If you were to ask most people about model railroading they would most likely respond with trains and tracks, mountains and scenery-- or something similar along those lines. Likewise when folks view a model railroad, that’s what they see: trains and tracks, mountains and scenery. What they don’t see and probably don’t know to consider are the myriad details that occur behind the scenes which are required to create the layout. A well-implemented layout requires the combination of good planning, access to the requisite materials and resources, a range of skills and applied knowledge areas, and the adoption of a good set of standards and guidelines and the willpower to stick to them. However, in addition to these elements another element is often required-- ingenuity and resourcefulness, the ability to adapt what you have into what you need.
I’d be willing to wager that most of us have often found ourselves in the local big box store pouring over the shelves looking for that widget that we can take home and shape, mold or bend it into something we need for our layouts. Or perhaps it’s a train model or a structure kit and we need a certain piece that isn’t included in the kit. So the natural inclination, even in today’s store-bought, ready-to-run world, is to reach into the junk box to see what we can find that could work. Maybe we’ll have to add a bit here or hack off a bit there, but with a little work, we can often find something that can be pressed into duty to make it work. And of course for the folks who scratch-build everything (the way nature intended model railroading to be… the inclination to reach into the junk box will simply be second nature!
And of course it isn’t just all with building trains and structure
Adaption is part of the fun for me. Styrofoam insulation and the steak knife were my best discoveries and now even more people write about it, though I admit I got the idea from this forum.
All the things in the garden that make for trees got me started at looking in the desert and at Michaels and discovering that static grass makes better pine needles than it does grass was part of this discovery. Caspia for White Pine, Candy Tuft for small maple trees. One of my favorite theiveries was Aggrojones’ “Filter on a Stick” pine trees.
My pocket hole jig designed for cabinet face frames has made all of the bench work easier and better.
Bob Ross paints for back drops is still a work in progress, but it is fun.
Rockler’s Thick CA with accelerator has been my best glue discovery.
All the tools I bought to do jewlery making, work better on the Railroad then they ever did making jewlery.
I used the titanium screws that came out of my wife’s bad knee when she had it replaced for a award winning flat car load.
In building your layout, or perhaps a train or structural model, have you encountered a challenge or situation where you had to adapt something from some other realm to meet your needs? If so, what was it, what did you do, and how did it work out?’
Oh my lands, the list is virtually endless. I use small electronic slide switches for turnout throws
Red sedum from the garden for tree armatures…
ceiling tiles for scenery base
And my all time favorite, using a ball point click pen to throw switches!
That’s them there on the right stuck through the fascia. I connect them to a bicycle cable, which is connected to a slide switch.
Here’s the front showing the push buttons. I totally stole this design from another forum.
You can see the pen clickers sticking out of the fascia there next to the BL-2.
I needed a place to store the fossilized thighbone of a prehistoric mammoth that I use once a year in history class as an example of making deductions from hands-on evidence. Impressive but not really exorbitantly valuable, nor fragile, so I stuck it on the junk shelf in the wife’s former ceramics studio (converted garage, her ingenuity). When my foam scenery came unstuck from its frame and needed weighting down for regluing, I needed SOMETHING. Why not a 12,000 year old fossil?
My layout had a 1950s forest industries theme. I couldn’t resist buying a set of Republic Locomotive Works N scale photo etched buzzsaws and two-man whipsaws, etc, even though I didn’t actually plan a lumberjacking scene. But the antique saws made a good display in front of a saw and hardware store-- an appropriate business for the forest industries town. I found a Missouri Pacific buzzsaw herald from an HO Champ decal to decal-bash into a buzzsaw blade logo for the sign. The craft store provided a “jewelry finding,” something like a shiny metal lollypop shape, a disc on a “stick” that made a round sign with a way to hang it perpendicular to the store wall.
Geeze, what a topic. There are so many things that I use that are found outside the hobby of “model railroading” that it is going to be hard to put a finger on specific items. Also, since almost everyone uses things outside the hobby, they almost become the norm, such as the blue or pink builders foam. But here goes:
– In building your layout, or perhaps a train or structural model, have you encountered a challenge or situation where you had to adapt something from some other realm to meet your needs? If so, what was it, what did you do, and how did it work out?’
There are five specific items that I can think of right now.
1- Push pins. I use push pin heads as levers on my manual turnout throw rods.
2- RC Control rods. I use radio control push rods for the control linkage to my manually controlled turnouts.
3- Bicycle speedometer. I made a speedometer car. As the computer / display I used a bicycle speedometer mounted on a flatcar.
4- Window Shade upper hollow wood rod. I used this as a tube for a housing while rasing and lowering weights that operate working crossing gates.
5- Speaker rings. I used wood composite rings that are used for mounting speakers for my turntable pit wall.
– If you had it to do all over again, what would you have done differently?
I don’t think I would change anything if I had it to do over again. In each case stated above, the items that I used worked very well.
– In building your layout, or perhaps a train or structural model, have you encountered a challenge or situation where you had to adapt something from some other realm to meet your needs? If so, what was it, what did you do, and how did it work out?’
In my N-scale days I was more of an inventor than I am in HO. In the '70s there was much less available for purchse in N-scale, so I found myself improvising. My favorite improvisations were my N-scale ground throws; there are a couple of them in this picture:
I made them from brass tubing, rods, and flat stock. I did batches of 7 and usually ended up with 5 that worked really well.
I’ve made an updated/upgraded version in HO. I like the way they look and work, so eventually I’ll replace my plasic ones with home made brass ones:
The current project I’m thinking of is a random building light controller. The idea is to use a large cam that will slowly rotate and throw microswitches to cycle building lights It will be a cycle and not truly random, but it will have the appearance that the building lights are turning on and off on their own. To add to the effect, I divide the interior of buildings into rooms and place lights in each room, so I can cycle the lights in different parts of a building.
In terms of adapting something from another realm, I’ve been known to take motors from dead electronic devices and use them in model railroad applications. I recently re-powered a railbus using a lens motor from an old digital camera.
i am going to have to scratchbuild a 34’ dropend wooden gon as i cant find one available. luckily i have the plans fr one so it will help. i will let you know as the project continues.
On resourcefulness: I use plastic chemistry test tubes with the screw cap side cut off and a round end glued on the cut off end to make HO scale LPG horizontal storage tanks. White painted coat hangers are bent to appropriate shapes for the piping to these tanks. I cut the test tube holders in half as bases to hold the tanks. I cut up cereal box cardboard laminated two thick to make the simulated concrete bases. I have these installed on my layout and about one hundred other, as I sell them on ebay. Using this type of resourcefulness can result in structures not found on most layouts!
John, it is truly remarkable that you can think of all of these questions each week. [:D]
In building your layout, or perhaps a train or structural model, have you encountered a challenge or situation where you had to adapt something from some other realm to meet your needs? If so, what was it, what did you do, and how did it work out?’
Yes, I constructed the benchwork from particle board ripped to appropriate dimensions. The fascia is made from chalkboard. The chalkboard does not need painting, and I can use chalk to write switching instructions next to industries.
Another example of many is using grated cheese containers (after washing, of course) for scenery shakers.
If you had it to do all over again, what would you have done differently?
No, the construction of the layout has worked well for me. The benchwork can be moved if needed which was one of my specifications.
How important would you say that “ingenuity and resourcefulness” is to the overall process of designing and building a layout or model?
Resourcefulness is always important. Each of us needs to watch the budget.
How often do you think what is termed “ingenuity” (“genius”) is really the result of interaction / communication with others? In other words, does having knowledge of an idea or technique-- even if only in abstract form-- really counts as “ingenuity” or something else?
“Cookie Cutter” construction using 1/2" blue foam.
I may have beat this one to death years ago when I started my layout in 2001. But it has met the test of time. Of course cookie cutter was nothing new. And foam was being used.
Many folks were using foam for layouts and that seemed like a good idea. I couldn’t find any 2" thick foam so it occurred to me to use 1/2" blue Styrofoam with the “cookie cutter” method similar the long used plywood method. Here you can see some of the foam sub-roadbed cut and supported with other pieces of foam. You can see some white beaded foam but I would strongly advise that only the blue extruded foam be used. The extruded foam is much stronger, finer grained and easier to cut and work with. Don’t use the white stuff! (See Note below.)
The 1/2" foam superstructure gets its strength from the “box girder” effect of the construction. The photos below show a good examples of this “box” effect. The cookie cutter sub-roadbed is supported by vertical “walls” of the 1/2" foam which are glued to the foam base sheet and, of course, to the sub-roadbed forming a very strong box-like structure. Even though the riser wall sections may be cut in short lengths to make cutting and fitting easier the sub-roadbed and base sheets are mostly monolithic. The resulting structure has many of the qualities of box, “T”, “L” and “I” beam girders making the overall “superstructure” very rigid and strong.
Remember that set of three houses under construction that came out in HO about as soon as they invented plastic. And copied in N when N was invented. Two of the houses were far enough to build as completed, as identical plan tract houses…occupied by two very different occupants…
the Messy family and Mrs. Neatnik.
A rearrangement of the parts of a 1/700th Japanese harbor tower crane kit provided supporting structure for an N scale gravel loader.
Wow! There are some really great responses this week–
Cookie cutter roadbed with blue/pink foam-- what a concept! I might have to give that idea some serious thought.
And I love those ballpoint pen switch throws-- talk about ingenuity! How well do they work?
And the doorbolt switch throws-- I’ve seen them done before on the fascia-- I think that’s the way Joe Fugate does 'em, but I’ve never seen 'em mocked up into switch stands before-- that’s clever The precision gear is a good idea for a turntable too-- I’ll hafta look into that.
The idea of using thumb tacks for roof vents is pretty clever too. You guys are all amazing me with the various ways you’ve adapted stuff. I hope some other folks will come along and add their ideas too, because this is fun reading!
…I just moved my layout and there was this gap in the scenery:
I had also just installed a dog door and had a half full can of Great Stuff (aerosol insulating foam).
[I]
I used the foam to created the support for my gap-filling scenery. Here’s the foam:
I followed this with a plaster layer:
Now all I have to do is cast some rocks and blend it all together. Those are my home made rock molds in front of the boarding house (latex brushed onto hunks of coal).
Here’s a few from my layout. I needed slotted rails to convert a flat car to TOFC. I used some old rail, a drill, and a machinist’s vice to make some.
This is a storage shed made from various left over building kits, at Blackwood Mine.
This is a pump, made from the top of an Atlas switch machine, and filters, made from odds and ends, with painted sprues for pipes.
The aluminum scrap pile was made from a piece of aluminum I found in a stream, while taking my dog for a walk. The other pile was made from various pieces from left over kits and misc. junk accumulated over time.
This truck dump was made from part of a trestle set and styrene.
It’s got a 100:1 ratio (50 turns of the crank to reverse a loco).
Shay Fan (Phil):
Could you share the identity of the e bay vendor that you got the 100/1 gear set from? Looks like that would be an excellent way to “power” a turntable as you have done.
That transaction was so long ago - over 5 years - that I’ve lost track. EBay’s records only go back 3 years, so I really don’t know. I did some browsing around ebay and it appears that worm/worm gears from/for garage door openers are readily available. I think these would work, although their ratios appear to be about 50:1 so you’ll have to turn the crank slower than I do to get a realistic rotation speed. If you buy gears, be sure to get the worm and gear at the same time and designed for each other. Getting them separate will likely result in a slight mis-mesh and they will wear each other out.
By the way, I fabricated the framework around the gears and I did have to do some adapting to get it all to work. It wasn’t hard, but I did have to work carefully to make it work smoothly.
I’ve also thought that a gearbox for a G scale locomotive might work well to “power” an HO scale turntable.
the inclination to reach into the junk box will simply be second nature!
