Con-Cor Pennsylvania Railroad set #8505

The only thing I was really looking to purchase at the Ohio N Scale Weekend was a steam engine. I lucked out. Not only did I find a great steam engine, it is from the Pennsylvania Railroad and part of a complete set with all the rolling stock. Here is a 35 year old Con-Cor PRR set #8505, still in the original box.

The engine is a 4-6-4 Hudson. We tested it on a layout at the show and it worked great. It has traction wheels that were completely dried out. When I got home, I cleaned those and they softened right up. The engine works great! In addition to the steam engine and tender, there are twelve boxcars and a caboose. All are in fantastic shape.

There is no light in the front of the engine even though it looks like there should be one. There are two wires that connect the engine to the tender. I am not sure what those are supposed to do. Otherwise, this whole set is perfect. I could not be happier with it.

In addition to the steam engine, I also picked up an assortment of rolling stock. I found a car carrier that works great with the pack of N scale cars I picked up on Amazon. In front of the car carrier are four PRR tankers I picked up at the show.

To round out the rolling stock, I found a five pack of Kato double stack Gunderson MAXI-IV Well Cars and two PRR flatbed cars with semi trailers on them. My rolling stock collection is looking much better. Thanks Central Ohio NTrak!

Ohio N Scale Weekend – May 2021

Central Ohio NTrak hosted the 12th annual Ohio N Scale weekend on May 14-16 at the Franklin County Fairgrounds. This was my first visit to the show and it will be on my calendar in future years.

There were at least half a dozen large layouts on display. I took my camera with the intension of taking a few pictures, but was so enamored by the layouts that I did not take many. The video doesn’t come close to doing the show justice. I saw several people with recording gear much better than mine, so hopefully more videos will be online.

All the layouts were N scale, unless there was something smaller hidden somewhere that I missed. The show filled two buildings at the fairgrounds. There were many vendors and lots of deals to be found.

Not many shows feature N scale trains. Most of my model railroad track is this scale, so this was the perfect show for me. And I got to see Ivo in person. It was a great time.

Gomez Addams Train Wreck Tribute

A couple of months ago, someone sent me a comment about one of my videos with a bridge.

“Now you can blow up the bridge, like Gomez Addams.”

I had not watched the 1960’s version of the Addams Family enough to be familiar with those train wreck scenes. Once I saw the compilation, the wheels started turning and I came up with the idea for the tribute video.

The Gomez Addams layout is O-gauge. There are two separate layouts used in the filming and sometimes both layouts are used in one scene. One layout uses all metal O-gauge track and the other uses track with sleepers. Take a look at this scene and notice how the layout completely changes track style. Aside from the different style of track used, one layout has a figure eight in the middle and the other does not.

These episodes were filmed in the mid 1960s, long before anyone could “pause” TV and look at things closely. They also used the same explosion footage in every episode. The first was this one, when Gomez and an official from the school blow up the bridge on the track. You can see the faces of both men.

Later, the same explosion is shown, but with the faces cropped out. In one frame you can still see the clothes of the two men, even though Morticia is in this scene with Gomez.

The explosion is repeated, with Morticia in the scene again.

Since there were multiple layouts, I created one that had a bridge over a pair of turnouts connecting the inside loop to the outside loop. The bridge is part of a middle loop.

The SCARM file can be downloaded here.

Kato v2 with Assorted Variations

I added the Kato v2 set to my collection. The viaduct track comes with elevated piers in various heights. Alone, the v2 set can create a rectangle track with one side elevated high enough to run a second track under it. The v2 set comes with one single lane bridge. I already had one of these bridges, so used both in this layout. A year ago, I purchased two sets of piers to try them without the viaduct track. They were not designed for that purpose and I started using Legos for my piers. The Kato piers make the layout look much more authentic.

There are three separate tracks for trains. The red line uses the viaduct track and passes over the other tracks. There are three storage turnouts and a reverse loop. The double curves are from an assortment of variation sets including v11, v14 and v16.

This is a fun layout, but the storage turnouts are too short to store long trains. As long as you are resigned for trains with only four or five cars, all will be great.

SCARM file is available here.

v16 Ultimate Figure Eight

I have used the v16 Kato set in several of my recent layouts. This variation is the largest radius double track set from Kato. It fits nicely on a four foot wide table.

This week I added turnouts on all four inside corners and a crossover in the center. With this configuration, a train can do a reverse loop from any direction, without going in reverse.

To simplify operation, I used three power supplies. One power supply feeds each outside loop and a separate power supply feeds the two crossover tracks in the middle. Each of the two crossover sections has a feeder track. I oriented the feeder tracks so that trains entering the crossover from the right would be “forward” and trains entering from the left would be “reverse” on the power supply.

You can see all the switching going on in the video. In about two minutes, all three trains were reversed in direction. This simple layout is a lot of fun to use. SCARM file is available for download.

v14 and v16 with Extras

I am back in the sunroom with a new 4×8 layout. Last week I had essentially unlimited space on the floor in our new room. This week, I am back in the sunroom. The picture below shows what the sunroom looks like without the Kato Unitrack layout. All of my Kato Unitrack, except for the bridges fits in the white case on the table. As a bonus, you can see the FasTrack loop on the floor.

A few weeks ago, I combined the v11 and v16 sets to make this layout. The v11 has 381/414 double curves and the v16 has 447/480 double curves. The sets fit together perfectly as the two largest double curve sets, creating four tracks of incrementally changing radii. The v14 set has 282/315 double curves. That leaves a gap for the R348 curves, if you have all three sets.

I created two simple loops with the v14 inside the v16. The four top tracks are evenly spaced so that extra space was available below the v14 loops for storage turnouts.

There are four separate tracks for trains. The outside three lanes each have at least one storage turnout.

There is a reverse loop on the inside.

Just like the v11 & v16 layout, this one suffers from the reverse loop being all the way on the inside track. Placing the reverse loop between the second and third lanes is the most convenient, but you need something with the space of the Easter Train to pull that off. The availability of a storage turnout on every track does make it easier to move the trains from track to track. This is a fun layout that took about an hour to set up.

SCARM file is here.

Easter Train 2021

I do not get to use the “new room” very often, but this Easter is one of those times. I used most of my track to make a giant layout. Normally, I keep stacks of similar pieces bundled with rubber bands. I used so many bundles, the “rubber band” feature seemed perfect. There are ten switches in the layout, so there was a large amount of wire in the middle of everything. Covering the wires with blue Lego plates made a necessary eye sore into a tolerable water feature around the bridges.

The track covers an area 11.5 feet by 7.5 feet. That is bigger than any arrangement of tables I have. The long runs are a great opportunity to see full length passenger trains in all their glory.

The large layout presented the option of a reverse lane between lanes two and three. Normally, this sort of thing must be run on the inside or the outside of the layout. The open layout allowed for the reverse loop to be in the middle. With a WX310 on the outside pair of tracks and another on the inside pair of tracks, it is easy to get any train to the reverse loop for a quick about face. The video shows an example of this.

The SCARM file is here. Happy Easter!