I have a 4 year old neighbor who has some trains - HO guage. He’s got an Athearn John Deer train with horn-hook couplers, and a Proto 2000 switcher and a couple cars with nuckel couplers. His Athearn train must have been a set which came with a DC powerpack. He has some E-Z track, and some Power-loc, but no train board to use them on. He’s having trouble keeping the trains on the track and rerailing them when they come off.
I think he would have been better off with O-27 gauge trains, and is even pretty young for that IMO, but he’s really excited about them anyway. So, I’m going to try to improve things for him.
To that end, I’m setting up an oval of Atlas Code 100 track on 4x6 homosote on plywood trainboard. I could benefit from a couple opinions:
Would it be ok on this small oval to simply solder ALL the rail joiners and use a single set of track feeders? The track will be nailed down and I think I’ll ballast it with white glue. Will there be expansion problems down the road? The far end of the oval is about 80 inches away, and I measure a couple 10ths of an Ohm. At 2 amps (which is overkill for one train), that corresponds to a voltage drop of less than half a volt. Seems acceptable to me.
When I was a kid (more like 10 than 4), my Tyco’s had horn-hook couplers. I always found them reliable and easy to uncouple with a pic. The nuckel couplers I use now tend to be a bit finicky. I’m thinking he might be better off with horn-hook couplers for now. Opinions?
Thanks for the help. I must say, it’s refreshing making a layout that only a 4-yr old needs to be happy with. As long as the train runs and stays on the track, I think he will be exctatic.
I hope a 4 year old is being supervised with model trains. It’s nice you want to help out. The horn hook couplers never bothered me too much but I think they are pretty outdated by now. Just hope your neighbors understand model trains are not toys. Good luck.
I agree. At this point, unless his parents sit with him he doesn’t get them to run at all, so he does have good supervision. One thing I included in the layout is a rerailer track.
My son was only 4 when I built him his 4 X 8 HO layout in the garage. Here’s my two cents:
I used Bachmann EZ track with the built in roadbed. It snaps together nice and solid and withstands alot of abuse. My son’s layout has two loops connected by a crossover and one siding. I only placed one set of feeders to each loop of track. I soldered the feeders but not the joiners. Never had any electrical problems.
I nailed all of the track down because the layout is built on a table that folds up against the wall. That lasted one summer. I should tell you I live in Phoenix, AZ. The first summer all the track (mainly the plastic roadbed) expanded and buckled huge sections of track. “Look,” my son said, “Hills!” No. I then unnailed one end of the layout, basically a 4 X 4 section, drilled bigger holes where the nails were, and refastened that track with screws, fender washers and nylon stop nuts. Now the whole thing moves when it needs to and does not fall off of the table when it is folded up.
Horn hook couplers are great! I have jars of them left from my switch outs and whenever we go to a hobby store or train show my son first checks to see if cars have his couplers or my couplers. Horn hooks are easy to manipulate with little hands and are easy to replace if broken.
Train him well. Yes, a four year old can be taught to respect and care for HO trains. Ok, cheap HO trains, not my Protos. Once he learns he has to be gentle to get them to do what he wants he’ll get the hang of running them. IF is trully interested in running them the way they are intended for. My son is now 7, still uses horn hook couplers, and in those 3 years we have never had anything more serious than the occassional snapped coupler and that’s with a few 2ft dives to the garage floor.
My 4 year old granddaughter prefers her Thomas the Tank Engine to anything else on my layout.
I wouldn’t go to the track trouble you describe. I would buy the EZ Track or eqivalent and fasten it down only the bare minimum that will hold it. The EZ Track sets come with a combination terminal track and rerailer. When the time comes to expand, then start over with real track, ballast, etc. Keep the train short. 4 or 5 cars max. 2 or 3 is even better.
A 4 year old couldn’t care less about couplers, ballast, or whatever. They just want to run the train.
Horn hook couplers have only one spring that holds them engaged. Knuckles have 2 which keeps them centered. Therefor horn hooks can have a tendency to derail when being backed up if the load is great.
Homosote is glued to plywood - leasson learned: a 4x6 with 1/2 in ply and homosote is heavy. They won’t be moving it arround much.
Homosote top is sealed and painted a nice sage green (it’s what I had on hand, and I don’t intend to use any ground foam).
Track is built and nailed down. I ended up using code 100 snap track, and I soldered all joiners and a single set of feeders. Lesson learned: the board flexes a bit when lifted by one corner, and the track creakes a when that happens. I hope it doesnt end up snapping a rail out of the ties.
I carved a piece of left over 2" pink foam for a little hill in one corner. Glued down with liquid nails for foamboard. A sharp paring knife and a sanding block work well on this stuff. Then I filled the cracks with Celluclay. Lesson learned: Celluclay is yucky! It’s stick, lumpy, and says it takes days to dry. Once it’s dry, I think I’m going to try some joint compound instead. Anyone tried paintable latex caulk on foam?
Now I’m experiencing the joys of ballasting track. I know the little boy won’t appreciate it, but I’m finding this is a managable sized sandbox for me to learn some new skills. Lessons learned: you MUST wet the dry ties and ballast down with alchohol before dropping the glue mixture. Alcohol is NOT, however good for fresh latex paint. I am using a mixture of 20ml elmers glue, 30ml water, and 15ml alcohol. It seems to work ok, and dries pretty quickly. The gray ballast is much darker after gluing (so far, it may dry some more). I did about 7 sections of track in a n hour or so. It doesnt take much ballast to do that much track. The big shaker container (sealed for freshness!) might be enough to the track on my entire 60 sq foot layout.
For my next steps, I plan to paint a road surface. I will mix black and white craft paint to get a
My guys got to be face to face with the O-27 train last night. Eddie tried to rerail the gondola after he kicked it. At 22 months, we never know what we’ll be seeing. With any luck, we’ll be having the two layouts running by the time they’re four and they’ll have their own Thomas type set.
I got my first trains, Lionel-HO, when I was 8. Loved them ever since.
A small loop of nailed down track you say? No real need to solder the joints. Knuckle couplers are rarely seen in my collection so far. Horn hooks have had decoupling problems for me in the past, but usually due to grade changes. Unfortunatly, the knuckle couplers on the few cars I have are not very kid friendly.
My first set was an O-27 battery operated set followed by by a Marklin O-27 set. The third was a Lionel Double Diesel set when I was five. That was the end of the O scale sets for me. After that it was HO with occasional forays into G, N and Z scales. I’ve always come back to HO and it’s what I run now.
Ballasting is done. Foam hill celluclay is dry, and a skimcoat of joint compound has been applied. A road crosses the layout and has a centerline and stop lines at each grade crossing. I did the center line with 2.5mm correction tape colored with a highlighter. I may apply a little scenic cement over it to try to hold it in place - otherwise I suspect it will scrape off quickly. If the hill dries ok, it will need a little sanding and some paint, and it might be ready to turn over to the new owner. I’ll put in a photo when it’s done.
Tonight I added 'X’s to the railroad crossings and finished the scenery on the hill. Funny thing about the hill is that I was envisioning a 60 foot shale cliff, and I thought it came off pretty well. When I parked an engine in front of it for a photo, it became clear that it’s only a 5 foot shale hill. I may make another pass on it and change the shale face to a grassy hillside - we’ll see.
Now, I know that there are no structures and very little real scenery here, but I did spend quite a bit of time on it, and I think I learned a lot. I also think my little neighbor, Alex, will probably really like it.
Delivered the train board for Alex this morning. He loves it! I think he’s having more fun running his vast collection of motor vehicles over the road than he has running the trains. He has a P2K loco, a Walthers RTR caboose, and a model power tank car that I converted over to horn hooks to go with is Athearn John Deer train set. The John Deer flat car was missing one coupler and cover. When I tried to replace it I discovered the coupler box was crushed. I ended up installing a horn-hook coupler in a Kadee draft gear box to repair it - we’ll see if it holds up to the Alex test. Nice to have my basement back too!
