This week I mostly added more lights to the layout. I started up a little production line making the small circuit boards to distribute the power to each of the buildings and soldering in all the streetlights.
I also finished the remodelling of the cobblestone yard in front of Woods Brothers in the South West corner of the layout.
Funky Foam to the Rescue
I had tried a couple of different techniques to get a decent looking cobbled area but finally hit on this top tip.
Once you have created your template of the area you wish to cover with cobblestones, transfer the shape to 1mm cardboard or similar. Glue a sheet of Funky Foam (1mm XPS foam) which you can get in Hobby Craft (12 sheets for £4) and then trim to your card.
Take a pyrograve pen or soldering Iron with a knife blade tip and carve your lines into the foam. This produces pretty good looking cobblestone sets.
After some painting and weathering using the sponging method, I'm really pleased with how they look. Uniform enough but also random enough to pass muster.
As is customary I actually started this blog post at the beginning of May but got massively sidetracked by the 60cm Floating Shelf Layout Challenge. I even made an instructional video on How to Make Cheap and Easy Cobblestones whilst this blog post was languishing in developmental Hell.
Building a Retaining Wall
I then needed to sort out the horrible mess I had made of the curved section of track which forms Loop C, specifically tying this into the layout yet providing necessary seperation between track and cobbled area. This was simply a section of 2mm thick ABS foam Board jammed in the gap and then I ran a pencil atop a wagon to replicate the rise of the track onto the wall.
A strip of foam board makes excellent capstones and this was all painted with a range of browns and greys just like the walls of the Palethorpes Sausage Factory building I made a few weeks ago. The gap between the track and the wall was then filled with my go-to gap filler Poundland Polyfilla although this remains to be painted and foliage added.
Finally I cut half of the branches off one of my chinese plastic tress and clued in to a traingle of foamboard before jamming it in the gap between the long workshop and the derelict warehouse.
Obligatory Running Video
I also received a long awaited depressed center wagon from eBay which now serves as the official Carrom Track Inspection Camera Car for making driver's eye videos. Enjoy...
As I aluded to in my last episode, I bought a joblot of secondhand N Gauge buildings from eBay for the bargain price of £19.
I decided to buy kits because whilst I would love to scratchbuild every model on my layout, to be honest, I do not have the patience or the skills. The aim of the game here is to get something on the layout to fill in the gaping void in the middle and to add some lighting.
Each building will have its own blog where I will document the customisation process in more detail and explain all the trials and tribulations involved when working with 40 year old plastic kits.
These kits are namely:
KleiWe - 203 Stadthaus (Townhouse)
I
didn't realise that these kits are so vintage having been produced
between 1967 and 1971 before being bought by the Arnold brand. In
unbuilt boxed condition these are quite the collectors item so I feel a tiny bit sad that I am going to hack them up. I found a
little bit of information regarding this short lived range on The Birth of N Scale blog.
This is a very European looking structure, but I quite like it. The fancy stepped gable detail is very reminiscent of Dutch "trapgevels" architecture. This is clearly a more upmarket or municipal building.
On the layout it currently sits directly opposite the Heljan Meat Packing Plant I built last
episode and it would seem fitting if this were the offices of the local
district council. Perhaps the fortunes of both entities are somewhat
intertwined.
Heljan 672 - Furniture Factory
I appear to be missing some of the parts to this model namely the base which includes a sort of loading dock. No matter, as this is going to be my "Tex Mex" restaurant in the style of Chiquitos or Nandos.
KleiWe - 202 Mietshaus (Tenement House)
Another
KleiWe kit, but this one is a lot less European in it's roof detail an
looks much more utilitarian. I'm thinking that this would be a perfect
fit as a police station. It sits on a dead end which will provide ample parking for the MFP liveried Falcon XBs that I intend to police Upper Carrom.
Kick her in the guts Barry!!
Auhagen 14475 Factory Building
This kit is still in production and readily available. Sadly I only have the rectangular administrative building part, but it will serve admirably as the Carrom College Halls of Residence.
Bizarrely this building had an entire set of windows with white frames instead of black. This will not do and so I have already ripped them out and will replace with carefully laser etched replacements.
Unknown Modern Warehouse x2
Despite some hours spent searching I could not identify the manufacturer or model of this kit. However, given that the rest of these models appear to be of german origin I expect this to be a long discontinued Faller or Pola kit. Please feel free to comment below if you know the origins.
For my layout it absolutely screams budget German supermarket so I am going to make it an Aldi. I have a second kit so if I get bored then I can always swap it out for a Lidl.
Bonus cardboard model - Builder Plus BPN9 Signalbox
I was surprised to find that hidden inside one of the buildings was this very dilapidated cardboard signal box. This will be perfect sitting on top of the tunnel mouth overseeing the small shunting area and the station platforms.
I understand that no railway architect in their right mind would ever dream of building a signal box on top of a tunnel and there is nowhere for the leverframes to go and all that real world stuff. But this is my layout and I want it to be visually interesting rather than an exercise in prototypical modelling.
This thing is too cute for school, especially as it has an interior. I feel it is only right and proper to do a full restoration and update it with some 3D printed replacement parts and lights.
I had never heard of the Builder Plus range but it was apparently part of PECO and after a bit of googling I discovered that some of the range is preserved in the Robert Freidus Paper Model Collection
Ressurection and Plug & Play
It is my intention to make all of these buildings as plug and play as possible and as I mentioned before my layout sits on top of a carrom table so there can be no dangling wires underneath the baseboard (as is tradition). This means I have to carve out channels in the MDF baseboard to snake the wires from my 5V USB powered chinesium distribution box through to each foundation and then terminate in a 2-pin female JST socket. Each building will then plug in with the matching male connecter and feed power to a hidden distribution circuitboard to which all the lights will be wired with the appropriate resistors.
I am taking this bold step because it will take me some time to ressurect each building one at a time and that is a much easier task if it is done at the workbench rather than huddled over the layout.
To make this a robust solution, I designed a JST baseboard adapter which can be glued onto the MDF and provide a sturdy location to seat each female socket.
I printed a bunch of these in resin fished the wires through the hole and glued them to the baseboard.
I bend over the pins of the JST socket before soldering on the wires. I have adopted consistent polarity for connecting the pins making it a trivial task to wire up the male JST plugs safe in the knowledge that they will always be the right way round.
What I love about the ubiquitous and cheap as chips JST connectors is that if you get this wrong you can quickly depin the plugs and swap around the wires.
Anyway here's a shot of one of my buildings with the JST socket baseboard adapter installed.
This is a free download from all the usual places including Thingiverse, Cults 3D, Printables. If you like it and find it useful please drop a comment and give it a like wherever you downloaded it from.
Back in March I was busy buying secondhand buildings on eBay to fill out the center of the layout. I also bought a few brand new (old stock) kits from Heljan and Gaugemaster (Kestrel) to satisfy my need to get this layout moving forward.
Heljan Meat Packing Plant - N673
I don't know anything about Heljan other than Sam's Trains on YouTube regularly gives them hell about their OO locomotives. The kit came in a slightly squashed box with a few sprues inside.
Initial assembly was relatively easy once you have worked out that the letters on the instructions relate to the the letters on the parts which must join together. The basic structure went together very easily but the configuration of the highest roof is a bit odd and leaves an unsightly gap. Furthermore, my intention was to light this top most area and it is essentially sealed off once you add the roof.
Painting with Jason Jensen
I'm a big fan of the work of YouTuber Jason Jensen, his densely packed urban layouts in OO and N Gauge are just a sight to behold. However, I'm no ex comicbook artist with all those thousands of hours worth of drawing and inking to fall back on. The beauty of Jason's channel is that he shows you how you can easily add character and weathering to a structure just with some paint and a bit of sponge.
The building was primed in black and given a white zenithal highlight. This is a fancy way of saying I sprayed the building with white paint from above to highlight the bits which would be hit by the sun at it's zenith.
I then proceeded to sponge on a few different shades of brown to simulate the varied coulour of the brickwork. There's no secret sauce to this recipe and you can pretty much use whatever paints you have at your disposal. Just remember to dab on less and less as you go from dark to light.
I did not bother to follow the spackle mortar step as I was really happy with how this turned out and I have no idea what spackle is 🤣.
All the woodwork, doors and trim came seperate on the sprue so this was painted before assembly with a quick zenithal prime and then a base coat of two of my least used D&D acrylics from a Nolzur's starter set by Gale Force Nine. These were specifically Putrid Slime and Xanathar Blue. Honestly these are crap paints and I do not recommend that you buy them, but they do produce a nice sea green colour when used together.
Palethorpes Signage
I have 3 Lima Siphon-G wagons in my fleet, one of which is branded with Palethorpes Sausages. I naturally thought that this meat packing plant should be a Palethorpes factory serving the local community of Upper Carrom. Grabbing some suitable images from the internet and resizing for printing using GIMP was a trivial exercise.
I followed Jason Jensen's weathered sign technique. This involves sanding the back of your printed paper sign until it becomes almost transparent. I cannot believe that I spent half an hour of my Saturday morning carefully sanding paper to make it even more paper thin. We do what we must in the pursuit of happiness.
This was then stippled onto the textured brick work with diluted white glue and I have to say I was impressed at how well this technique works. You can see the ghosted image of the underlying brickwork on the lighter coloured backgrounds and it is quite convincing. Now that I know what I am doing, I am going to be braver and go for even thinner more realistic signs in the future.
Lighting the model and adding a circuit board
My intention with the majority of the buildings on the layout is for them to be removable so that I can work on them off the layout. This lends itself to the "plug and play" mentality where each building has a single connection to 5V power and is then distributed to each LED from a circuit board.
This model has a sum total of 6 lights. Three are 5mm bright white LEDs for the building lights and then there are 3 bright white streetlights. To be honest I have long since lost the packaging that the lights came in and it was all Chinese to me as it came from Aliexpress.
This worked wonderfully for about 30 minutes of continuous use until one of the street lights failed, then another and then the third until this went pop but as I had encased it in photosensitive resin it smoldered for a while and stank!!. Why did this happen?
Because I am a dumbass!!
The eagle eyed of you will have spotted that I had wired the positive leg of the Street light LEDs in at points A, B and C and then soldered all the building lights in at D. This completely by-passed all the resistors and sent each one 5V from supply.
I initially blamed Chinese fake LEDs, but no wonder they failed, nothing can withstand that much power and survive.
It is only by writing this blog that I spent the time to dissect the circuit and recording what I actually did and compared it to the circuit diagram (what I thought I'd done) that I discovered my catastrophic mistake. This is called learning through failure boys and girls and is the best type of learning their is.
However, I do have photographic evidence that, however briefly, it did work.
Obligatory Running Video
This week's video is a bit on the short side but it does illustrate the
My fleet of N Gauge Locomotives has been slowly growing ever since I began this Coffee Table Layout project but I have been somewhat dissapointed in the affordability of most locos.
This has meant scouting for old Minitrix, Graham Farish and Lima Locos on eBay which can be picked up at budget prices. Reliability and running is less than stellar as you can imagine for toy trains which can be around 30 to 40 years old.
However, being an avid follower Mike and Douglas at the YouTube channel Budget Model Railways and I noticed their affection for the Kato Pocketline locos used on their tiny layouts and was amazed at the effortless slow running of these tiny little marvels. I subsequently purchased a couple of the very cheap Kato 11-105 powered chassis to experiment with.
Kasugar.Japan
A big shout out goes to eBay seller Kasugar.Japan who furnished me with two chassis for the princely sum of £46.52. If you are looking for some Kato items or maybe you want those rare JDM Pokemon cards then this is the store for you. SPOILER ALERT... I enjoyed this experience so much I bought two 11-109 chassis.
Which Kato Chassis do you choose
The main differnce between the two Kato powered chassis is that the 11-105 has two 4 wheel bogies (one powered and driving but both pickup power from the rails) and the 11-109 just has 4 wheels but is all wheel drive and all wheel pickup.
3D Printed Bodies Galore
If you are into your Narrowgage / 009 model railways, you have a plethora of options available for both the Kato 11-105 and Kato 11-109 chassis. If you want to stick to N Gauge then you will have to do a bit of searching on Cults3D or Thingiverse, but they are out there.
This file is amazing value for mone, I struggle to price up my own downloads and there is always the fear that if you price it too high you end pricing yourself out of the market. At this price it comes highly recommended.
I printed off a couple of Model 6, a warship class looking body which the designer recommends for the 11-105 chassis and a couple of model 5 which looks a bit like a class 04. Printing took an hour and a half and they came out looking great.
Once the tedious task of clipping off the supports was done, Model 6 fit on the chassis perfectly. Model 5 required some trimming with the dremel and it is a bit of a squeeze but it can be made to fit.
Sadly when painting I used an untested rattlecan of "white" paint which ended up being gloss and having a really bad reaction to the black primer underneath. I soldiered on and managed to get a passable attempt at a little BR Green paintjob. I was only mildly pissed off by the painting disaster because these are 3D printed bodies and I can just reprint them.
But what do they run like?
The Kato chassis are very light and they have a tiny motor which is ideal for their intended purpose which is low speed shunting operations and as a result they have very little pulling power. Anything more than a couple of small wagons and the wheels start to slip. This can be overcome with the addition of a little weight.
I added two 5g self adhesive weights to the top of the motor housing and this proved more than enough additional traction to comfortably pull everything in my fleet of wagons and coaches including my Canadian Pacific grain wagons, BR Mk1 Coaches and Siphon G wagons.
The incline on my layout was no problem for the tiny little Kato on its own, but it struggled when coupled to anything but the lightest of my wagons.
Other Locomotive Body Options
Whilst hunting around on Cults 3D I encountered a few options together in my N Gauge Train Stuff collection so you don't have to trawl through pages and pages of train stuff. I also found quite a few of the odd looking chibi style "Caricature" 009 locomotives which are essentially condensed versions of regular OO/HO loco bodies for the 11-109 chassis type. Most peculiar.
On Thingiverse I found the Alsthom 1000 which looks like a fairly authentic reproduction of its prototype.
If you don't have access to a 3D printer Budget Model Railways has you covered one with a range of N Scale Loco Bodies to purchase from their website.
Let me know what you think, and if you have tried printing out your own N Gauge bodies for the Kato chassis please share.
It's been a while since I blogged about the N Scale Coffee Table Layout what with the minutae of life having taking center stage. Whilst there has been a huge amount of progress on the layout I just did not have the motivation to record it.
Cardstock Low Profile Buildings
Before Christmas I chanced on a joblot of low profile cardboard building kits for a bargain price. These were all from the scale model buildings N gauge range and are semi photo realistic and obviously taken from photographs of prototypical buildings which have then been photoshopped.
These were perfect to line the edges of my layout and I developed a technique of cutting out the buildings in layers to add a little depth and visual interest to these already great kits.
Doors and Windows
Using a fresh blade in the trusty craft knife and a steel rule, laboriously cut out each of the windows and doors and put them to one side. It is important to store these in the same order and orientation in which they were removed for when you want to put the windows back.
This will leave you with your base layer.
Add Depth with a Second Layer
Take your base layer and stick this to a second piece of card of a similar thickness using a glue stick. The buildings are generally small enough that there is enough excess unprinted card to let you do this without needing to break out anymore card stock but following in the footsteps of Michael from the fantastic Chandwell YouTube channel, you can resort to your favourite brand of cereal packet.
Now repeat the exercise cutting out all the window and door apertures. This will leave you with a double thickness layer.
Abutments and Protruding Structures
Some of the buildings feature various protruding structures which can be cut out and carefully peeled away from the second layer. Glue stick is pretty weak stuff so you should have no problem removing these elements. Stick these to similar thickness card and cut around them.
Glazing Windows
There are a couple of ways you can glaze the windows either by adding a layer of acetate to the whole base layer or by covering the window with cellotape. I prefer the second method as it does not add a lot of thickness and it is easy to cut through the tape if you are simulating broken glass.
Using the cellotape technique you could go the extra mile and remove any tape from the mullions and transoms of panelled windows for that matt look.
Using the acetate technique you can simulate larger moder multipanel windows by scoring the acetate gently. You can then rub these with coloured pencils which will colour in the scratches to form the mullions. This does tend to warp the acetate creating a sort of bubbled shape to the windows and lots of reflections. If this is not to your taste then you could just draw the mullions on using a permenant fineliner.
Edging with Watercolour Pencil
The edges of your building (and window apertures) will now have clean white edges which need to be coloured with paint or my favourite water colour pencils. This does not need to be a perfect colour match and in fact my dark grey pencil seems to get the most use.
Reconstruction
Any abutments that you created can now be reglued back into their rightful places giving you a solid wall again.
Rebuilding and Reinforcement
Adding all these extra layers of card that they
weren't originally designed into the kit can make them a challenge to
keep square when you finally come to fold them together and rebuild the low profile type structures. I found that
adding an interior skeleton of 5mm foamboard was more than enough to produce a rigid structure. This also gives you a much better surface to attach your roof panels to.
Replacing Windows and Doors.
You can now refit your windows in their relevant recesses simply fixing them in place with tape. For particularly deep recesses you can repeat the earlier step adding additional layers to the window apertures to suit your tastes. If you are gluing these to your backboard as I was then I recommend keeping the final number of layers to a minimum.
Roofs
The roofs included in the kit are the worst aspect. Typically using just patterned textures as these are likely to be completely unuseable from the prototype photograps, they are a little lack lustre and can either be replaced by better textures from other companies or weathered using the watercolour pencils.
If you are making a silhouette style building the included roof textures are more than acceptable. however, if you are going more for the low profile look intended by the kit then a stage of artistic weathering is definitely required.
Accessories and lighting
How far down the rabbit hole you go is dependant on your tastes and skill level. Adding some gutters and drain pipes with strips of card or styrene is an easy way to add that extra layer of detail.
Some of the buildings clearly include security lights and adding these to your building is trivial. Simply drill through the relevant spot with a small drill bit and fish through an appropriate voltage prewired SMD LED. These can be affixed with the modellers friend photoreactive resin glue or even white glue.
Signs and Names
Some of these kit buildings come with signs printed on the buildings. Whilst the maority are simulating painted on signs some would benefit from being raised from the surface. You could scan the building sheet into the computer before you start cutting out and reprint the signs onto card to make them a bit more three dimensional.
If you have access to a 3D Printer you could also model these letterforms and print them out. This is much easier than it sounds and I have a tried and tested technique for making signs which can be used to great effect here.
Weathering Cardstock Buildings
This is an area of modelling relatively new to me but using a set of cheap artists pastels and watercolour pencils I managed to dirty up some of my buildings. This is an entirely subjective exercise and is probably best done when you have selected spots on your layout for the buildings to go and then you can weather them into place and achieve a realistic and consistent tonality to your scene.
The Bowerings compsny sign was scanned in and then 3D printed using the technique I menetioned above. LED lights were added alongside 3D printed drainpipes.
This buildings roof texture was okay but I needed to heavily weather it to make it look like rusted tin. The aperture for the sliding door is currently masked with some black card whilst I decide on a suitable interior.
This two storey structure features a loading bay with protective steel posts which I modelled using styrene rod. Drainpipes were added using the same styrene rod. The roof is a little lacking in detail and I think could do with a replacement slate tile texture. Sometimes you are never really happy.
Obligatory Running Video
I recently invested in a tiny action camera measuring no more than 2cm cubed. After some messing about I managed to get a semi decent bit of footage. I highly recommend playing this back at half speed.
The layout has undergone some pretty big changes of late, none bigger than it getting some platforms and more importantly working out where the logical place for the station is.
The original plan was to have it on the left side of the layout, but things got cramped real fast and so I decided to flip the script and move the station to the right. It makes logical sense to just have one road going into the interior of loop 1 and then out via a large 3 track spanning bridge adding even more visual interest.
How to make a custom shaped N Gauge Platform for your model railway
Grab acouple of sheets of A4 copier paper and lay it over the track.
Run your finger over the track embossing the location of the rails on the paper and then trace those embossed lines with a marker to make the next step easier.
Draw parrallel lines approx 4mm outside of the track. This represents the edge of your platform. Cut out the shape of your platform and test for clearance on your layout.
Draw a line in the middle of your shape which is a known length, say 50mm. This is your scale line. Scan or photograph this shape and put it on your computer.
Import the image into Sketchup and draw a line over the top of your scale line. Use the tape measure tool to measure this line and input the known length of your scale line. This will rescale the image to match the real world scale line. Delete this line as you no longer need it.
Trace around the edge of your paper shape using the straight line and two point curve tools until you have created a filled shape. Flip this shape in the Z axis or you will end up creating a mirror image of your platform shape. Ask me how I know...
Extrude this shape up about 2mm to form your platform surface.
Use the offset tool to create a matching shape 2mm in from your outer line to form an inner filled shape. Extrude this shape up 10mm. Save as an STL and send to your slicer of choice for printing
Obligatory Running Video
This weeks video shows off some of the lighting I have been adding to the layout and in particular the little 5v USB power distribution block I bought from AliExpress for some stupidly low price. Lighting is an involved process and I will be going into this in much more depth in future episodes.
Building a model railway layout in any scale is a challenge. If you are not an experienced railway modeller and are coming at this without the benefit of many layouts under your belt it can seem a bit daunting.
What are the challenges when building a model railway
Buying Your Track - This is a key barrier to progress, as track layout and more importantly what track you need to purchase, is going to determine how quickly you can build your layout.
Fortunately, I had a few scraps of secondhand flexitrack which meant I could get a rough idea of how many loops of continuous running track I would need and how many points. This created a shopping list for eBay and Aliexpress and I could get on with some other critical elements of the build whilst I awaited delivery.
Track goes on top of some things - Where my particular layout is concerned I have two items which need to be built before I can lay any of the 2nd and 3rd loop track. This comes in the form of a viaduct whihc pulls double duty as a tunnel. Fortunately, I have access to a 3D printer and so after a few hours searching I was able to locate an STL file which met my needs... somewhat.
Building to a Budget can delay a Project - Model railways are expensive things and if you are not made of money then assembling your critical items might need to be spread over many weeks depending on your budget. This can be a challenge when you are buying lots of points or turntables which can cost a fortune. This can introduce delays which slow the process down and can suck all the fun out of the room.
We can all fall into the trap of prevarication but keeping up the momentum is key and there are lots of smaller projects which you can bring forward at little to no risk to the project as a whole. Smaller scenic items which can be dropped into a layout at the right time are a godsend.
Whilst I waited for all my track components to arrive, I needed to build the elevated section of my layout (loop 3) and I had enough track to test the incline and build the up and down ramps. The layout is intended to be viewed from the front and I wanted something a bit more visually interesting than a grassy hill. This meant I needed to set the height of the tunnel so I could determine the height of my track and then put in place the loop 3 roadbed.
I found the perfect STL file on Cults 3D and shelled out the princely sum of £3. I then set about printing out a couple of these sections on my Photon Mono M5 to test on the layout. They are huge chunky models which benefitted from hollowing out and adding some drain holes. However, even after doing this I ended up with quite a lot of trapped resin which leaked out slowly... very slowly.
Without realising that the designer had created a Low Relief version of the viaduct, I sliced the fronts off in Meshmixer to create fascias for all my arches.
Over the course of a week or two I printed off several fascias and infills to create a curved section of viaduct which hides the tunnel.
Archway Shops and Real World Inspiration
Ottley's Coffee & Catan - Inspired by my colleague and fellow boardgame fan Stephen Ottley. Stephen is our resident coffee afficianado and also runs the tiktok channel TableTok Games.
Sam's Sounds - Sam Buckley is our resident muso and part time punk. He will of course now be referred to as the punk pickle.
Lejava Journeys - Tom Lejava is one of my longest serving colleagues and is never happier than when he is on holiday in some exotic destination. A travel agent was the obvious choice and Tom has the dubious honour of having a name which is super easy to cut out.
Just A Girl - Impeccably attired Elena is honoured on this layout with a fashion boutique specialising in the latest street fashions. "Just A Girl" is her catchphrase and fits this shop front like a glove.
Neale's Yard - Sales Director David Neale got a discount warehouse on this layout. If you look very closely through the open door you will see the man himself pushing the Ark of the Covenant into the back of the warehouse.
Anisha's Snack King - Anisha's snack drawer is legendary and so having an international snack store was a perfect addition. If you are the King you need your sign made out of gold... real gold. I knew I would find a use for that gold leaf I bought from Aliexpress all those months ago.
Loop 3
Determining the height of Loop 3 was a simple case of tracing between a couple of sections on all three sides of the baseboard scribing a horizontal datum to work to. On the left of the layout loop 3 climbs up to meet this datum, tracks level across the back of the layout and then falls down more steeply on the right. The road bed was superglued in place with some MDF supports.
I threw in some track and tested that my engine would fit and with a small amount of support trimming it did. I then tested that the same fully engine could climb the incline easily with a rake of wagons behind it. It passed the test sufficiently well for me to continue.
Using a wooden curve template I drew on the rough arc that the loop 2 tunnel track would take avoiding any of the vertical supports which will form the retaining walls for the loop 3 track.
Magnetised Scenery
This entire section of scenery needs to be removable yet tie into the layout at each end where the tunnel mouths (portals) are. This would seem like a perfect task for those tiny but incredibly strong neodymium magnets. The ones I have are about 10mm diameter by 1mm thick.
The magnets were glued onto small offcuts of MDF on the back of the viaduct facias and matched to magnets on the viaduct supports.
As you can imagine this was a fiddly exercise and I broke the viaduct several times. I used some car body plastic bumper filler to strengthen the combined fascia structure.
My Aliexpress order of flexitrack finally came through. For £15 I got 5 50cm long lengths of really flexible concrete sleeper style flexitrack with gold rails. Not a huge price difference to PECO track but when you are combining with other orders you can make significant savings on the shipping.
I did not skimp on the points and managed to pick up 2 x ST-5 (RH), 2 x ST-6 (LH) and an SL-E393F short crossing for £50 all in.
Establishing Loop 2 and Casualties of Construction
Putting in the large Loop 2 was the first priority. This goes all the way around the layout and through a tunnel / viaduct and allows rail traffic to move between the loops.
This was also my attempt at laying cork underlay. I bought a roll of self adhesive underlay (that's not going to bite me in the arse in a few years time, LOL) and cut 1 inch strips which I then cut in half about 2 inches from one end. This creates a head and two tails which can be more easily bent to conform to the radius of the track.
I joined two of the flexitrack sections together using the very substantial joiners provided and connected it to one of the RH points. This established the first run of track on the left side of the layout allowing space for the platforms which will eventually service the station and passengers waiting at loop 1 or loop 2. Things went swimmingly until I began fixing the track under the elevated section. I could not get a tool in to drive home the track pins.
With a sigh I proceeded to rip out the elevated section. In truth, I was not 100% happy with it and it will allow me to custom cut a roadbase which conforms to the curve of the viaduct and provide a solid mounting surface for the points which will be needed if I decide to put a small siding on the left. The right side of the viaduct is going to be getting a signal box from which the signalman can see the entire layout.
The First Rail Disaster!!
Everything seemed to be going according to the vague plan I had in my head until I got down to the return set of points which reconnect Loop 1 and Loop 2. I think I got mixed up and ended up putting them too low down on the layout.
However, as Bob Ross might say "It was just a happy accident" and chance purchase of the short crossing changed the direction this layout was going in a big way. Gone was the idea of another set of 4 points connecting loop 2 with loop 3 and back again. Instead the crossing would permanently link loop 2 and loop 3 in a moebius strip like arrangement.
I'm sure you will agree that this introduces a large amount of fun to the layout and saves me £60 in points that I won't have to buy. This will also reduce the number of DC controllers I need to buy to have continuous running throughout the layout. Double Whammy!!
Thanks to this unplanned change the layout lines I had marked on the layout could not be followed and so I strapped on my big boy pants and began cutting underlay and laying track in small sections. I can always trim it down later.
By now I had pretty much used up all my flexitrack, but don't worry I put in another order a couple of days ago just in case.
Obligatory Running Video
This weeks running video showing the layout in its new improved Bob Ross inspired shape.
The archway shopfronts have been removed for photographic purposes but don't worry they will make a return shortly.
As I mentioned in an earlier episode of this series, I actually have another loco in the shape of a very battered Minitrix No 201 0-6-0T Dock Tank Loco in British Railways black which I found in a £3 grab bag of toys in a charity shop.
It did work, but not very well, so I had a go at blindly repairing it. I'm a man, I don't need instructions... how hard can it be?
I killed it...
...or at least I thought I had. I disassembled the running gear and could clearly see that there was nothing stopping the motor from moving about in the chassis and consequently the worm gear from becoming unmeshed with the drive gear. Two tiny countersunk screws were missing from the motor plate.
Thanks to the information found on the marvellous site Classic Minitrix I was able completely strip down the chassis and to put it back together with the wheels in the right configuration. I don't know if this is normal but this little engine uses the wheels and chassis as pickups from one rail and isolators on the axle allow other side of the wheelset to pick up from the other rail.
As soon as I applied power the motor sputtered into life.
It's not out of the woods yet as it is missing some bits like a buffer, the two tiny countersunk screws which hold the motor in place and both couplers, springs and the plates which hold the whole shebang together.
I'm sure that these are readily available on the internet somewhere like Lendons of Cardiff.
It really does need a lick of paint as it currently looks like a very well played with matchbox car. Fortunately the decals are in great condition so at bit of black enamel and a protective coat of matt varnish should see it back in good cosmetic order.
The Tale of 1,600 Machine Screws
Sourcing the screws to retain the motor was not difficult as there are plenty of eBay sellers offering tiny watch screws. The challenge is discovering what size screw Minitrix used back in the day when they designed this little loco.
The answer is M1.6 x 3mm. I know, because I bought 1,600 countersunk machine screws to try to find two which were the right size.
How does it Run?
Like the clappers. It's not great at very slow scale speeds but as you can see it flies around the small loop on my layout. My choice of electrofrog points is causing it to get stuck (hence the speed) but it runs.
Not to worry, there are big changes coming to Upper Carrom so tune in next week.
IMHO a 3D Printer is essential for most model hobbyists, they have never been more affordale and easier to use, as long as you have awell ventilated place to put it like a workshop or man cave then you should get one.
The cost savings of print your own models compared to commercially produced injection moulded kits or ready to run models just makes it a no brainer.
I found this selection of N gauge Rolling Stock models inspired by the PECO wagon on thingiverse and thought I would have a go at building my own rolling stock.
The kit of parts is great and offers a basic short 4 wheek wagon chassis comparable to the ones I already have in my collection which came with the starter set. On top of this can be fitted a choice of:
Box Van
Brake Van
Cattle Van
5 Plank Wagon
Tank Wagon
The kit also comes with two roofs for the brake van, and the cattle / box van and rapido style couplers.
Printing Advice
Supporting the model well is crucial. I chose to print my chassis flat side to the build plate, but I still added plenty of supports arount the edges, buffers and inside the coupler box to ensure a good print.
The wagon bodies have a short pair of keys which lock into 2 matching slots in the chassis so their is no flat surface and a similar support exercise is required. The roof is easier to support as noone will see the insides. The trickiest part to print were the bars on the cattle van, which are really too thin at this scale. When I reprint my cattle trucks I will likely recreate these slats in thin card.
Assembling a 3D Printed N Gauge Wagon Kit
Assembling the kit is a simple case of adding the couplers to the chassis and sealing the two halves together with your choice of body style.
Ready to Run models typically have sprung couplers but I had no tiny springs on hand, so created a simple spring from the thin transparent packaging that the wheels came in.
Cut to size and bent in the middle this provides enough "spring" to keep the couplers level.
The brake van has a specific roof with a stove vent whereas the cattle van and box van have a ventless roof.
What about wheels?
The kit does not come with wheels and whilst I have found some models to print I thought it best to buy these on one of my many aliexpress trips.
I found a seller offering 48 plastic wheel sets by Evemodel, that's enough for 24 wagons, for the princely sum of £5.49 + shipping. If you want metal wheel sets they are readily available but obviously more expensive.
The wheels fit neatly into the holes in the axle boxes of the chassis, although I did have to open up the rectangular pockets that the wheel flanges sit in to enable free running and end float. This was a trivial task with a small needle file, although care must be taken when fitting the wheels to avoid breaking the brake assembly detail.
Once assembled they look pretty convincing.
How do they run?
Pretty well as you can see in the video below. The couplers hang down a little, but with the addition of the little makeshift springs I think these will work very well on my layout.
It's high time that this layout got a name and it seems appropriate to call it Upper Carrom as it is quite literally above the Carrom Table.
Of course it wouldn't be a real railway station if it didn't have a railway station sign. There are plenty of places you can download but I wanted to model one myself and the technique I used to make my badges and the famous Okey Dokey sign is a great fit for what is a very simple design.
Use The GIMP
I have been a GIMP user for many years ever since Photoshop 5 and it is an awesome free alternative. Yes it has it's quirks but once you get used to them it's pretty much plain sailing and has everything I need in a bitmap image manipulator / Photo editor.
On a transparent layer floating above the white background layer, I added the station name using the text tool making sure that this was 100% black.
The basic name plaque lozenge shape is easy to create using the circle and rectangular select tools to create shapes on seperate layers filled with 100% opacity black. These were then merged together to create a single "half" which could be duplicated and flipped and then merged to create the whole lozenge.
The middle lozenge was just a repeat of the steps above. Do not merge the full width lozenges together at this stage. You shouls have 4 layers (from top down) Text, text lozenge, middle lozenge and finally the white background. Hide the text layer temporarily.
For each of the lozenges, select the black area and use the select > shrink command to reduce the selection to an appropriate size then fill this with white. Merge Down the sign lozenge onto the middle lozenge to create a single lozenge layer
Unhide the text layer. You should now have a black and white railway sign. Export this for Tinkercad as a png no larger than 1000px wide.
Finally select in the lozenge layer select everything outside the lozenge using the fuzzy select tool, invert the selection and create a new layer above the white background fill this with black. Turn off the layers above and export to png.
In Convertio
Convertio.co is a fantastic free web based converter tool. Just upload the two png files and convert these to SVG.
In Tinkercad
Import each of SVG files you have just created as "Art". Modify the height of the text layer so that the text and the border of the sign protrude protrudes out of the background.
Export your model as an STL for 3D Printing. Import this into your slicer (it will be big) and scale to your needs.
Obligatory Running Video
The first running of the newest addition to the ready-to-run rolling stock collection, a cheap aliexpress Canadian Government grain wagon... it's on loan okay.
