts in with your kit in addition to your building kit. It definately is an accurate kit with sharp details and some really beautiful windows, including the unique oval windows on the top of the first floor. They even captured the unusually thick 22″ concrete walls of the prototype!

Construction is pretty straight forward, like a DPM kit you must first file down the walls so that they’re square where necessary, then paint and glue it together. For paint I used Floquil “rattle-cans” in Tuscan Red for the base color for the roof (*we’ll weather and fade it out later.) and for the concrete I used rustoleum textured concrete paint for it’s excellent realistic color and somewhat rough finish.

For this kit, I wanted to really detail it since all the windows would probably be open and clean. I went about scratchbuilding a varnished wood floor and scratchbuilt the electro-mechanical interlocking machine found in many towers from the 1920’s.

The long wooden cabinet houses the electo-mechanical interlocking device, but that balsa-wood floor simply won’t do. I took thin basswood sheet and cut it into scale planks with kitchen scissors. I then varnished it with a mix of craft paint and acrylic gloss medium. I typically don’t gloss anything I model, but I felt the interior of this building would benefit from it once it’s illuminated with bulbs.

There’s the floor test fit into the building, I still need to paint the window detail on the inside of the kit.

The interior was then detailed after the varnish dried with a variety of detail parts I had on hand. The guy in green is a Micro Machines figure, perfect HO scale by the way.

The Interior was then test fit..

Stay tuned for part 2 which includes the final details and weathering.

Part 3: Atlas Wooden Turntable Goes Steel

To follow this project from the beginning, check out part one and look at part 2 with interest and make sure you’re all up to speed, because here’s where it gets complicated.

Okay, since the design of this turntable is essentially a pin-connected steel truss bridge lying in a concrete pit. So now it’s time to break out a package or two of Central Valley’s bridge parts. To make the bridge, you need to assemble 4 identical truss bridge pieces. A smart idea would be to make a wooden jig and assemble the pieces accordingly. I need to draw up some scale plans for the truss spans, I’ll post them in a while. It isn’t too difficult to take the photographs found in the first article and modify or compress them to fit on our atlas turntable.

the photos above shows how the Central Valley bridge pieces connect to the I beams attached to the main frame in the last article.

Basically, each truss piece should attach to the I beams, then you connect each truss span together with bar-and-pin fittings from the top of each truss span. The first truss span seen in the photo below was a prototype. Each girder was cut with a razor saw, and fitted together with Walther’s goo. The rivet plates were made from 0.003″ brass, the rivets made from gently tapping the point of a screw into the brass in the correct rivet pattern, pretty tedious work that doesn’t make that great of an effect. I might go with styrene in the next version with archer rivet decals handling the rivet details.

Next, we’ll tackle how to distribute weight on the turntable, work on the pit rails and give it a rotation test.

5 Modular Layout Concepts

Using stiff paper cutouts, you can play with modular layout concepts without filling an entire sketchbook full of shapes. I took one sheet of paper and made inch-to-a-foot scale (1:12) representations of my current collection of layout modules, and then went to work developing a new way to re-arrange them.

All of these are designed to fit in a 10X12 foot space.

The Highgrove Division:

The Downtown Warehouse District

The Tidewater Coast Line

The Urban Junction Trunk Line

The Foothil Branchline

With 25 days left in the layout contest, keep sending your layout plans along for a chance to see your plan come to life as a layout right here on this website and win a prize while you’re at it!

My Official New Layout Contest!

First of All the Rules and Prizes:

The Layout will have to utilize the unobstructed 10X12 foot space allocated for the layout, but keep in mind that you don’t have to use all that space. If you can come up with an interesting, fun to operate, and smaller plan you may be a winner just as easily as someone who takes up that much space. Also keep in mind that you must use the module shapes provided in the photo at the bottom of this post. One of these Modules is known as the “Midland Industrial District” and is a small 1.5′X7′ switching layout whose plan can be found by clicking here.

The layout must be fun to operate and incorporate a smoothly laid mainline and plenty of interesting industrial trackage. I also require some nice scenic open areas and would prefer to avoid a spaghetti bowl. For inspiration, check out the list of layout concepts below.

Okay, to sweeten the deal for my new Layout concept the winner of my trackplanning contest will recieve a certificate for one weathered car or locomotive ($60.00 in value) or a Walther’s Trainline GP-15-1 in Chicago & Northwestern Colors or painted Missouri Pacific blue, but Unlettered. It’s a DC locomotive with a smooth drive and probably not hard to install DCC in.

The Contest will run for 30 days from August 10th through September 10th. The winner must provide a reliable e-mail address so I can contact them to let them know they’ve won.

The Basic Concepts: (Choose ONE theme and run with it)

1. Is a tidewater layout, lots of sloughs, saltponds, one huge salt plant and a handful of other industries. lots of water, but no real port scene, perhaps an abandoned cannery or something. (Examples in real life would be Monterey, Calif. Alviso, Calif. Crockett/Hercules/Antioch, Calif. and into the Delta)

2. Is a portion of Southern Pacific’s coast line near San Miguel Calif. I’d scratchbuild that beautiful mission and most of the unique downtown structures that can be found around it. It is the most prototypically ambitious project of the bunch and would require some research

3. Is a depiction of the Alameda Belt line right here in Alameda. Trains in the street, that huge life bridge and a really huge cannery structure. The problem is not a single thing in alameda is easy to scratchbuild and would take a long time to get running because of the lift bridge and specialized trackage.

4. A user-suggested layout idea, left via comments at the bottom of this post.

GENERAL INFORMATION:
1. What Industries would you like to center your layout around?
Depends on the Concept you choose to build your plan around (of the four chosen above)

If it’s the San Miguel Layout:
-Camp Robertson in the Cold War, lots of Military Vehicle and troop train traffic.
-Grain (pre covered hopper)
-Packing Houses for fruits and vegetables.
-Lumber Warehouse
-Oil Company Dealers
-Box Factory

If it’s the Tidewater Layout:
-Docks and a Warehouse
-Oil Company
-Cannery
-Cement Plant (Could have a narrow Gauge connection)
-Salt Plant (Could have a narrow gauge connection)
-Boat Building Plant
-A carfloat slip or ferry connection
-Steel Fabrication Plant

If it’s the Alameda Belt Line layout, I’ll provide a list of actual industries.

HERE IS THE LIST OF AVAILABLE MODULES TO USE WHEN TRACKPLANNING:

2. What problems/issues (if any) did you encounter while building your Model
Railroad?

Tracklaying is my greatest enemy and I aim to overcome this issue with this particular layout.

3. For the current project, what scale are you planning to use?
HO 1:87

4. Do you wish to incorporate narrow gauge? Yes No If yes, which gauge? Maybe, if you want, some small point to point HOn3 for industrial purposes (Salt Plant? Dockside Warehouse? Quarry Spur? Large Cement Plant?)

5. What particular prototype? (For example, New York Central or Santa Fe)
Southern Pacific, AT&SF, maybe WP

6. If no particular prototype, please describe what type of theme you have in mind
for your layout.
My Freelanced Mission Valley and Pacific will play a central role to the layout’s train operations… A quick snapshot would be Small steam, (all smaller than USRA 2-8-2) and early diesels (Baldwins, EMD FT’s, etc.) with 40′ freight cars and 60′ Harriman Coaches.

7. What era? (For example, 1940’s through the end of steam.)
1954 exactly. Perhaps the occasional jaunt to 1939.

OPERATIONS:
1. What type of operations?
Point-to-Point or Continuous Loop? Either is Fine, or elements of both.
Multi-train YES, but not necessary.
Hump or Classification Yard NO Switching/Peddler Freight YES
Passenger YES Interchange YES
Lake or River Ferry YES Port/Barge Terminal YES

2. How many potential operators? 2-3 Number of trains in continuous operation? 2-3

3. Operators will be: adults 2, perhaps a third guy as a brakeman.

4. Do the operators have a basic knowledge of how real railroads operate?

5. Will you require central train control systems and signaling? No, although that would be cool, that’s something to consider for sidings.

AVAILABLE SPACE:
1. Where is the space? Second Floor Room, 12X10 space in a much larger room.
2. Does the room have climate control and dust control? Not Really.

5. Minimum aisle space. 24″, but 18″ if it’s necessary.

6. Bench height? 48″ with NO GRADES please.

7. Is “duck-under” or lift out construction acceptable for access to certain parts
of the layout? Yes, Duckunders are fine, although I’d prefer some sort of lift bridge like my old layout, which was a 2X2 square of mainline that lifted out.

8. Maximum acceptable reach to track 30 inches.

9. Is it acceptable to put track anywhere on your layout? Y N If no, what
areas are restricted? (Describe)
Track is fine anywhere as long as it looks realistic.

10. What ratio of track to scenery? (e.g. 50%-50%)
Make the Industrial Districts vast mazes, but as soon as you hit the country, a single track (or double track) mainline at most through rolling scenery.

=Are there any special under layout requirements?
Since the modules are 48″ off the floor, it will obviously be used for the storage of boxes, shelves etc.

= Minimum Radius Requirements: 24″ Mainline Radius, as tight as necessary on industrial trackage, and will allow for 15″ on spurs. I’d prefer #6 switches for sidings and #4 switches for industrial leads.

-What season of the year do you wish to represent?
Spring or Early Summer (Feb-May)

IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS, feel free to post inquiries below in the comments section or visit the offical contest thread either at Railroad-Line Forums or at Trainboard.com.

Today, The Highgrove Branch Filed for Abandonment.

Today, the Highgrove branchline of the fabled Mission Valley & Pacific Railway was approved for abandonment, and after a final train pulled the last cars out of the yard, a layout that has lasted 4 years and traveled 40 miles has been seperated into 10 modules and dismantled.

Like a jolt of some strike-slip fault not unlike the mighty San Andreas, the modules cracked apart revealing the foamcore “earth” . Thus severing the railroad’s mainline, uprooting trees and leaving destruction in it’s path.

Building a layout is a rewarding exercise in the classic sense, and of course every modeling magazine will tell you that. However despite this they don’t seem to tell you so many of the more bittersweet moments of model building. You will rarely if ever finish a layout, and I’d say that barely very few of those reach a state of noticeable completion. As is the case with the Highgrove division.

It’s not so much the actual visual completion either. My original concept was to accurately model the AT&SF’s San Jacinto branch layout, but this wasn’t realistically possible using the fun, but inaccurate trackplan in the 1980 model railroader article featuring the real branch line, which is located near Riverside, Calif, in the southern California “Inland Empire”.

With more research and plenty of trackside photos graciously e-mailed to me in the last few years I eventually gave up on that strict prototype view since my trackplan would require expensive revision to even get a remote resemblance to the rather mundane track layout found on the San Jacinto branch.

The buildings on the real San Jacinto Branch were appealing, the trackside industries modelgenic, the old former California Southern Ry. Victorian depots fanciful and ornate, but I didn’t have the time or will to scratchbuild them. Thus further deviation into the realm of kits.

The scenery along the actual line was…boring. No actual rivers, flat land, and farm fields and tract homes. Although Lance Manheim would probably have tackled it with remarkable finesse, I learned that I enjoy a little bit more flavor to my layouts. Not to the point of characture, but not so minimalist as to fall asleep while operating the layout.

In this time I was also hopelessly influenced by my local East Bay Area railroad scene, many excursions out to Alameda Island to take photos of the remnants of the ABL fired my desire for water features and street running. I also have always had an active interest in the Southern Pacific’s Coast Line around San Luis Obispo, and my river module represents the Salinas river to an extent further unfocused me from my original layout goals.

As for construction techniques, the Modular system is unbeatable, but for my next layout I need to follow some standards to ensure reliable operation. All of my layouts have had less than operable trackwork for some reason, which leads to frustration 9 out of 10 times. I’m seriously considering building a FREEMO-style layout using their standards, that way I can take a portion of my layout to shows and such.

Using decomposed granite as a earth surface not only worked really well for my layout, it also looked great. I’m seriously considering using it again for my next layout. It also made an excellent, realistic layer of dirt to then add a layer of foilage atop. I so think I’ll experiment more with this static grass stuff though in the future.

From an operational standpoint, it’s a remarkably nice layout to switch and operate. If my track were bulletproof it would have easily been a very impressive layout. Atlas switches pretty much killed any operating fun I had, unfortunately. Their crude frogs seemed to be my worst enemy when it came to operating rolling stock.

It was a fun ride, but not as satisfying a layout as I’d hoped. It’s room-filling 9X12 size was impressive, but since it didn’t operate without a derailment every 5 minutes I’m glad I can move on to a more interesting, new layout concept.

So sit back and watch as another layout develops before your eyes in the next year or two. If you want to check out the layout some more, click on the “HO Layout” catagory found in this post, and see it from start to it’s bitter end.

SP Common Standard Turntable from an Atlas Model PART 2

Now that the concept proved successful, it was time to dive into actual construction. Luckily, I had a turntable lying around from a display I took to shows last year, and although it was nicely weathered and a nice model in it’s own right, it was cheaper than buying a new one.

I began construction by salvaging an Atlas turntable motor from another damaged model I was given. The motor and gears worked fine, and recycling is paramount to any model railroader. So I installed the motor onto the turntable and then soldered wires to each rail in the center, so I could run the electricity up onto the future bridge.

I also purchased a 12″ by 12″ plexiglass sheet to use for the new (non-rotating) turntable pit. I traced the circumfrence of the atlas model with a pencil onto the plexiglass and lightly scored the plexiglass. I then used the “scribe n’ snap” method for making a remarkably perfect circle. If you look closely in the above photo, you can just make out the plexiglass disc.

Next, I had to build the open steel underframe for the bridge that would span the turntable pit. Most turntable scratchbuild tutorials go for the classic plate-girder look, but I decided to go for something more interesting, as you know. I built it almost entirely out of styrene “I” beam structural shapes I had laying aound. The main I beam is a scale 4 feet tall, laying on its side making the strong center beam.

This really took alot of patience and a couple failed attempts, which I suppose will make good shop clutter or scrap loads. I had to not only cut all these I beams identical widths, they had to be notched to interlock with the large “I” beam.
If someone knows a really great, smooth and clean way to cut structural shapes like these to identical lengths please post a comment, I’d love to hear it. Eventually I got the necessary amount ot structural shapes cut and began putting it together.

Now that the underframe is complete, it’s time to build the pit rail and outrigger wheels to support the ends of the turntable. In our next two installments, we’ll build some truss structures and the outrigger wheels.

Atlas Turntable Kitbash- From Wooden Wonder to SP Common Standard.

The Atlas turntable has been a staple of model railroading for more than 40 years, and still sells well today. However despite it being one of the most mechanically well-designed turntables in existance, it is a model of a very unusual prototype. Wooden plank turntables did and still do exist today. The wooden plank turntabe was used in the late 1800’s for street railways, cable car operations and small industrial railroads to not only provide a means to rotate motive power but also to serve as an accessible pedestrian or vehicular thoroughfare when not in use. It also would have been installed in areas where a turntable pit would have been dangerous or not feasibly built. Despite these advantages, they were expensive to maintain and all but a very select few survive today. Most, if not all of them were “armstrong” turntables in which an operator had to push on the piece of equipment to get it to rotate. Other examples of armstrong turntables include “gallows” style turntables and very early cast-iron turntables, all dating from the beginning of railroading forward.

Due to the fact that the wooden plank turntable is an extremely rare type of turntable, it shouldn’t be on as many layouts as you see them on. The benefit of the Atlas model is that you don’t have to modify your benchwork in any way to use the turntable, which is a major plus compared to nearly any other model on the market.

In this next series of articles I aim to get a solid, non-rotating turntable while achieving the detail of a Southern Pacific Common Standard 100′ turntable, albeit selectively compressed. It won’t be an easy project, but it’ll reward you with an excellent looking and operating piece of equipment that’ll always work well.

The Concept

The Idea is to cover the rotating top of the turntable, to legnthen it to the outer edges of the device and create a highly detailed steel turntable structure to be visually appealing and eyecatching.

From a mechanical standpoint, It’ll have wires soldered to the rails on the deck that’ll be fed up through a tube to the rails at track level. The whole turntable will swivel from this central tube which is glued to the former top of the turntable.

A new concrete pit will be scratchbuild out of acrylic sheet and painted. Pit rails will be installed to guide the outrigger wheels on either end of the bridge.

The extended edges will allow a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 (with Vandy Tender) to turn itself around, which was impossible before the modification. This opens up the turntable to medium sized motive power and it can also turn an SD-45T-2 with ease as well.

The first step was proving my concept before jumping head first into a complex project, so I cut a large doughnut shape from grocery bag paper electrical tape. Testing out the false bottom concept was a success, it turns fine as long as there’s clearance over the former wooden top of the turntable.

Follow along as we venture into the complex world of constructing a turntable from wood, brass, styrene and acrylic sheet.

Here’s a sneak peek…

Model What Used to Be: Abandoned Trackage.

Since the beginning of the railroads not every commercial venture between two steel rails has always worked out for the better. There are over 10,000 miles of abandoned right of way in the US alone, probably much more if you count yards, sidings and industrial spurs.

Often, abandoned right of ways tell almost, if not more of a story then the active lines you’d model on your railroad. Most times bridges were left in place, signals still standing (some still operating years after the track has been abandoned!) Of course embankments, ballast and the right of way itself will remain until redevelopment or nature destroys it.

Railroads merge and traffic dries up, creating duplicate routes and usually the one that’s costlier to maintain is abandoned. Case and point would be the Southern Pacific’s Altamont Pass line. It was steeper in grade and featured sharper curves to the rival Western Pacific mainline just across Alameda Creek. Rails were removed in the 1980’s when much of the traffic along the line had disappeared, and what was left was easily served by the WP mainline (namely the Kaiser Gravel Plant at Radum, between Livermore & Pleasanton, Calif.)

The mess of industrial trackage that can still be found in most American cities that experienced industrial growth before 1940 is another interesting example. Really tight curves, crossovers, diamonds, double slip switches and small yards would be utilized to efficiently serve the major industries of the day. Often the buildings were built with the curvature of the railroad tracks in mind, as were fence and property lines. One can trace former industrial trackage without great difficulty as long as it hasn’t been completely redeveloped. Many older industries simply left the trackage in place and removed their mainline connection (usually a switch) sometimes they would have a few obsolete railroad cars delivered before this would happen to be turned into storage.

When railroads fail completely, due to lack of traffic or commercial business reasons, the right of way is either left to rust or ripped up. All infrastructure except for ballast is sold off and the grade is left to nature. Most often when this happens, especially if it’s in a scenic location near affluent residencies, a “rails to trails” program is started, which usually paves the right of way with a bike path. The Southern Pacific’s San Ramon Branch is an excellent example of this, as is the Northwestern Pacific’s line to Tiburon. It would be interesting to model a little paved pathway with bikers and joggers with evidence that tracks once existed there.

Disasters can also cause a line to be abandoned. The Eel river plagued operations on the NorthWestern Pacific railroad up in Norther California’s Redwood Empire. The river would rise more than 40 feet, washing out bridges, flooding tunnels, destroying buildings and eroding embankments. Eventually the line was so unprofitable that it was abandoned. Plenty of other hard-to-maintain railroad lines have had their rails pulled up.

Here’s some excellent examples of abandoned trackage:

Let’s Build an HO scale Art Deco building!

Art Deco was an architectural movement that superceded the Beaux Arts movement in the mid-1920’s and progressed through Art Noveau and eventually turned into Streamline Moderne in 1940. A lot of new materials were used to define art deco architecture from the styles that proceeded it. One of the major materials that was popularized during the era was Vitrolite, an opaque architectural glass that covered the facades of the new structures. It basically is a giant leap forward aestetically from the stones, bricks and wood that was ornately used in the Beaux Arts movement. Also, the mass production of sheet aluminium, copper and stainless steel opened new doors for materials to adorn structures.

Geometric designs were very popular, many of these geometric designs progressed forth from Art Noveau’s heavy lean towards nature themes. Deco added the unusual step of “modernizing” ancient architectural styles, most successfully Neo-Egyptian. Neo-Moorish and other ancient civilization’s architectural motifs were added as time went on until the surprisingly odd “Pacifica” style flopped at the 1940 world’s fair in San Francisco.

THE MODEL

Anyways, I choose a somewhat modest structure as a starting point, as I wanted it to be noticed, but now outrageously overdone. I eventually picked the “The Beacon News” building in Paris, Illinois as my inspiration. This building is covered in turqouise Vitrolite, with the letters actually made from cut black Virtolite built directly into the wall!

My building differs from the original in two ways, the Virtolite panels have become tiles, and the brick has been replaced with stainless steel sheathing.

The first step was to measure and cut the facade. This was done with an HO scale ruler, and I tried to keep the tilework matching the edges of the windows for a nice clean design. After I measured them out and marked the edges, I came in with a razor saw to cut the windows out, and cleaned up the flash with my exacto knife.

I then set took the facade outside and sprayed it a turquiose base color and let it dry.

In the meantime, I started work on the walls. I have plans to use this structure in the future, so I wanted to have all four walls detailed. The back 3 walls are made from 0.60 styrene for strength.

To simulate the board-formed concrete walls typically found on these types of buildings, I came up with this solution.
1. First you apply the tile to the edge of the building that’s facing the facade. Then take a piece of thin balsa sheet and cut random sized boards less than a scale foot wide and as long as necessary.
2. After you’ve made a substantial pile of lumber, take some carpenter’s glue and cover 1/4th of the wall, spreading it evenly. Then in a staggared fashion, build up the wooden wall, trimming the edges that overlap. I added small transom windows to let light in from the sides of the building, while still giving the newspaper employees some privacy.
3. I sealed up the wood with concrete colored paint. This step is essential!
4. Then I covered the entire wood portion of the wall in glue, to further waterproof it.
5. To fill in the cracks, I mixed a couple of teaspoons of hydrocal, which I dyed with a dab of concrete paint, and pushed it into the gaps, completing the illusion of a concrete wall (This photo will be shown in the second part.)

I temporarily placed it on the layout to see how it’d fit into my downtown.

Stay tuned for part two!