makin a simple loop so I can make things RUUUUN… a little bit more than back and forth on my test track. I have a ton of loco and car projects this will help get the ball rollin there.
pics later, nuthin fancy.
You know, I’ve tried this twice and ended up with layouts.
When we were doing our basement finishing project, I found I had to tear down my first ever layout that I built myself. I got squirrelly quickly and built a small, very simple and modest diorama so that I could at least display my Lionel greyhound Challenger. I was so desperate that I actually hooked up two leads to the rails and pressed their ends to the posts on a 9v battery so that the QSI sound would power up and give me that much of a thrill. Later, even that was insufficient, so I took a 18" X 46" slab of 3/4" ply and used strips of drywall for sub roadbed. Then I tacked some Fast Tracks turnouts and some flex down on it to make a very simple switchback. I powered it for the purpose of getting to play with my new Pennsy J1 but also to improve the turnouts. Well, prove and improve.
It was a useful exercise, in retrospect.
A workbench strip of flex track wired with second hand used auto wire to the power pack was ok for now. Everything new would go onto that track and be enjoyed for days.
Then that crappy bent flex track was replaced by Kato track. Little did I know that this nice straight track was to be my downfall. More later…
I got one big engine. I got a switch to test it on. Then a bigger switch. Then more switches…
That for me is the slide to the edge.
I ran out of that 1 foot by 5 foot table space, visited a club with dozens of feet of track running on portable modules. That was the end of the workbench and the beginning of the layout.
First a loop. I already know that I will be bored with the loop now I find places and need many more switches, track, scenery, trees…
The last straw for the analog was the reading T1 from PCM. Very nice engine but no bell or whistle… what? I have to spend 40 dollars for a DCC Master with buttons to drive the whistle or bell? Who am I kidding?! I get me a big DCC system today and settle that for good yes?
whew… I take nap now to rest.
I use to set up a small oval on our kitchen table once in awhile. It drove the wife crazy but at least I was having fun, lol.
I keep coming back to the idea of doing a small & simple temporary/skill-builder layout…for trying out things before doing on my “main layout”. I have the spare Unitrack to do something simple (no turnouts). Every time I start planning something I get carried away, and end up with something not so simple, requiring turnouts, and taking more space than practical. Then I get frustrated and lose interest.
No need for frusteration.
I have built an industry here in one corner, and the trackwork will go down sufficient to serve that industry. The problem of scenery, roads, people, names etc etc etc are much later in the future.
The main thing is to lay track somewhere and get things moving with the goal of rolling trains. That is the biggest one I think. Take caution to make choices when you discover you liked something about trains more than something else you can always stop and do it over.
Take it one part or layer at a time you will be fine.
Sometime I think a child playing with wooden track peices and wooden train engine, cars etc making and breaking up track patterns and running trains on the living room floor has more fun than we do sometimes.
Dont get lost in the forest of details, work on one tree at a time.
I have lumber laying around I used for my modules, lots of leg pieces, a piece here and there,this mini-venture is almost set already. I had some support lumber mounted on a module piece, can’t friggen remember why that was, its off, now a 2x4 plywood with homosote top is on it, the module is 18"x4’, I didnt care about the overhang. Next step is to piece together another 2x4 module and the circle is done. I already have my shelf pieces there, I just re-adjust the supports. Wall supported. EZ. I will just take wood pieces and screw them across the edges to secure them level. This is something I can easily take apart. But I think it will help me develop the shelf modules better in design. Gonna try to get a puter set nearby to snap pics.
Its about 8 1/2 by 6ish area with a central opening, duckunder to get there. Its close to my design goal, just not exactly my construction goal. I started to work out my roller support for the shelf, its basically the shelf design mounted on a plywood on rollers with assorted supports to hold the wall shelf mounts. Totally portable. I found my design wasnt going to fit well with the current crammed in room till I can clear stuff out, so I snagged the module stuff.
So the shelf mount is put aside for now for later.
I might double track it, throw a switch or 2 in and test out my track plan design(s).
The level height where its at is closer to the N&W/Virginian would be modeled, its a multi-level attempt here.
could get interesting, watch these spots for progress…
yippee, module made, another shelf re-adjust, I used these metal corner thingies to hold the modules togther in line, everything is surpringly solid. I laid down a circle of 22" radius, good enuff to check my BLI 2-6-6-4. The oval has lots of room around it for wider radius and sharper, which is what I am looking for in this plan. Nothings powered or secured (track) done for the day. That’ll be later. This little bit of work made me make the decision to get working on my South Shore Michigan city module and bring it to snuff.
the current module setup allows me to connect to my Michigan city module and test/check it out runningwise. Very nifty, I think I’ll keep the setup for a little while tile that module is brought to a completions level…
the “Big Circle” I just put up would be just beyond this module straight and to the right.
nifteee, I think…
Considering my usual stand on trackwork, what I am about to reveal is rank heresy. Make of it what you will…
Just as soon as I had the basic benchwork assembled for the first section of what will eventually become a 2-car-garagefiller (of which I only had title to one stall at the time,) I dug through the big box of garage sale prizes that have attached themselves like barnacles to the good ship Tomikawa Maru. Turns out that I had a couple of loops worth of Brand X snap-together track (steel rails on black plastic faux ballast roadbed) and even four turnouts. I draped a couple of recently-opened moving boxes over the joists, snapped together a large loop with passing siding plus branches (roughly paralleling where I intended permanent track to go) and set a work train (0-8-0T, four gondolas and a box-brake) into operation.
Having gotten a quick hit of turning wheels, I then proceeded to start cookie-cutting subgrade, anchoring it to the benchwork and installing permanent track. Until I had enough track laid to allow a decent run that temporary loop served as a construction tramway. It has long since gone back into the junk box - but it sure was useful at the time.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Nothing wrong with running a few trains and building a few skills. While I was renovating my train room, I built a 3’x8’ rig that was cobbled together out of parts of older layouts, bits of foam, etc. Here’s some of the scenes I came up with…
I worked on foam scenery techniques, track ballasting, roads, water, and a bunch of other things. I also built a small staging yard, and started experimenting with car forwarding. After I got the main part of the “real” layout built, I dismantled that layout, keeping a chunk of it for a photo module.
Lee
Soldered wire to the rail joiners to get power going, spiked the track down, and hooked a power pak on, and dropped an Gp-35 lettered for the club on, actually ran it, spiked ahead, checked, ran it further. Dirty track, see the sparks zap at the wheels… heh, smell that oxide, whew!
Got it all spiked down, ran it once around…sparks sparks!
This is brass snap track mind you…I’m a baaad boy putting this down…
Got the brite boy, cleaned it then Poooured on the Track-zip, ran it around…mucho bettero.
Now guess what I do next, I grabbed my DM&IR 2-8-8-4. Laid it on the straight part, and started it into the 22" radius curve…soorrrry, AKANE DM&IR 2-8-8-4’s dont like them curves. Well, sometime I will lay down a 24" and 26" and maybe 28" loop for testing. I have a South Shore NWSL little joe which says minimum 26", tho I might test it on 22", no guarantees…
sooo after this, put away the 2-8-8-4, switched power supplies to the BachMann EZDCC, I put my BLI 2-6-6-4 on. Whoosh, Wheeeerrrr, its alive, ITS ALIVE!!! Whata sound system…
It got around the loop fine, but then, whats this? The pony truck is off. There is one spot I already knew where a curve is on between modules and their not an even fit, a slight hill.
The pony truck was on the curve and the inside wheel was lifting off, and when it got to the straight, the pony truck couldnt correct and off it goes.
I threw an outside guard rail at the derail point but that didnt help.
So I turned the engine upside down and looked. I didnt think the pony truck has enought “play” room to manipulate. So I pop the cover off, man they had those mini-screws tight!!
On the pony truck they had a spring thing pressing down, I bent it to make it have more pressure downward, then I filed part of its swing restricting material off so it could turn further. Put it back together and it ran better over the “hill” spot. Not perfect
I went this approach for about 6 months until I had enough locomotive and cars assembled that nothing could move. I had filled up the entire test track… I knew it was time to get my butt in gear and build the layout.
THREW TOGETHER A SMALL SWITCHING THING TO AMUSE MYSELF AT WORK WHEN IT’S QUIET AND TO MY SURPRISE IT TURNED OUT JUST LIKE HOW I WANT MY STATION AND SURROUNDING TRACKWORK FOR MY REBUILT LAYOUT(STILL IN PROGRESS) [swg]
Theres the silly circle. What, got all this up in like 2-3 days?
The screamin BLI 2-6-6-4, bought it before they had the sound legal prob. a few years old already. It got its first real excersize today.
The Akane DM&IR 2-8-8-4, massive. Won’t run on this circle…
The initial groundbreaker loco, SJV GP35. It has interior and working 1.5v constant lighting all over the place, but my DCC DC test on it blew them…
SJV caboose, marker light LED’s, works in both directions directional on DC. pre DCC stuff here…
I may be giving a whole bunch of equipment the test around.
I’ll explain the first pic, the concept is shelf modules, and the reward portions are on shelves, simple plywood/homosote base. The longer module on the shelf at the rear is the narrow gauge rescued from the club layout, it is designed with the module idea I have going. It is functional now, I can run an engine over most of it, with a few tortoise machines on it. Its laid away like that to work on other projects. Thats whats neet about the modules. Then when the design time is right, I’m back on it. All kinds of other gobbly gook on shelves just waiting for a place on a layout… or nick nacks whatever. Yes thats a brass South Shore car laying on the shelf.
The area your looking at is just about what I am after what the modules will do, but the front modules are supposed to be curve modules and a little smaller use area. Most trackage will be on multi-levels and looping back. Modules at the very front will have NO background so you can see thru them to the rear.
The modules are built on a mini-wood box-like framework of 1x2’s. I can use the L-Girder approach on this easily. The modules rest (or might hang off the top support) directly on commercial wall shelving. MR had an article on shelf design and I tried building it, it was really way too much fiddling to make it. The modules will be clamped to the shelf supports and I may design some kind of adjustable raising support to take care of slight height differences.
I will try this on my Michigan City module.
lots to do!!!
How do I plan to shift trains from level to level? My rule of thumb, ZERO helixs, the track will meander thru scenery, loop back, be hidden undeneath inside modules, or a planned “Unhidden” track that runs on the module outside to gain/lower track height.
The end result with so much going on will be a little spaghetti-like, but my goal is to pack the action in.
its a good thing I did this, as I keep snagging equipment and checking them I find little things that need working on, My South Shore Little Jow has a stripped pony truck thread holding the sideframe, now I know why the wheels keep coming off.
My Virginian EL2b’s, one wire has pulled off, anothe keeps wrapping around the universal joint, needs attention.
My newer South Shore 700 has some wiring needs, a few stripped wacky loose wires touching the wrong place. a Model Trains FA doesnt run well, a freight car wont stay coupled, this and that, the list goes on and prolly grows. Making this loop also allowed me to re-organize the room and make more needed room. whew, stuffed up around here. Every one move I need to make finds me shuffling about 10 or more shtuff around. makes anyone go maniac…put up a flourescent light I had sitting around, woops one lamp busted, 2nd lit fine, yay!! gotta buy another…its been a busy day here already and it aint done yet.
Christmas cleaning and phun I guess…
Now that my garage remodeling project is almost done, I plan to build a double track test oval.
It will have 36/38 inch curves at the ends and 12 foot straight sections between.
In addition to testing, and retuning all of my stuff that has been in boxes since 1984, I will use the straight areas to build the 3 x 8 foot modules (excuse me, dominos) that will be used in the layout that I am planning.
Just to get something running after 24 years will be very exciting.
I havent had a solid personal layout for years, was involved in a club for a long time, I had a layout going in my previous place but a move whacked all that out. Today, I think I have an even better layout Idea than I did then, so maybe the wait is a good one.
Yeh the club had to move and we had to tear out a big layout, bummer. The new place is right next to the NS in a freight depot in Mishawaka IN, how much better can you get for a layout place…depot was built in the 1880’s…historic…