The new house has enough room for a train around the Christmas Tree. Here is the old Lionel Christmas Train, with some extra Fastrack added, to make what I call the Christmas Tree Pretzel layout.
Download the SCARM file here.
It’s been a while since my last post. At the end of the summer we decided to move. Our new house is 50% bigger and we decided the extra space was worth it. My wife recommended we call the new sun room, the Fun Room. It’s twice as big as the old sun room and will hold some giant layouts.
This layout includes Kato v11 and v16 sets. I added two bridges, three WX310 double switch tracks and a few 248mm double concrete straight pieces to make the layout longer. It has four separate lanes, so four separate trains can run simultaneously. The layout is twelve and a half feet long and took about 30 minutes to put together and wire up. SCARM file is here.
Kato v11
Kato v16
All DC
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!
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.
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.
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.
Before we started doing the landscaping, we added some more track to the layout. Everything arrived today, so we did a dry run on the patio.
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.