I just finished installing the first of many caboose ground throws on my n scale layout. I glued a piece of cork roadbed next to each switch and used a piece of styrofoam sheeting to shim the ground throw to get it at the right level with the switch, but now what can I do to make it “blend in” more? Paint/ballast?
Any ideas would be great
Thanks
Art
You are not really going to be able to hide them, but they should be painted to look as real as possible, thereby enhancing the scene.
Add some ballast around the ground throw. If you haven’t ballasted the track yet, wait until you do. Once the track is ballasted along with the ground throw area, use a heavy black wash around the throw bar and point area ties and around the ground throw. This simulates oil and grease that would be there making the ballast look very dark in those areas. Then you can paint the ground throw a dark rusty color and with splotches of oily black where the parts would be moving.
Go slowly with the black wash at first until you see what it can and is doing.
To blend the ground throws in, I would weather them with some rust after simulation them being mounted on concrete pads with some weeds around the whole thing.
Myself I plan to simulate the concrete pads by placing thin styrene around the ground throws and painting it a light to middle shade of concrete gray then weather on lots of rust, dust, dirt and a few weeds.
What !.. You don’t like this …
Paint and ballast is all you can do. Googled it and found a few web sites, unable to load them thow for some reason.
Those ground throws are more suitable for G gauge and look way out of place on an HO-scale layout, in my opinion. That’s why I use under-layout methods (manual and electric) to operate HO-scale track switches.
What I’d do first is make the mounting pad smaller - you could land an airplane on one of those! Second: use a smaller version. It looks like you’ve made your own linkage so you’re not dependant on the springiness of the throw. The smaller ones have a shorter throw and can be made up for in the linkage. Third: n ot weather the rails so much. Why do people over-weather them like this?
my suggestion would be to mount as many of them as you can at the edge of the table and connect them to the turnout with long throw wires. One of my train friends has done this and it works well and looks good. of course I prefer the look below:
Guy
True. I use them, on my Gn15 line and they look great.
For the record, that is not my layout and I don’t use Ground throws… The image was taken from here. http://www.nmra.org/beginner/images/ci_final.jpg
It was tongue-in-cheek and I don’t use brass track.
I hate the look of the ground throws unless they are very small on a larger scale layout. He is also dealing in N scale so smaller ground throws is not an option.
I hide mine in bushes made of green moss like stuff I think it is called Leichen or something close to that.
Chief:
Plant some weeds around them, use them like the easy and reliable, gimmick-free delights that they are, and fiercely ignore the scale issues to death. If they were to scale, they’d not be so reliable or operable by giant fingers.
(A maker of a similarly beefy brass throw had it right in their ad a few years back. “Horribly ugly and oversized! Dependable for over forty years!” :))
I’ve got whacking big Atlas switch machines slapped on top the table, so…
What I do with caboose hobbies ground throws once they’re installed is replace 'em when their handle (almost inevitably) gets twisted off. I’m in the process of replacing mine with something more robust (and less expensive).
As far as looks goes, if you’re taking photographs the best I could find to do was to temporarily remove them and substitue a more scale appearing switch stand… Sigh.
With caboose hobby ground throw…
One C.H.G.T temporarily replaced and another hidden behind a clump of ‘bushes’
Regards,
Charlie Comstock
I love that ground throw. Is that a maual throw, or auto? And who makes them?
That isn’t brass track.
Grandt line, switch stand. Non operating, just looks cool. The turnout is thrown by a swtichmaster stall motor from underneath. It is the only switchstand on my otherwise under construction layout. I’m not any where near being ready for switchstands but I couldn’t resist having one in place. Sort of like the theater tradition keeping the one light bulb burning in the theater so that it never goes dark. I have broken the stand a bunch already and figure that I will repair it many more times before I’m done. Central Valley also makes these.
Here is a lnk to the grandt line:
http://www.grandtline.com/model_railroad/detail%20parts/trackside_details_all_scales.htm
Guy
I disguise my N scale caboose throws by recessing them below the track level. It’s a simple matter of inserting a track nail into the throw bar to transfer motion to the turnout points.
I’m working in N scale, so while I love the convenience of them, they do create quite an eyesore if they’re installed at roadbed level. This method works really well, and really makes the machines "disappear’ until you need them…
This is a pretty good view of the finished installation.
Hope this is helpful.
Lee