Model Railroading

[Whiterook]

I have been interested in model railroading ever since my older brother got a Lionel O-gauge back in the 1960’s… I just loved the subject, and was fascinated with the likeness in such a small scale. I was a plastic model kit builder too so, I was already interested in scale models of any kind. That set was massive! I never got to run it much…maybe a few minutes here and there, as this was definitely my brother’s property!

Fast forward about 30 years and the advent of Shop TV networks, and one my wife watched, QVC, had a host named Bob Bowersox that hawked Bachmann trains, in HO scale! Finally, my chance to own my own set! …it was a hokey one, being a Manopoly game commemorative set with five pieces and EZ Track, but it was my entry point. It was followed shortly by an Acela commuter train, from the same network; which I added more track and a few buildings to. I ran it in my basement on three 2.5x5 foot camp tables (two faced longwise, and a third as a topper T-cap). Placed on green felt, it wasn’t much, but it was a ton of fun.

What I noticed in running my own trains was, how relaxing it was. There’s something hypnotic about running a model train round and round a table! No routes or simulated operations… just round and round and round we go! Add a beer or two and you really had something going there! I must have run that train for about two years, before I had to pack her up for a move to our first purchase home (no more renting!). Unfortunately, the train sets never made a reappearance, and remain boxed up in storage.

Fast forward yet again, another 30 years (Yikes!!!) and to last year, I finally decided to get back into the hobby. I thought about my HO trains, but I’d had a yearning from 30 years ago to switch to N-scale, which I’d seen a work colleague run at one of the biggest model railroading shows in the country, which also happens to be held in the third largest city in Massachusetts, and a half hour south of me… Springfield! N-Scale is fantastic little scale that is about half the size of my HO’s, and which you can run a ton more track and layout! I knew I was going to be retiring and had one last big bonus award check coming, ever, so I decided to spend some on my wife, and some on some N-scale trains!

…the brand of choice, after much research ended up being KATO…a Japanese brand which is fairly upscale in quality and price. 

The first choice was, what to run? Modern, historical, iconic line, local lines?

I decided on a little of each… I would go Modern, within my lifetime; and I would start with a line of my personal history, CN (Canadian National), which I see all the time here in the Northeast, but also resonates with an relative from my past that was an engineer on the line up in New Brunswick, Canada. So I purchased a starter set, which you can buy with one of five locomotives — the set I got contained a CN ES44AC “GEVO”locomotive and a few cars, the set also including KATO’s snap track and controllers.






The locomotive is just gorgeous to my senses, and brings back so many wonderful memories of my childhood. I don’t see many of them anymore, particularly since I’d moved to Western Massachusetts, but they’re still around in great numbers.




I’ll chronicle my purchases and builds in this thread as it develops, but up next, I’ll catch you up to the start of my N-gauge layout and additions. I hope you find it both interesting, and maybe inspire some to jump into this great hobby!

[Whiterook]

As mentioned, this starter set came with a beginner layout of track… a simple oval called an M1



The track snaps together bunch as Bachmann’s EZ Track, but is far superior in construction and design. They look way better, too, with gray beds rather than black. The plastic beds are much more realistic looking in molding, and the sleepers are decent, as well. At N-scale, it gave a nice coverage on the table, with a simple enough design it was literally plug-n-play.



I wanted to give the set a try soonest, so I decided to use a folding camp table base, kinda along the lines of the old HO layout, but just needed the one table (shows the space one can save at this size!)



…covered with felt, I just went with a flat table groundwork…so hills built up underneath. I just wanted to make sure the loco was operational and all the components worked.





…the Controller is really where this manufacturer shines above my old HO company! A KATO Standard SX Power Pack is provided, with a flip switch for forward/neutral/reverse is practically placed to the left, while a super nice and smooth acceleration knob is placed on the right. The track leads also plug much smoother into the controller. It’s a wonderful and compact unit, and gives a better feel of a train control than a simple box and turn knob!



KATO also supplies a nice little portable rerailer (which you see in light blue, behind the locomotive)… placed on the track, you can place a loco or rolling stock atop in slots and roll the train pieced onto the tracks easily! At N-scale, I quickly learned that the trucks and wheels are so small, they are harder to fidget into place onto the rails.

[Whiterook]

I ran the train nicely on this layout while I tried to figure out what I wanted for a more permanent layout; ovals are fun, but I want to add not only realism through an actual diorama, but also mimic some sort of operations line where I cam make stops, switch stock, make deliveries, and all that fun stuff!

The thing with snap track is, you are limited in the curves and such that are available, as opposed to physically laying track and beds to a lot more latitude in degrees and such. I did a pretty extensive search of layout plans from KATO and enthusiasts of the brand, and there is some nice stuff out there! …but finding just the right preplanned version was difficult. I finally came upon the Manning Oaks line…



It want quite what I wanted specifically, but it gave the kernel of a custom plan. A double oval, with switchovers and a yard. A Yard! Oh yeah, baby, I needed one of those!

So it was a matter of grabbing some drawing paper, a pencil, and plotting! Before I could do that, I also needed to decide how big the base foundation would be, and of what. The decision was to use building construction wall foam, which was a new hell on its own! …no boxed store would cut it for me, so I bought a giant 4 x 8 foot piece and hacked off a section of the top in the parking lot with a drywall saw, so that I could fit the damned thing in my RAV4 SUV! …you will note in pictures below that it is re-glued back on, with yellow tape holding it together. Yikes! Well, it’ll be getting foam glued on when I make hills so, what the hey!

The next first big element was adding (and try out) a Passing Siding…


…a line of track that splits off a main line and creates a length where a train can park temporarily to allow another train to pass, and then drive back onto the mail line. The plan was to place it on the main line (outer oval) just below the crossover to be added later...



As I sketched out a bigger outer oval, a started with a plan to add an Inner Oval with a Double Crossover crossing switch (see 210 above, as an example)…







…this is possibly, the most critical addition to a more advanced layout because this puppy is the piece that will allow my trains to switch from the outer to the inner oval. Now a note on all this is, I am not planning to run my trains via DCC anytime soon — digital command control basically allows the electrical currents to run through a DCC power pack controller so that a train switching from an outer oval to an inner oval won’t short out another locomotive already running on that inner oval (or vice versa). It’s wonderful technology, but I’m just running standard dedicated current that only turns off when you manually flip a switching unit (e.g., crossover, right or left hand switch, etc.).

So this crossover had to be plotted to one of the four ends, and where the two ovals would be closest to each other. I decided to place it at the middle-ish front of the layout closest to where my main Engineer seat would be. It’s also the most complex switching unit, ‘cause you need to switch a precise series of switching or you’ll short out the entire line. Here’s what it looks like with the passing siding…



Next would be, how big of an Inner Oval. My initial plots had it much smaller… that would change!



Below is a picture of what I started with…



The good news is, everything worked! My old wiring skills still have some mojo! But I also had to add some juice! …the train was a bit sluggish on that outer side of the layout and I needed to add a road bed power feeder to give a little umph to the outer halves of the layout… you can see it at the top left-ish holding the two lines’ loops together.

Of course, that also increased electrical line needed so, I had to get a power line adapter setup under the layout…



Already, the complexity of this N-scale layout is far more advanced than what I used to run. It’s also a hell of a lot more track than I ran previously in HO, so there’s been a learning curve.



Well folks, that was the plan, and it would have been pretty good, but remember what I said I HAD to have… A Yard!

[Whiterook]

The Yard — Take I

So I had my smaller inner oval line and it was time to try out the newly purchased Yard.




I quickly found that I didn’t have enough room between the ovals, on the right side of the layout.



I was forced to use less track than supplied and I didn’t have much of a run for parking trains. This was the optimal direction o was looking for, because my trains run clockwise; in this configuration, I would have been able to back the train stock into the yard lines. Unfortunately, I’d need to expand the outer oval at least a. Foot or more, and I just don’t have that kind of foundation real estate.



…not horrific, but I didn’t like it.

[Whiterook]

The Yard — Take II

So the Yard would go in the inner loop line instead, which meant I needed to flip the direction. Yes, my trains will now drive into the a yard lines, rather than back into them. I did a ton of research at that point of changing over Yard layout direction, to see how trains actually navigate Yards. Good luck finding anything… OmG! It will have to do, and in the end, may be the way it actually works?

The bonus of this strategy however, was expanding the inner loop out towards the right side of the outer loop. However, now that I had more real estate to work in, I saw the Yard Kit needed some modifications to fit in that direction, including the need for Y-shaped right and left hand turnout switches, but this also allowed me to extend the Yard lines. Extra straight lengths in various sizes also need to be purchased in order to get the two ovals paired up in side-to-side runs.



…yeah, that’s a lot of switches! …like 6! Note that I did consider placing the yard at the top of the layout, and maybe even having an original direction for backing into, but it would have required being outside the outer loop, at the very top, and again… real estate issues!




Ain’t she purrrty!



This would turn out to be the basic layout and is what is currently setup in my furnace room. I’ll take a moment to relate a particularly brilliant example of Yankee Ingenuity, when in seeing and realizing all that spaghetti wiring laying in the table. I used a utility knife to cut channels in the foam top and press the wired in… that cleaned up the table nicely and helped the track settle down, as well! And on the subject of the track, I also figured out that wadding up a little poster putty and sticking it under the track in strategically located spots, the track doesn’t move!