Hello everyone, I just wanted to share some photos of my nearly-completed Z scale layout, the SOO Line M&M Sub set in rural Wisconsin/Minnesota.
The layout lives/travels in a green hard-sided suitcase, but is seen without it for the sake of photos.
Hello All,
Great work and photography!
Hope this helps.
Looking good. You’ve come a long way since I saw you in St Albans.
Have fun,
Richard
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AZ6oaDKNh9A
Here’s a “short” video on my layout.
“Short”!!! It was so short my eyes didn’t have time to focus!!!
It was long enough however to see that you’ve got it running smoothly.[tup][tup]
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Harrison, this is really sweet. Nice work.
The tunnel portal ceilings look dangerously low, did you shorten the castings? They remind me of top-of-train scenes in “The Great Train Robbery”, where Sean Connery did his own stunts and – facing backwards to the end of the train – had to stumble “just in time” so that he didn’t get bonked to death by a bridge coming up that he could not see. Terrifying to watch. He would not have survived a roof walk on your train.
-Matt
It was a 3D printed tunnel incorrectly scaled, which I learned too late. When I get bigger equipment I will have to expand or “daylight” the tunnel.
This is interesting to me because my mainline goes underneath my town, but in planning my layout my grade had to be steep and I only created a grade sufficient to get the tracks in the town high enough to clear the trains underneath. I accounted for roadbed depth, but it didn’t occur to me that in having my town sit so low over my tunnel, the portals would stick up above ground level in the town. I would rather there was a little rise of topography behind the tunnel portal before the town grade was reached, but I didn’t think of it.
In looking at all the tunnel portals available from Chooch and Woodland Scenics, etc., I started looking for ones not so tall, and not being very familiar with AAR tunnel specs, I didn’t know if there is a minimum clearance, whether it would stand out as being unproto. I thought maybe you had gone ahead and shorted some commercial casting.
Anyway, I noticed the shorter clearance but it doesn’t look wrong or bad to me. I wish I had those (in HO scale).
-Matt
Great work! So you can run them in your hotel room? Great idea!
Jerry
I can run them anywhere, but the idea is to use it to show the possibility of model railroading and Z scale. It also makes for some great views/clicks on YouTube, and I hope to “sneak” the layout into a train show (with permission of course).
Really cool layout Harrison, thanks for the fun pics and movie.
Regards, Peter