Saw 3 Nice HO Layouts in the Houston Area Yesterday

Don't forget November is National Model Railroad Month The San Jacinto Model Railroad Club are sponsoring the annual fall tour. These tours start in the middle of October and end with the first weekend in December. See this Post for the 2005 Schedule. Saw some nice HO stuff yesterday. Kind of early in the tour yet, but anyways... The High Points Met Loren Neufeld at Jim Lemmond's HO Cedartap Railroad. Loren is perceived as a Master among the Houston area model railroaders. His scenery designs are....Well breathtaking. The Cedartap Railroad is under construction with 30% of the scenery. What scenery there is is marvelous! The construction method is a continuous shelf around the perimeter of the building walls and a center peninsular yard. Self contained in a 12'’ x 20'’ building. Designed as both a continuous running, and point to point pike. Operating DCC system is Digitrax and Team Digital switch controllers.Works with Standard ethernet cable. Peco code 75 track (most of it weathered) and Electrofrog turnouts. Scenery designed by Loren Neufeld Features a out-and-back branchline under construction of about 75 feet with many tunnels and trestles. The railroad features Santa Fe and Southern Pacific, both steam and diesel, during the transition era. Next stop: Robert Ashcraft's HO Raton and Western Railroad. This is a 2 year old, 18'’ by 22'’ layout. It seems much larger though, as it spans 2 rooms! I'd like to see it when the scenery is completed! Around (and through) the walls with a peninsula. Continuous and Point to point running. Bi Level with a 5 turn Helix in the Peninsula. Track work is complete. Train control by Easy DCC. Signals throughout - Used to indicate turnout status - What a cool idea! This is a stupendous pike even without scenery. Can't wait to see what Bob does with the scenery, though. Last stop for Saturday's jaunt was: Eddie Carol's HO and HOn3 Glenbrook Valley Railroad. Branchline of the Denver and Rio Grande. Construction started in 1996. The railroad is situated over Eddie's garage. When completed it will be stupendous!. Hell, It's stupendous now! As you walk up the stairs to the train room, you pass under a double-track helix that looks to be completely hidden by a mountainous vista. The walls in the stairwell are partially covered with scenery and tracks. Eddie has made great use of almost all the available space for his pike. This not just your average around the walls model railroad. Handlaid dual guage Code 70 track. Handlaid switches. Some commercial used I think. Scenery is 60% completed. Train control is DCC by Digitrax. Wireless walkaround throttles. Eddie was there and had a friend assisting. These two had three trains running at once. Eddie says the scenery is 60% done. All I can say is WOW! If you get a chance to see this dual guage railroad, I say GO! People and trains - I saw some really nice model railroads and met some really nice folks this weekend. Never ceases to amaze me that folks will just open their doors and let you walk right on in...Most answer questions freely about what techniques they use and what equipment they are running. Plus the significant others of these artists are very tolerant (and friendly if they are in evidence) of thier spouses railway follies. Most MRR's are tolerant of other scales. (I've yet to see an NScale layout) Pictures - I'm always a little leary of asking if I can take pictures (based on the Model Railroad Layout Tour Rules of Etiquette - more on these later in the week) and I need to get over that. The hard work and dedication these folks have put into thier hobby is evident in the quality that I saw this weekend and should be shared. I think I should start asking if I can take a few quick pictures.

I Made a Mistake in Last Night's Post

I've had it pointed out that I left a link off the listing that should've been in there... Jules, an Nscaling friend from Great Britain, who is a webmaster, web designer and Nscale Modeller, who's site I surfed onto from the NMRA site some time ago. I liked his layouts enough to send an email to tell him so. We have been somewhat regularly corresponding via email ever since. I had told him about this site and what I was trying to do. So I suspect he's been checking (perhaps) irregularly to see what I've been up to...Reminded me I was slightly remiss in my netiquette. Jules has put together a couple of nice layouts with back storys and tips, documented on his webpage, Small World Layouts And so...Laaaaaaaaaadieees and Gentlemen! Without further ado...I give you the Internationally Acclaimed, Fantastic, and Lilliputian (and two of my personal favorites): Langwaithe And No Picnic by Jules Jules: Why settle for being a link in a list when you can have Top Billing!

How's about a few Links...

Don't forget November is National Model Railroad Month To that end members of The San Jacinto Model Railroad Club are sponsoring the annual fall tour. These tours start in the middle of October and end with the first weekend in December. Click here for the 2005 Fall Holiday Layout Tour Information (opens in MS Word) Freely stolen from the Lone Star Regions pages of the NMRA. From Kalmbach Publishing - The Trains.com forums Active in the last 24 hours are here: Active Trains.com forums From Trainboard.com one of the oldest railroad-related discussion forums on the Internet. 24 Hours of TrainBoard The MyNscale.com forums. Your home for all things Nscale are here: Active Topics The gauge.com. Model Train Forum The Simply Trains site. European trains The ModelRailRoadForums.com is a free discussion site covering all scales. Lotta different topics. The Railwire.net a forum for modelers forums. Seems to be NCentric but all scales are welcome. Looks to be an international community. The Nscale.net - Forum by nscalers for nscalers. Now I haven't spent a lot of time on any of these sites with the exceptions of Nscale forum on TrainBoard.com and the Trains.com website (This site doesn't really separate by scale. But there is a heckuva lot of information available there). But as I do I'll add them to the My links section on the right. For your convenience (but mostly for mine). How about an article about couplers from TheNscaleDivision.com (online Hobby shop). I found this article to be very enlightening (if you are into nscale couplers): Information about Nscale couplers.

Project: Code 55 Test Track Progress

Last night and the night before, between innings of the World Series (sigh) I managed to get all the straight pins pulled out of my cork. Then I lightly sanded the roadbed with a medium grit sandpaper. Had to get some of the rough spots out. So now I've got choices to make as to the next step. And the weekend is coming up! They are: Lay the track and feeders(testing as I go along), ballast the track, get out the permascene, then paint and start terra-forming (landscape). Get out the permascene, then paint, lay the track and feeders(etc), ballast the track, terra-forming. Get out the permascene, lay the track and feeders (etc), paint, ballast, terra-forming. or myriad variations of the above. Now the real fun begins! I also want to get out and look at some layouts. The Fall layout tours in Houston continue through the first weekend in December. November is National Model Railroad Month!

Project: Code 55 Test Track

Cork Roadbed Well, I've pretty much worked my index fingers to the bone pushing straight pins through the roadbed. I need to get a thimble or something for next time. Or just let them callous over. But that stings! Didn't hurt too much last night - But this morning - Ooooooch! At any rate - Got the cork roadbed glued and tacked (pinned - OUCH!) to the subroadbed. This is harder than it looks. Even with an exact trackplan glued down, it was still a challenge to make sure everything is in line and aligned. And turnouts are a pain the royal Patoot! The next time I lay track I think I'll look into those ready made ones or buy some cork sheets and make them myself. All in one piece. Although by the time I had to cut cork for the second one I had pretty much figured that out (Again) too. Another skill relearned. (sigh) But that first one - It's just plain fugly. Fugly switch work Engineer's view of roadbed When I get all the pins out of the cork, I can already tell I've got a date with some medium or fine sandpaper for a little light sanding on the roadbed. Got a few rough spots. (sigh)

Project: Code 55 Test Track: Roadbed

Since I Didn't Have to Work Today... I've been working on getting the cork roadbed down. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it! Just the sub-roadbed, a few hundred straight pins, some cork, white glue and me!

Looks Like We are Unglitched at This Point

Here's a picture of the reason for the delay. The two pieces of the sub-roadbed somehow got out of alignment while they were clamped down in order to bond the wood with the sub-roadbed. In order to fix this, I had to move the tracks up a 1/4 inch on the track plan in order to make room for the switchstands I plan to use for the turnouts. I also had to cut the track plan prints in order to make them fit the sub-roadbed. I designed this little jig to hold the paper and a scale ruler. As you can see from the pictures, it's pretty simple. Just a piece of pinkboard and a couple of straight pins. Worked pretty well too. Only slipped once and that was of no consequence. As I worked at cutting the printouts to size, just for fun I guess, I went ahead and numbered them. Even though there was very little chance that I would put one of these on the sub-roadbed out of order. After all this would be the third time around with this little trackplan. I probably could have glued these down in my sleep...But old habits die hard so every piece got a number. So here I am, a little further down the sub-roadbed and the difference in the two is becoming a lot more apparent.The difference now is at least 1/4 of an inch. But as I glue the new track plan down, I sight down the durn thing and ensure there will be no mistakes this time! Third time lucky! The final shot shows the finished Sub-roadbed assembly.

Project: Code 55 Test Track - A Silght Glitch

Got a good look at my test track this morning, and there's one teensy-eensy glitch. One of the pieces of the foamboard shifted a little (I suppose) at the time I was clamping it down. Now I need to move the entire set of tracks about 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch up on the plan. If I don't, the turnout on the right hand side of the contraption will be too close to the edge and the switch linkage will actually hang over the side of the foamboard. (sigh). ^#@#(*_$(&!!!! The new and revised track plan

Project: Code 55 Test Track - Construction Pictures

1. Got a little over half already cut out. I managed to get the 8-1/2 X 11 Sheets glued to the foamboard mostly in line, I think. This is harder to do than I originally thought. Given the nature of the printout I used it took a bit of work to be able to get them to line up. XTrkCad left a half inch margin on the right. Used a razor knife to cut the sub-road bed to size. I called this Phase 1. 2. Phase 2. In this shot I've already glued the track plan to the foamboard I'm using for the sub-road bed. I'll let it dry a bit before I cut it (I have to go to the hardware store). This glueing on this part seemed to go a little smoother than the first time. I think I actually used a lot less glue on the backside of the paper. Didn't have near the wrinkling or sliding as I did with the first few sheets of Phase 1. 3. I'm about half way through cutting the excess foamboard on the far side of Phase 2. I've clamped my straight edge along the line on which I need to cut. I probably measured this four or five times. "Measure twice - cut once" is the saying of the day here. Some of my other cuts haven't been as straight as i've managed so far on this piece. I have to plant my thumb on the ruler to keep it from slipping too much and messing up the slice. 4. I've finished the cuts here. Sanded the edges where the two pieces of foamboard meet on the 1X(whatever) so that I'll have a fairly even join. After that I zig-zagged Liquid Nails down my plank. Pushed the foamboard on to the wood. Once I made sure everything was aligned correctly. I gently clamped the piece in my Workmate. (Thank the gods for Workmates, what a versatile tool) After that I clamped six Quickclamps on the thing at either end and walked away. Came back to make sure everything was still aligned. Then my son and i took off to get some dinner. Next Post: Laying Cork (I hope)

Project: Code 55 Test Track

I was able to get quite a bit done on the new test track today, in between trips to the hardware store. The track plan glued to the foam board. The foamboard cut. The foamboard Liquid Nailed to the 1Xnot quite 4. Clamped them and set them up to bond. Clean off my workbench(!) That last one actually had nothing to do with the TT. But something had to GIVE! It was completely covered in structures. I couldn't even put a tool on it for fear I'd BREAK Something! Next Post: Pictures!

Decision Made I Guess...

Last episode I had discovered that my brain wasn't quite working correctly. And I needed to do one of the three: Try and scrape the pinkboard off my existing piece of 1 by and do it right. Go get a new piece of wood and trash the other. Keep going... So I went with option 1 because of these... I want to test my skills, but not too heavily(!) I have the materials on hand. It is as simple as it gets. It quickly became apparent that Option 1 would be...difficult. (Liquid Nails bonds pinkboard and wood really well) But do-able. I decided to leave 10 inches of pinkboard on either end and around 4 inched about mid-board. And I would call them legs. Since I was going to paint the whole thing except the top black or dark brown. I will ballast the track, probably throw some scenery on there as well. I've heard it said (somewhere) that if you don't keep these skill developed - you lose them. Unlike riding a bike - which I probably haven't done for years but am confident I could if I wanted to... So adding ballast and scenery will be another test, eh? Here's a shot of the track plan printout I will glue to the pink board before cutting. Drawn with XTrkCAD. After these dry, I'll get out the T-Square to help with the straight lines and cut them out. Then glue them to the (new) top of my (not quite) 1 by 4. Should be fun, right? Well I think so...Because if you are not having fun...What's the point? Might as well plant it in front of the tube. Speaking of fun...How about a slightly blurry picture of a rusty ole pumpjack I weathered. I'll try to get a better shot of this soon. It's one of my favorite models. And a candidate for layout animation as well! Just too tired tonight to fool with the camera. Didn't want to bail without posting something good! The rust on this model is real rust! Sorry about that background.

Lessons Learned - The Hard Way, Naturally Part 2

(This is a large post) I wanted to test my rolling stock and locos on code55 rail. Been designing a test track with XTrkCad. Remember I'd bought some track. I'd designed a few things. First there was... Then there was... And thirdly there was... I was also asking questions on the Model Railroader forums. Also a site called NScale.org (They got hacked pretty bad and moved to MyNScale.com). And the Nscale forums on Trainboard.com. Some of the folks probably thought I was some kind of idiot. Having taken a hiatus from the hobby for a number of years I decided to Use the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid! With that in mind, I came up with this design: It is 3-1/2" X 68-3/4" What is the deal with lumber sizes? When they sell you a 1X4, why can't it be 1X4? I came up with this design because: I want to test my skills, but not too heavily(!) I have the materials on hand. It is as simple as it gets. So I cut my pink board to fit (so I thought - Ha Ha!) my length of plank. Can a 1X4 be a plank? Semantics...You figure it out. Any way I bonded the stuff to my plank. And it fits - Almost (sigh). So what is the lesson learned here you might ask. Well, after studying my two sets of printouts from the CAD program last night. On the way home from work this evening, it dawned on me... Why didn't I glue the freakin' track plan to the pinkboard BEFORE I cut it?!? (sigh) I must really be out of practice. (sigh) Apparently my brain needs some exercise. So now I've got 3 choices: Try and scrape the pinkboard off my existing piece of 1 by and do it right. I used Liquid Nails so this may not be an option. Go get a new piece of wood and trash the other. Keep going... crap! Oh and by the way, thanks Guppyman! You've lead me down another technological gardenpath - Blogrolling - neat stuff. I had heard of it. Just never investigated. Put a roll on Sound Off by Texas T's

Lessons Learned - The Hard Way, Naturally

So I bought some of these Micro-Trains Trucks and couplers. Just to see if it was as easy as I'd heard to change them out from stock trucks. Of course the couplers were not attached to the trucks (Dang!). So of course, I had to try right off the bat... Lesson Learned... Do not let Micro-Trains parts sproing(!) out of your hand, bounce off the workbench, and fall (somewhere) onto the dirty floor of your garage. Twice! They don't call 'em micro trains for nuthin' folks... Honestly, while trying to do a little coupler conversion this weekend, I dropped one of those Microscopic (read: irreplaceable Screws from MT. The little bugger jumped out of my hand, ( and I saw this in slow motion) hit my black workbench, and bounce to the floor in my garage...@&*(%^#$!! <=This is known as cussing a blue streak! I felt like a CSI. (You can can learn stuff from watching TV!) I was down on my hands and knees on the floor, with a flashlight for at least 10 minutes looking for the little so and so... I found the little bugger too. But on the other end of the car.... The same part jumped out from between my index finger and thumb of one of my two left hands and hit the floor again...@&*(%^#$!!. After at least 20 minutes (same drill - hands and knees with flashlight), this time, I found the little thang (whew!) got it into it's little microscopic hole and was able to walk away... As I said, Dang! Who says you can't learn from TV. Thanks CSI!

Just what is the Code?

Model railroad rails are sold in various heights. These are known as codes. The "code" indicates the height of the rails in thousandths of inches. So Code 100 rail is 100 thousandths of an inch high. Code 80 is eighty thousandths of an inch high. So you get the general idea. Here's a handy link to an article about this on the Trains.com website: Model railroad track codes defined Anyway you look at it Code 55 rail is pretty small. It has a very low profile when compared to code 100 or even Code 80. The illustration came from the Trains.com website. Give credit where credit is due.

So why did I come back to Nscale?

The truth of the matter is I've never left. I bailed from active modeling for at time, but I think I am ready to go at it again. I've got some pretty good models (of structures, mostly) sitting on my workbench right now that I built before I stopped. Why now though? Well really I think that I just happened to be paying attention again. Got to lurking on the MR Nscale forums. Nscale.org too. People were talking about this Code 55 rail. From what I could see it was a vast improvement over C100 or C80. But would all my old stuff run on it? Also there were a couple of free CAD packages specifically for designing Model Railroads available. The one from Atlas Mfg. available from their website http://atlasrr.com/ was geared more toward Atlas equipment (of course!). But it was free. The other is a free download from Sillub Technology at http://www.sillub.com/. XTrkCAD. Not only is it free, but open source software to boot. It has quite a few libraries available as well. And for NScale too. Not everything, but you can add your own. Has it's own group on Yahoo! as well. And they are fairly active and responsive. You do have to join the group to pose questions though. So the wife was out of town for a few days... I sent a few emails out, checking to see who had stock on what. The idea was to buy enough track to make a simple test track to test my equipment on. Papa Ben's Train Place responded fairly quickly and with some good prices, too. So I cruised over there one Friday after work. Met the owner, That would be Ben(!). My wallet was a little flatter when I walked out of there. But I did close the place down. And I had a lot more information than I'd had when I walked in there. Ben was great. Very patient. Answered all my questions. Even the stupid ones. That's the way to get repeat business. Plus they've got a goodly amount of NScale equipment and kits. So I had bought: 2 pieces Superflex (30 inches long) 1 Each No. 5 right turnouts 1 Each No. 5 left turnouts 1 pkg (6 pcs.) 30.609R (at least 2 pc. for the turnouts) 3 pkg 11.25R full curve 3 pkg 12.5R full curve 5 pkg 6in Straight. I could make something simple, but it could cover a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood. After a while though, I ‘m thinking that I just need to setup a simple track using the switches something along these lines: I may even get to start on this today!

Visited A couple HO Railroads in Katy

For National Model Railroad Month. Saw Mike Barnette's Pike. I was going to take a couple of pictures, but why when Mike already has some nice pictures of his home layout here. MKT models from the Katy Model Railroad Club, Katy Texas Mike has a very nice HO RR in a spare Bedroom in his house (Picture at right). 14' X11' with a duck under. Runs through the closet in the room. Mike says (Don't we all) that his pike will probably never be finished. There is always something to do. Some little detail to add. Also saw Louis G. Mahr's HO setup. Still under contruction. But he has laid a helluva lotta rail. Built a room in half of a two car garage. Climate controlled. Needs to be too. Summers are brutal in Southeast Texas. I hope to get out and see some more next weekend. I wanna see some "N".

November is "National Model Railroad Month"

To that end members of The San Jacinto Model Railroad Club are sponsoring the annual fall tour. These tours start in the middle of October and end with the first weekend in December. Click here for the 2005 Fall Holiday Layout Tour Information (opens in MS Word) Freely stolen from the Lone Star Regions pages of the NMRA. Thought I might go out a see a couple of these today. There are 2 in the Katy area. I didn't realize just how many MRR clubs there are in the greater Houston area. Maybe more on these later.

Today's Question

Why on God's Green Earth, would anyone choose to model in N Scale? For me, it was the fact that you could pack so much action and scenery into a much smaller space. I mean I could have gone with HO at the time I built my 1st Railroad. I had a lot more space then than I do now. That was the beginning to mid 1990's I guess - It's not like there was a lot of stuff out there - but I guess I could see the potential of it all and I figured it would be an ever evolving thing. And it has been. I'm amazed now at the quantity and (for the most part) the quality of stuff that is available now. But why did YOU do the 1:160 thing? I posed this question to the NScale group on TrainBoard.com. What do you think they said? Answers are here. Not surprising, a lot of them went along the same tracks as I did. Ability to pack a lot of action and scenery into a smaller amount of space. Space limitations. The people involved in the scale. The amount of detail not required(!) The potential ratio of scenery to train. NTRAK The need for speed.(?) No basement. Space is at a premium. More bang for the buck per square inch. Long trains. I agree with all of this. Well most of this... t... How about a link to: My Rail Images Gallery

Welcome to TexasT's 1:160 Adventures

Since I've decided to foray into NScale model railroading once again, thought what better way to document my adventure(s) than a website on Blogger. After all I've tried to write books on Blogger, tried to write travelogues on Blogger, and just blog in general on Blogger. It's only logical to write about NScale on blogger, right? I don't promise daily updates here. Just not possible with my crazy schedule. I do promise not to write not just about the good stuff. We're gonna have the good, the bad, and the plug ugly here about doing the NScale strut. I do promise to try and keep it interesting, informative, and hopefully fun. Or at least funny. Click Picture for a larger view I'll put in links and other stuff that I like as long as it's (mostly) 1:160 related. So away we go! Feel free to leave comments etc... Good, bad, or indifferent...all comments are welcome. I love comments. Hell I might leave myself a comment or two. But if you blast me too hard I might make it invisible. (!) t...