This weekend saw my Dad and I visiting the Sompting and District Model Railway Exhibition.
This was a fantatic little day out for the pair of us and it is about 35 years since I have last been to a model show of any kind.
If I remember rightly it was the Model Engineers show at Olympia where I got to see the anamatronic ABC Warrior and the Landrover Mega City 1 Taxi which were going to feature in the upcoming Judge Dredd movie with Sylvester Stallone. The team from Robot Wars were also there recruiting robot builders for their new TV Show which was still in the pre-production phase. Yes, it was that long ago.
Sompting Exhibition Layouts
Many thanks to all the members who brought their exhibition layouts and for taking the time to chat with us. Everyone was extremely welcoming and we both had a great time chatting and looking at the wonderful layouts. Big shout out to Mike Potter from Budget Model Railways for publicising the event on his YouTube channel and bringing his Japanese shunting layout which was quite stunning.
Barraton - 00 Scale Layout
A charming scratchbuilt Era 1 locomotive
Thomas The Tank Engine celebrating his 80th Birthday
a 360 degree shunting layout
I could not leave without making a few purchases some of which may find their way onto my own floating shelp layout including:
Arnold 6354 / Rapido (0634) - BAUSTAZ Coaling Station - £6
When I watch my favourite YouTube channels they invariably feature industrial buildings. Sadly I do not have many of these so I grabbed this visually interesting multi-level multi track building when I spotted it on the club stand. Largely intact, with the exception of the coal conveyor, this will be a great addition to my layout. It is an impressive 22cm x 4.5cm and is intended to be flanked on each side by a track, so lots of opportunity for shunting.
Gaugemaster SS-2 Electronic Station Stop Module - £5
The club stand had a whole box of these and other Gaugemaster automation modules and I couldn't resist at that price. See how I get on wiring this in on another layout
Lima Palethorpes Siphon-G Wagon - £8
I already have one of these for my layout and as I have a Palethorpes Sausage Factory as practically the only industry on the layout I deserve to have a small rake of these wagons.
Obligatory Running Video
The postman delivered my haul of secondhand track so work could start on my own Budget Model Railway Floating Shelf Challenge layout. As you can see the Coaling Station is already installed on the layout and pretty much dictates the theme for this layout.
If you follow the explouts of YouTubers Mike and Doug at Budget Model Railways you will have heard about the Floating Shelf Layout Challenge.
I got really excited about this and so popped down to my local Home Bargains to snag three of the cheap shelves.
Why Buy 3 Floating Shelves?
I could go into a long essay about prime numbers or the religious significance of the number three, but it's because I am building 3 sections. 1 for me (an inglenook), 1 for my dad (a shunting layout), and the third will be a shared fiddle yard sitting between the two layouts.
Dad's scratchbuilt model of Padstow Station in N Gauge
The challenge specifies that the fiddle yard can only have 2 tracks, but in my case I am going to have 4 in total but trains from one layout will not be able to cross between the two tracks. This should provide some excellent expansion but honestly the layouts should operate independently of each other.
Mike has alluded to a modular challenge in the future so I will have to factor this into the design without really knowing what the dimensional specs are going to be. I am banking on a single line going directly through the middle of the short edge on each board as the easiest way to do this.
Perhaps all that hard work designing Geomorphs for my other hobby (Role Playing Games) will finally pay off?
The Budget So Far
This is an exercise in budget model railway building so keeping the cost to a minimum is key. I think it is only fair to represent what it would take to build a layout from scratch so I am only going to consider things I can or have purchased from eBay or AliExpress. Whilst Mike does espouse the recycling of old layouts for track, if you are new to the hobby you will not have an old layout to scavenge. This will obviously push the costs higher, but I think it is in the spirit of the original question that provoled this challenge.
I will not be including the cost of acquiring tools as I feel that this challenge assumes that you have basic tools such as a craft knife, steel ruler, hammer, drill, sanding paper, rotary tool, 3D Printer (only joking)
I have some items on order in anticipation of the challenge and whilst they have not arrived yet I will include their costs in the running total. I have included the cost of 1 KATO 11-109 powered chassis for each layout as I have just purchased those for my own layout.
Whilst I have several 3D Printers and I will probably print some things for my own layout, I will include nominal costs as if you were ordering these items from a print farm rather than the cost to make them myself. For example each loco body could realistically be bought from Etsy eBay or other small manufacturers for £10.
Running Total
ITEM
Layout 1 (mine)
Layout 2 (Dads)
Fiddle Yard
Baseboards
£6
£6
£6
PWM Controllers
£2
£2
-
Kato 11-109 Chassis (1 per layout)
£23
£23
-
SUBTOTAL
£31
£31
£6
We will be attending the Sompting & District Model Railway Exhibition on May 10th, so I hope I can pick up some cheap rolling stock and track to build the actual layout.
Board Dimensions and Layout Design
The Home Bargains Loft Floating Shelves are are (L) 800mm x (W) 235mm x (H) 38mm which means a single length of PECO flexi track will run straight across the board with plenty to spare. It is far too early in the design process to be detailing which track sections need to be purchased but I imagine it will look something like this:
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.
