Here are more subway graphics:
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
tgindy Nice work fellas! It looks like subways are more doable than first meets the eye. Also as I recall, another 3rd-Rail modeling technique from the 40s-60s (including John Armstrong's layout) was to use flathead screws with rail soldered on top which could then be powered and picked up with a live 3rd-rail shoe.
Nice work fellas! It looks like subways are more doable than first meets the eye.
Also as I recall, another 3rd-Rail modeling technique from the 40s-60s (including John Armstrong's layout) was to use flathead screws with rail soldered on top which could then be powered and picked up with a live 3rd-rail shoe.
Yup. I was looking at something like that. LION used copper colored nails: drive them through the insulating bead, and then solder a rail to the top of them. That's all it really needs unless you really want the protection board as well, and that could have been done with a thin strip of styrene affixed to brackets of some sort.
But the LION has 1000' of track, and did not want to go through the expense of buying that much rail material. As it turns out it is very doable if you use 1/16" welding rod for your third rail. That stuff is CHEAP! But its round. If you can ignore that, fine, if not you can sand it down after it is installed. Had this come to my consciousness before I started with what I did, I might have used that instead. Maybe I can still do it in signature places where people can oooh and aaah at it.
ROAR
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
My South Ferry station resembles the original in name only:
It was going to be a couple of staging tracks, but I enjoy building subway stations, so I decorated this one as well.
This is still really just staging and parking for the subway trains, giving me a chance to hide them when I'm running "old time" trains and just the trolleys roam beneath the streets. I've saved an old video camera with a bad tape transport to use as a good-quality video feed to a monitor, so I can watch what's happening down there where the sun don't shine.
For the station walls, I took my home-made latex mold for the walls and filled it with Hydrocal. I waited about 10-12 minutes, and then wrapped the mold around a curved surface to give me the arched walls you see in the top picture. I also tried making the "South Ferry" sign with a decal, rather than a printed sign. I think the sign came out much better than the earlier projects. The girders are H-girder sections from Evergreen Plastics.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
A couple more subway construction questions:
[1] What's the viewing height from subway track level to ceiling?
The viewing height on the route of the Broadway LION is different in each station. It is about a 1.5" tall platform, and so one must bend down to see the train inside of the station, as per this view at South Ferry:
Here is a view of 42nd Street:
[2] Does anyone run subway track up to a ground level station?
Yes, But... in my best instances, the tracks are level and the horizon shifts position. Here at Avenue H you can see that instead of the train going down into the open cut, the wall rises up to well above the train level by the time the train turns the corner to arrive at Cortelyou Road.
[3] How is subway hidden tracks access handled?
LION has some track that is pretty tough to reach, but none of it is really hidden. In almost all places I can reach into the tunnel to rescue a train that lays down. This photo is the lower level of a 1 1/2 turn four track helix. As long as I needed a helix I figured it had to be decorated as well.
[4] Has anyone modeled "virtual" 3rd-Rail without electrification?
Yes, you can see it on all of my photos. What I use is 1/8" square balsa wood. I paint the top brown to represent the protection board, and I paint the sides black to represent the shadow under the protection board. I use glass beads purchased at Walmart to represent the ceramic seats upon which the third rail would rest and drive a 20ga 1/2" nail through the wood and the hole in the bead into the sub roadbed. Do not go down to the tracks to look at the third rail or you may end up like this guy.
I built my subways from the ground up. Starting at the pink foam level, I laid track on roadbed and ballasted it with black cinders. I built the stations up at the edge of the layout, where they would be visible from the edge. This is the Saint Anne Street station. You can see the tight clearance, only 3 inches. Between the railheads and the tunnel portal at the far left is less than NMRA standards, but I only run subway trains down there, and they all fit just fine. The CMX track cleaning car also has no clearance problems, important because that's how I keep that underground track clean without taking things apart.
After I had the track done and the stations started, I added tunnel walls. I chose a "cut and cover" look with straight walls rather than a bored tunnel. I did the walls by cutting strips of styrene and rolling on Hydrocal plaster with a paint roller, the way they do textured ceilings. Then I sprayed them gray and added black accents. I made the catwalks from balsa wood, with railings made from floral wire. The conduits are plastic coffee stirrers, although if I did it again I would use wire instead.
Yes, access is a problem. As I built the subways and then put the rest of the layout on top of them, I devised a series of liftoff sections. One end of the layout is shown here:
With all the liftoffs removed, it looks like this:
There are a couple of others, which gives me enough access that I can reach anything.
I have two steep grades where the subways come up to the surface. I run both Proto subway trains and trolleys on the line, but typically only the trolleys ever leave the tunnels. There are no high-platform stations above ground to meet up with the subway train doors.
A company called Images Replicas makes HO-scale 3rd rail. I've never tried it. They also make other subway items, like end-gates for the cars and NYC style subway entrances. These are nice products. The newer Proto cars have end gates, but I have one older set so I bought the Images Replicas ones and installed them.
This is the nicest subway picture-friendly forum thread yet!
tywest Does anyone know where i can purchase graphics for a subway station i am scratch building? If need be i will make my own. I was hoping there would be an easier alternative. I have checked all of the subway model sites i know of. I have only found graphics for the cars and stairways here http://www.imagesreplicas.com/accessories.htm Any ideas???
Does anyone know where i can purchase graphics for a subway station i am scratch building? If need be i will make my own. I was hoping there would be an easier alternative. I have checked all of the subway model sites i know of. I have only found graphics for the cars and stairways here http://www.imagesreplicas.com/accessories.htm
Any ideas???
Well now, you are looking into the LION'S specialty. Check out my web site, but most of my newest work is not there yet. So here are some pictures. All are made on the computer. I use Serif PagePlus X5, it is not expensive and it is very versatile. They have excellent help forums.
LION has taken to printing his output on gummed label paper and so it will go up quickly on almost any surface. By taking pictures in the subway I could put them together using page plus to make some very convincing stations.
My first effort involved these houses (on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn) which are mounted on foam board and pasted to the wall.
My second effort was the platform at Cortelyou Road. The station has not been finished yet, and the prints of the houses are too big. They will be redone sometime when I feel like it.
My station wall at 42nd street involved making a three-section photograph of the actual station wall, sizing it down, and pasting them together. Me thinks it worked very well. Because it is a real photo of the real station, the light reflects off of the tiles perfectly.
Here is a photo of my 34th Street station, this one was made 100% on PagePlus. There *is* one photo of tiles, about 4 tiles x 4 tiles, which was made into a bitmap and used by the program for the wall. The program was able to extend that indefinitely to create the entire 48" inch long wall. I then filled in from my imagination the rest of the details.
14th Street was made with the same file, I just changed the tile graphics.
Here is a shot of Dyckman Street.
The rest of the station was scratch built. Computer ribbon wire was used for the corrugated wall, and because I used silicone caulk as my adhesive, paint would not adhere to it correctly, which for Dyckman Street made it look all that much more realistic.
Canal street was made from photographs. I built only a single track at this point (the northbound track being on the other side of the table and therefore not modeled. The photo makes it look like there is a northbound track, and so I continued that illusion north of the station modeling the tunnel stub that was not used.
I am now in the process of modeling a passageway above the 14th Street station, but all that is done so far is the graphics, the assembly is still sitting in several parts here in my office.
Google "Movie Posters" and you can download posters like these to put on your subway wall.
Here are some pictures of one of my subway stations(still under construction). I used the back side of some hardboard, painted it white to resemble tiles and added the platforms from the same material. Note in photo 6 that the Warriors, a gang from Coney Island, have left their mark at the station.
John R
John R.
how do you build the tunnels are there forms molds were do you get the side decks for them also i am just trying to find ideas to get started this is my first time do train molding.are their any how to get started books that will help me in trying to build my set up
My subway runs around the entire layout along the exposed face.
I am impressed with Mr. B's subway stations. I have mixed emotions about mine.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Nice use of space for both above-ground and below-ground tracks. How far does your subway line run? Mine is just a short oval around to the back side of the layout, with a single passing siding in the Penny Lane station. I'm going to add a two-track staging area with my layout addition so I don't have to always leave one train parked in the station while I run the other, and so I can put the redbirds and "greenbirds" away when I back-date my layout to the 30s and only run trolleys.
For inspiration, this is an old photo I took in the Boston MBTA system. It's looking down the tunnel of (I think) the Green Line at Park Street. The tracks are at grade level in the stations, so no, I didn't hop down off the platform to take the picture. The Green Line is light rail cars, and formerly ran PCC cars. It's the line that was featured in the Kingston Trio's famous song about Charlie on the MTA, before they changed the name of the transit authority.
I don't remember the date on the picture. But, it was old enough that nobody hassled me about taking pictures in a subway station, and it was taken with a film camera.
On a slightly different topic, there's a Public Transit group here http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/group.php?groupid=63 that some of you might be interested in.
CapeLIRRfanI love your station! I'm in the process of building my first station of many for my layout and you have employed some great ideas! I'd love to see more pictures of yours... do you have an online gallery of them? Do you have more stations in your layout? I've enjoyed using http://www.nycsubway.org as a resource for station photos. It's almost TOO much information if you're like me and just in the planning stages... so many stations to choose from to model! -Rick Denton
I have a gallery of layout shots at Railimages:
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/8165
My subways are mostly below-ground, and there is a "normal" layout on top of them. The earlier pictures (higher page numbers in the gallery) have some under-construction subway shots, but they are all mixed together.
From the beginning, I planned to have a video camera in the front car of the subway train. There are some stills of that in the gallery. This is my latest video of subway system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5OvZtI-QU&feature=channel
Thanks for the ideas. What i probably will do is use the computer and print stuff out. That will probably be the cheapest and easiest option.
I use the computer, too. I do letters-only in MS Word, and graphics in MS Paint. For fancier stuff, I'll download the images from the web, import them to Word, size them appropriately and print. These signs were printed on white cardstock and glued to a piece of styrene:
My subway floors and walls were made from Hydrocal castings:
Again, I printed the signs on cardstock, glued them to a styrene backing to "raise" them off the wall, and then glued them to the "tile" walls.
I made my subway walls and floors in Photoshop with the graphics printed on.