Reading a few posts on gluing down track lately a lot of us are using Latex adhesive caulk it's primary use is in the building or home improvement trade some automotive applications as well, suitcase connectors or Scotch locks have been used for years in the automotive trade.Servo motors primarily used in R/C planes and cars etc. are now being used as switch machines
So what forms of technology used in other fields or hobbies do you employ on you model railroading.
The Location: Forests of the Pacific Northwest, OregonThe Year: 1948The Scale: On30The Blog: http://bvlcorr.tumblr.com
I saw your posting on that quite inventive I must say another one that came to mind was topper tape for roadbed.
Not original with me, but I carry it to an extreme - steel stud, "C works like L" girder construction. Everything below the plywood subgrade is steel stud material - girders, joists, diagonal braces, risers, control panel mountings...
Not very expensive, lighter than equivalent wood and utterly impervious to the effects of changing humidity.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - on steel stud benchwork)
Here's something I did when building my current layout.
I was trying to come up with a way of making easy connectors for between my layout sections, and at the time, I was a PC tech at my last job. One day while working inside a PC, I saw the power connectors and thought they'd be perfect. So I got a bunch of Y-splitter power connectors and converted them. They work great.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
I use my computer to read and write CV's, my Air File (used for body work) to sand wood to make it straight and the Microwave (when wife is not home) to dry dirt. Oh, stole a fork to carve foam. And, never thought 5 years ago my wife and I would be fighting over nail polish remover?
I have all so used the metal wall studs, they are cheap and straight!
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
It may not be much, but my discovery of pink Styrofoam and a steak knife has revolutionized my scenery. Neither were designed for this, but I got a floor to ceiling canyon out of them.
ARTHILL It may not be much, but my discovery of pink Styrofoam and a steak knife has revolutionized my scenery. Neither were designed for this, but I got a floor to ceiling canyon out of them.
Art:
Always wondered how many homes didn't get insulated with pink or blue stryofoam because guys like you and I raided the home improvement stores for our model railroads, LOL?
Good for us, I say!
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Working in the Automotive repair trade, I have found scotch locks that have been designed to accept a spade connector in it so that it's easy to isolate wiring, just plug & play. Crimp a spade connector to the end of the wire, crimp the scotch lock onto the bus wire & plug it in, no need to fiddle with 2 wires in the same scotch lock.
Gordon
Brought to you by the letters C.P.R. as well as D&H!
K1a - all the way
I used a small electric motor and gears from a RC toy tank I found in my neigbours trash to turn my coal mine's turntable. Don't know if thats what you where looking for, but I thought it was kindda neat.
all the ideas tools and parts used I find interesting. That is one thing I think that kinda separates this hobby from others is the inventiveness of the people in it and how they can take litterally a pile of junk and turn itinto a master pieces. Jsut have to watch out for guys like you steeling stuff out of my garbage can........lol
A friend of mine is into building model ships and airplanes. He introduced me into the world of those mini-servos, which have become a fairly inexpensive replacement for those expensive switch motors. There are also a number of different electronic circuits available to control them, allowing us to employ servos in various "animations" on our layouts, like wig-wags, train order semaphores, working saw mill - if you can dream it, you can build it!
These are all excellent ideas, I have a revolving idea for a self demolishing bridge that can reset itelf, but no time really to work on it... I ginsu my foam, I've done spades and blocks, but honestly my most shining moment as an engineer was in hish school science when I built a car from a reat trap and an erector set... got 100 feet- grand prize and 20 dollar certificate for the shack...
I see that servos from RC airplanes are something I should look into. Another source from a hobby-cousin is gears. There is a slot car hobby shop by me, but not the little cars most of us remember as kids. These are much bigger, and pretty sophisticated little pieces. This store has a fairly extensive selection of gears, both brass and delrin, in many ratios that could be useful for this hobby. I'm planning on making a reduction gearbox for a couple of my steamers that should slow max speed down and greatly increase torque and slow speed running.
Another thing I do is save old electronics (clocks, radios, VCRs (you kids will have to ask your parents what it is) etc. They are a great source of electronics parts that can be used in some of the many circuits floating around on the internet.
I was looking for a casting mold for hexagonal cobblestones. I couldn't find anything within the hobby, not even a styrene sheet of such cobbles to make my own mold from.
I ended up getting a piece of artificial honeycomb from a guy who makes these for beekeepers. I made a "positive" impression from modelling clay, and then a mold from latex rubber. Finally, I poured hydrocal and had my cobbles:
The guy who makes the plastic honeycomb, by the way, turned out to be a former O-scaler, and he loved the whole project.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Mister B that is very cool there is no way I would have ever thought of something like that. I hope the servos are fairly easy to mount and program etc. I just ordered a bunch from Tam Valley Depot his online video tutorial seemed simple enough and the price is right.
For the guy with the collapsible bridge you must be related to Gomez Adam's..............lol
Well really many of the things we use are "borrowed" from other areas. Matte medium (for sealing down scenery or ballast) and gloss medium (for water effects) are both used by artists to protect and seal paintings they've done. Plaster, wire screen, lumber, plywood etc. are all designed for the building trades, not for model railroading. Before dedicated throttlepacks came along, transformers were generally all AC, so models using DC used to use car batteries to power their layouts.
Off subject, but I always liked the fact that when guitar / recording legend Les Paul was building his home recording studio in the forties, he made an excellent record turntable out of a Cadillac V8's flywheel.
From original post by Allegheny 2-6-6-6: [QUOTE]
“lately a lot of us are using Latex adhesive caulk it's primary use is in the building or home improvement trade”
I recently started using a new adhesive for track and foam sheets. I had used the special blue foam adhesive that comes in caulking-type tubes over a year ago to build sections. After a long break for a year of teaching and some graduate school, I am putting sections together and found some of the stick-um I used did not stick well. It was volatile, and sometime some of the oomph was gone out of it on one end of the sheet before I could finish applying it on the other end. I hopoed for the best and the best wasn't good enough.
So my blue foam base was coming loose from its frame IN PLACES, not everywhere, I need to reglue it without taking it off, something I could squeeze and butter-knife into the narrow space, and something that would not attack the foam. I found LOCTITE low-odor water soluble household adhesive on sale at the tiny hardware shelf in the grocery store. One advantage, it allows 20 minutes to place joint being bonded. Not a new technology but something rather old-- I used a 10,000 year old fossilized wooly mammoth thing bone to weigh down the foam while setting-- because it was something I happened to have handy.
Arrow shows where foam was coming up...
When I found it working for that emergency project and wanted more to use it to stick down cork roadbed, I found the product was gone. Maybe the special sale was a closeout. But there was something with what sounded like very similar properties, LOCTITE Power Grab all-purpose construction adhesive, likewise water-cleanup, 20 minutes working time.
I hope to @#$%&* that the stuff is NOT latex because my wife is allergic to latex and I want to be able to use it in then house.