Hey everyone. Been gone a long time and now I’m back again. I at one point sold all my train equipment except the 40th annaversary Amtrak set I bought when 822 came to Seattle.
Anyway I came back to trains in an odd way. I replaced my HO stuff with “L” scale trains. As much as I love Lego, all the Lego trains could really do was go around in circles at a stupid fast speed. So as I was doing some research online I came across something that Chicago Metra does every year for sick kids. Operation North Pole. And the. I found that Kato has made N scale replicas of these trains for the last 2 years. At the time I had a large layout of Lego with an entire city and trains running through it. I decided I needed a change and my Lego table would make a great Nscale layout.
So more research lead me to find a couple really neat highly detailed small N scale layouts. I got the idea to build one for Xmas. I took inspiration from several layouts I found on YouTube and started building.
My my plan is simple, 2 loops, DC power winter scene, and even a lighted Xmas tree in the town square.
I will post some pics soon as I figure out how.
OK this has been an adventure... I used to use Photobucket for this but since they went all greedy like I have had to search for a new image host. I think I found one that will work, so here goes. This is 3 weeks worth of building I will try to make it interesting
Here is the start and end of the first day of building. I have track laid down where it is going to be and that is about it.
Here is the next weekend, I have the mountain beginning to take shape. Ignore the weights they are just there to help keep the foam in place as the glue dries. OK so here is some experimenting I did with a Kato Throttle and a DIY power supply. I wasnt sure if the power supply would have a good clean voltage for the trains. I used my O-scope to see. What truely suprised me was the Kato Throttle had a very rough looking sawtooth type signal, not a clean DC signal, the DIY power supply was straight DC with no variation. Kato Throttle signal. DIY power supply and it's signal. Here I combined 2 of the DIY power supplies on a board. I want independant control of both trains. I will be building a custom throttle for this layout. Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end. As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
Here is the next weekend, I have the mountain beginning to take shape. Ignore the weights they are just there to help keep the foam in place as the glue dries.
OK so here is some experimenting I did with a Kato Throttle and a DIY power supply. I wasnt sure if the power supply would have a good clean voltage for the trains. I used my O-scope to see. What truely suprised me was the Kato Throttle had a very rough looking sawtooth type signal, not a clean DC signal, the DIY power supply was straight DC with no variation. Kato Throttle signal. DIY power supply and it's signal. Here I combined 2 of the DIY power supplies on a board. I want independant control of both trains. I will be building a custom throttle for this layout. Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end. As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
OK so here is some experimenting I did with a Kato Throttle and a DIY power supply. I wasnt sure if the power supply would have a good clean voltage for the trains. I used my O-scope to see. What truely suprised me was the Kato Throttle had a very rough looking sawtooth type signal, not a clean DC signal, the DIY power supply was straight DC with no variation.
Kato Throttle signal.
DIY power supply and it's signal. Here I combined 2 of the DIY power supplies on a board. I want independant control of both trains. I will be building a custom throttle for this layout. Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end. As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
DIY power supply and it's signal.
Here I combined 2 of the DIY power supplies on a board. I want independant control of both trains. I will be building a custom throttle for this layout. Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end. As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
Here I combined 2 of the DIY power supplies on a board. I want independant control of both trains. I will be building a custom throttle for this layout.
Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end. As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
Here is last weekend's work. The mountain is shaped in pink foam followed by the addition of expanding spray foam to fill in the missing pieces. Im not sure I like using this method but it did work out quite well in the end.
As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color. And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces. Stay tuned for more.
As you can see I have also cut out the facia. It's mahogany ply that I am going to smooth out and stain a nice reddish color.
And now here is what I was able to get done tonight. Some base paint laid down, no more pink prairie, just some dirt and rock color. I need to get some washes for the plaster rocks and portals and Im going to airbrush some tone into the rock faces.
Stay tuned for more.
You have made a great start and from the pictures I can tell you are having fun! That´s what it is all about!
The Kato powerpack does not deliver stratified DC to the track, but uses pulse-width modulation for finer speed control and low speeds, so the sawtooth look on the oscilloscope is OK.
My little DIY power supplies can actually give my locos slower and stronger performance than the Kato Throttle. I’m not sure if the DIY power supply will cause more heat at those slow speeds, I doubt I would ever run a loco that slow for very long so I prolly won’t ever find out.
Ok so this weekend was productive. I was able to get some washes on the white rocks, I washed the mountain a bit to make it darker as im trying to simulate wet rocks. I have placed some buildings around the town area to get a feel for it but nothing is set in place yet. The track is down now, I’m going to ballast the edges a bit. and before I went to bed I put the facia on. Ignore the ratchet strap, it’s just there squeezing the facia together while the glue dries.
Sorry for for so many pics all at one time, my posts are still being moderated, and I know they don’t watch on the weekends so I waited till this morning, just in case there were questions to answer first.
And lastly I started painting my Merchant’s Row building.