Since you seem to be going with code 83 track, make sure you don’t buy any of the old AHM/Rivarossi stuff. The wheel flanges on those are so big that they would probably ride on the ties instead of the rails.
Hello Darth Santa Fe.
Got and noted, I will stay away from the above mentioned cars. Although at this point, no doubt much to the shock and aghast of the MR’s here I have little and or no idea what rolling stock etc I am even intrested in. It is without a doubt, strangely, the area of the hobby I am the most uniformed about at this point. As always with me backasswards [:)]
Thanks for the reply and info.
Peace
Coyote
Simon a question for you, if I may. I looked over the great links you sent me, thanks again, and wondered does Flextrack work well with Ami Instant Roadbed, if you happen to know?
Thanks again.
Peace
Coyote
If you’re wondering what brand of rolling stock to use, the Athearn kits are pretty good for their price. If you don’t like kits, you could try Athearn’s Ready-To-Roll line of cars, or Intermountains assembled cars. The Intermountain cars have some of the best rolling wheels I know of.
Thank you very much, great advice! I will defentely looks at Intermountain. Oh how my list grows chuckles
Thanks again
Peace
Coyote
Coyote, I can’t help you from personal experience as I went the cork roadbed with liquid nails route. I have read good things about the AMI instant roadbed but have no first hand experience. One thing that I would be cautious of is how well the adhesives hold with temperature extreme. You mentioned the garage heat above. I used Atlas flex track and it needs to be pinned into place while the adhesive dries as it tends to want to flex back to straight. If the AMI adhesive softens in heat it might cause your track work to shift. Drop AMI an e-mail and ask them about the temp range for the product.
GRANDPACOYOTE,
Also welcome to this great forum.
Are you using the entire garage for trains or sharing with car or yard stuff ?
My thought is to install a window unit air conditioner ( either in a window or thru the outside wall ) sized large enough to cool the square feet of the garage. Do you have a problem in Texas with big swing changes in humidity ? If you do, I would not use wood bench work as wood expands and shrinks a lot with humidity changes. This will adversely affect your track work and cause waves and gaps in the track that will cause train running troubles. I speak with experience on this as we have big changes in humidity in the midwest. I am building my ninth layout and now using steel building studs for the bench work and 2 inch thick EXTRUDED foam for the bench top. These
materials are impervious to humidity changes and are also easy to work with and don’t cost any more than wood and sometimes less cost. There was a recent article on steel studs in Model Railroader magazine and there have been many on using foam.
Have you thought about modeling a specific prototype railroad or are you " freelancing "
you own " private " railroad ?
Again welcome and don’t hesitate to ask questions, even small ones.
Ray ------ Great Northern fan.
[#welcome] Hi GC!
Somebody had to put up one of these signs and most of the time by the time I read the new memeber thread, several people already have! [:D]
Also, Lester2max, here’s one for you! [#welcome]
You guys are gonna have a ball! You will be amazed at the depth and variety of knowledge available within this group.
Welcome to Funville!
Tom
Check out this link, a thread by jfugate. He’ll get you up to speed, and comfortable with, DCC. Wiring is highly similar to block wiring in DC.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=36389
Another very helpful and wizard-like regular is rrinker. He has saved more than one DCC butt on this forum, some of them several times.
Flextrack is very good for generating your own curves, especially if you want to ease into what will have to be short radius curve. So, you can style easements that help your locos to take those sharper curves. We’ll help you with the soldering when the time comes. We have some whizzes here in that subject, as well.
welcome to the forum !
seems like all your questions have been answered already (first round anyway!) so i’ll just say hi , and remember to enjoy yourself , this is supposed to be fun . sounds like you’ve got a couple of months of layout room prep ahead of you , should be enough time to read up on all your options . and order a couple of those kits now to give you something to do when you’re tired of reading [:D]
Simon, thank you, will do. I am thinking it may end up a problem due to the products inherint stickiness at higher temp. Ami even recomends if you want the product to become more tacky and modelable to put it in a lightly warmed oven befor hand. Ah the joys of having Texas summers as a worry.
Thanks again.
Peace
Coyote
I’m working in the basement using AMI roadbed and I have the opposite problem. It’s so cold that that i have trouble sticking track down. From what I read earlier you are planning on putting down track in september. By then it should be cool enough to use AMI roadbed. I found the optimum temp for it is mid to low 70’s. If it’s a little warmer you just have to be careful because it will be twice as sticky. Normal heat shouldn’t ruin the product but extreme heat might. When I say extreme I mean like if you lit the layout on fire. But then at that point ruined roadbed is a moot point. (Disclaimer- Under NO circumsance should you light your layout on fire.) Over all it’s easy and forgiving.
Andrew
P.s. One last thing. Any pressure on the roadbed over a period of time will stick that thing to the roadbed. So if you layout track leave it for a day there is a good possibilty that that peice of track will be stuck on. To get it off take a drywall spatula and slowely pry that peice off.
Hello Ray and thanks for the welcome. [:)]
I’ll be sharing the garage with washer and dryer, some storage and freezer mostly. Our Humidity where I and the OL live doesnt change suddenly, but in summer time it goes up and stays miserably up for months at a go. [xx(]
Yes I saw that article as a matter of fact, was the first issue of MR I ever picked up [:)]
Ah the 64,000 dollar question. In all honesty I dont know, this is the area of the hobby (train knowledge) that I am weakest in there are a few lines that are starting to catch my intrest, most seem to revolve around some unique feature or strange component to them. Now mind you I couldn’t name
Hello Tom and thanks for the great welcome.
Peace
Coyote
Thanks selector. I’ve added the article to my quickly growing folder of articles, great stuff.
All the help here has been wonderful and you guys have greatly calmed many of my misgivings and fears, thanks again.
Peace
Coyote
Hello Ereimer and thanks for the welcome.
Yes, so far so good. You folks here have been greatly helpfull and all seem like a good bunch of eggs, a welcome change foe me from my normal online forum experiance. [:)]
Good idea on getting some practice stuff to work with when I get tired of reading and cleaning, which will be soon, no doubt. chuckles
Peace
Coyote
Quickly tosses a zippo over his shoulder while whistling umm coughs now you say -not- to light your layout on fire? Gotcha! writes down ‘no fire’ quickly on his list
Thanks for the info and advice! Will keep that in mind.
Peace
Coyote
Grande, it took me a bit of time to slap together but there are some ‘before’ pics on the web site I cobbled up for the layout here: