I am a brand new reader of this excellent Forum and this is my first posting here.
I have been a model railroader most of my life. I have had a number of small layouts, but am mostly an O-Scale kit and scratch-builder.
I am planning to add on to our garage for a layout room, as I own a small house. The layout will be small to medium sized in an area roughly 18 X 20 feet. It most likely will be L-Girder and plywood/homasote, cookie-cutter built. All track joints will be free to move, but the gaps will be solder-jumped for conductivity. The rail will be nickel-silver, flex and hand-layed as a combination.
Here is my problem: I live in Glens Falls, N.Y. and it is not uncommon for winter temperatures to drop to -20 degrees F in the winter months. Also, our winter is usually 6 months long, so this room will need to be well insulated and heated.
Because I’m not made of money, I plan to keep the layout room just above freezing, which will be most of the time. When I’m working or operating, the room will probably be at around 60 - 65 degrees.
Does anyone in the group have any experience with this kind of a situation. Can I do what I have planned and what kind of problems can I expect. By the way, I also rebuild antique radio’s, so I will be asking the same question of the radio crowd.
Our large HO scale club layout is in a building with no heat or air conditioning, and that has had no adverse effect on our layout or the trains.
Temperatures here can vary from a low of 10 degrees Fahrenheit to over 100 degrees, and humidity extremes are normally within a range of 10 to 60 percent, depending on the time of year.
Temperature conditions that you are facing should have no effect on your track or the radios. Changes in humidity will effect the wood that your railroad benchwork is made of, sometimes to such an extreme that your track will buckle. Controlling humidity will yield better results than worrying about the temperature extremes.
I, too, have worked with antique radios and their cabinets are made of much better wood than anything you can find today, so the temperature should not bother them but drastic swings in humidity can.
Thank you. I had not planned on doing anything about humidity. I know there are some days here where the humidity will far exceed your 60%, so I had better plan on a decent size dehimidifier.
I know you said you had no problems with scenery, but I was wondering if you feel my plaster scenery needed some sort of built-in method of planned crack relief similar to a cement walk-way? In the event a crack is going to happen, I would much rather it crack at a road or mountain range transition than through the ball-field (as an example).
I am planning on building a storage shed for locomotives that has a safe means of keeping them at near-room temperature, as I have experienced a sluggishness, even when they were in the house on a cold winter evening. We keep our house temperature, in the winter, close to 63 degrees.
Again, thank you for your encouragement and fast response.
My situation is similar to yours in that my layout space (two car garage) can descend to freezing (or, very seldom, below - ambient air temperature.) It can also top out at 120+ deg F. Since the gas-fired water heater is in the space local code requires open vents to the outside, so effective climate control is out.
My garage-filler, currently under construction, has steel stud ‘C acting like L’ girder construction, cookie-cut plywood subroadbed and foam roadbed. I do leave expansion room at rail joints, and jumper around them by soldering little omega-shaped bits of wire to the rails at every non-insulated joint.
Lately, I’ve taken to doing construction work in the single-digit morning hours for my personal comfort. Other than that, the temperature extremes haven’t prevented me from operating (ran a unit coal train and a local freight this afternoon, temperature in the garage 105.) Humidity might lead to swelling and shrinkage of wood in your neck of the woods. Lack of humidity does strange things to wood here, which is why I decided on steel benchwork and don’t hesitate to beat the plywood subgrade into submission with lengths of angle iron. Left to its own devices, a 2’ x 4’ sheet of ply will shortly become a piece of free-form sculpture. Dimension lumber can turn into a cross between a compound bow and a corkscrew after exposure to a summer’s worth of dessication.
It might cost you a little more up front to superinsulate your space, but once you do the heat output of a few incandescent lightbulbs should be able to handle the temperature differential between inside and outside. (I recall a Minnesota home owner who claimed to be able to heat a 3200 sq ft superinsulated home with the equivalent of two electric toasters.) It’s a case of spend a little now to save a whole bunch later.
We have had similar experiences with our HO scale models becoming sluggish when the temperature is low. I believe the problem is due to the lubricating oil becoming thicker when cold.
I have had remarkable results by using Mercon Dexron III Automatic Transmission Fluid as a lubricant instead of any of the hobby oils. We began using Dexron after reading about it on one of these forums, and it does seem to be a much better lubricant for models because it can withstand more drastic temperature extremes without changing viscosity.