BobM’s N Scale Layout

[BobM]

I mentioned my N scale layout in my “I’m back” thread and it seemed to garner some interest; so here goes…

This isn’t the usual thing we see here on ISM. There are plenty of other forums dedicated to model railroading, some specializing in N scale. So why here? ‘Cause I like you guys! And who knows, maybe I’ll start a new trend here and bring in some new members?

A train layout has been a long time desire of mine. As a kid, we had a small Lionel set that we would setup every now and then. But my family didn’t have the means, or room, for anything more. In the late 70’s I went off to college leaving my then retired parents as empty-nesters. During that time, my dad took over one of the now empty bedrooms and started his own N scale layout. He worked on it for few years; I’d help out a little when I was on vacations or otherwise able to spend time at home. However, shortly after I graduated and moved across the country to start my career, he packed everything up and they sold the house. He kept what he had, with plans of starting a new layout. Unfortunately his plans never came to fruition.

I did eventually “inherit” most of what he had saved. But, with the priorities and schedules of my own family, I never had the opportunity to do much with it other than to put together a loop around the base of our Christmas tree for a few years. But now…

And why now? Well, my wife and I recently became empty-nesters, retirement is in the not too distant future, we have the means, I acquired some free, more modern, N scale supplies from a friend, and well… the pandemic!

A train layout scratches a lot of itches. Modeling, of course. Electronics, check. Woodworking, check. 3D printing, sure. Spending money, in spades!

Enough jabbering already, on to the fun stuff!

I couldn’t get a good overhead photo of the entire layout, so here is the west end:


And the east end:


The working name is Fairview Valley Railroad. Fairview Valley is a small, fictional community in the northeastern US set in the late 50’s to early 60’s; at least that’s the plan. There will be a small town with a gas station, shops and other local businesses. The roads are currently under construction in the east end. The west end will feature a train yard maybe with a freight station and nearby TBD industries.

The name Fairview comes from my family. As a very young kid, my dad raised hunting and competition beagles under the name Fairview Kennels. Later, my brothers and I raised angus and sheep for the county fair, we used the name Fairview Farms. Most recently, I was an independent software consultant using the name Fairview Software. I’m sure there were others along the way that I’m forgetting.

The base is 33” x 96” (or about 85cm x 245cm for those of you using that new fangled measurement system).

I haven’t taken many photos during construction, but here are a few that I’ve used to check out scale and get get an idea of how things are coming together.

Here is a road crossing. The crossing is Plaster of Paris; the road is sheet craft foam, painted with craft paints. The truck is off the shelf, in N scale it is just over 1” (25 mm).


This is a recent eBay purchase, a 2-8-0 Consolidation, passing by the west end river/lake/water feature. The rock wall is Plaster of Paris cast in aluminum foil impressions of rocks in the back yard painted with craft paints; that process worked out better than expected! The rocks and boulders near the water are from failed attempts at the prior process! The water is casting resin tinted with Tamiya clear blue and green; I still need to go back and add some waves using Mod Podge, but that will happen once things are closer to completion. Adding vegetation is another future project.


Next is a tunnel portal. The portal is a 3D FDM/filament print painted with craft paints, covered with scenery foam moss.


Next up, a pair of bridges and the other tunnel portal. I’m using Kato track for most of the layout. These bridges are “pre-fab” pieces from that system; I’ve added the weathering.


The final photo for today is a mountain cabin scene. The cabin is mostly scratch built from toothpicks and scraps of styrene. The only thing not scratch-built is the railing which came from an old building kit of my father’s. The foreground tree is made from a wire armature, lichen canopy, and scenery foam for texture. The background trees are cheap Chinese trees from Amazon spruced up with paint and scenery foam.


Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll gladly answer any question, take any suggestions, accept constructive criticism, and entertain any conversations.

As I make more progress I’ll post updates.

Enjoy!

[Garion77]

Wow ! this is simply amazing.
It is a life long dream for me too...but never had the space and time. My dad as kid bought me small train sets and the taste for them always stayed with me. And layout like that ignited in me when I entered for the first an Expo Rail exposition it's called where I live.

Happy that you could fulfill your dream

[RangerNeil]

That's an impressive layout already - all the more so when you consider how small N guage is!! I think I'd struggle with it in HO/OO gauge.
Congrats on both achieving the dream and the amazing job thus far.

[digger303]

That's an impressive layout already - all the more so when you consider how small N guage is!! I think I'd struggle with it in HO/OO gauge.
Congrats on both achieving the dream and the amazing job thus far.

A man and his hobby is a beautiful thing ....well thats what I keep telling the missus. It's going to be a great piece of art when finished.
It would just be small enough for a booknook. A small rail station or maybe a rail and logging scene.

[BobM]

I thought I’d share a couple of updates.

First, something positive; I pulled the trigger on set containing an engine and a few cars that I’ve had my eye on. I got a reasonable deal on eBay. These sets were released in 2010 and the engine seems to get good reviews. These are also factory weathered so I don’t have to worry about screwing that up!



I know, they are hard to see in the packaging; when I finally open them and get them on the layout I’ll take some better photos.

In the meantime, I’ll want to upgrade the engine to DCC. For those unfamiliar, the train set you probably remember as a kid ran on DC current. This meant that for the most basic setup there was one DC controller that controlled the speed of the train on the entire track. If you had two trains on your track they couldn’t be controlled separately unless you divided your track into sections, added a second controller, and a bunch of complex switches. And then to add a third… well, good luck! With DCC (Digital Command Control), digital signals are sent from the controller over the tracks to the engine which has a DCC decoder that controls the motor speed, lights, and even sound. Each engine has its own address and responds only to signals sent to it. So in theory one track could have multiple engines all being controlled independently by one or more controllers. A long way from what my dad and I worked with 40 years ago!

Some engines are sold with built in DCC support; this one is not. Converting to DCC means adding a decoder to the engine. This can be as easy as replacing an existing PC board, often times without even soldering, to wiring in a decoder between the track pickups and the motor with minimal soldering. Sometimes the engine’s frame needs some minor modifications to get the decoder and wires to fit; sometimes major modifications! I believe this one has an easy drop-in replacement board.

However, the 2-8-0 steam engine in an earlier photo required some soldering, and as it turns out more. I upgraded that a few months back, but it never ran very well. I figured there were two issues, 1-lubrication of the drive train and 2-some electrical issue with the track pickup. So over the weekend I decided to open it up to give it some maintenance, lubrication, and search for electrical issues. Well, the electrical issues became readily apparent when I opened it up. On many of these locos, the electrical path goes through its solid metal frame. This frame is this cheap cast “white” metal that is impossible to solder to; and when I did the original install I failed miserably and the connections just fell off.

So after some research, I found some suggests to find room or make room to drill a hole to insert a screw that you have better chance of soldering to. So that’s what I proceeded to do. In this case I need to file a flat spot deep enough for the screws head to be low enough so that it would still fit in the shell. Things were going great, I had filed a notch that would work and I was marking it for the hole to drill. I guess I was pushing too hard in the wrong place when I felt a snap! Aaaarrrggg! I broke the frame! In this picture you can see the two half’s, including the two pieces of the lower one.



This looks impossible to fix without making a real ugly mess. Fortunately, the manufacturer, Bachmann, has an online parts store and luckily they have spare frames that are very reasonably priced! I immediately ordered one and hopefully it will arrive shortly. Phew!

I did manage to add a brass screw to the other half and solder to it without issue. I’ll post an update with better photos once I get this sorted out.

In the photo, the DCC decoder is the red thing with all the wires coming out. Orange/grey to the motor, red/black to the frame, blue/white to the headlight, yellow is for an additional light if needed. For scale, the grid on the mat is 1in (25mm).

That’s it; I hope someone finds this interesting!

[digger303]

Yes I did find that interesting particularly your explanation of the decoder and how it all works.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Cool
Kids did mostly Thomas Tank Engine stuff, your display is much more serious
This was my favourite character

[RangerNeil]

I found that fascinating - thank you. Like many I guess I grew up with the single DC controller per track so the explanation of DCC was very interesting.
I remember seeing a few years ago a Iive steam set-up by Hornby in OO/HO that fascinated me - apparently it flopped because it needed 14.5v to run, not 12v so you couldn't "mix n match" on the same track

[BobM]

Glad you all are enjoying it!

Neil, I hadn’t seen that live steam stuff before, that’s crazy! I think it was more than the voltage differences that kept it from becoming popular; it seems pretty complicated and finicky to run.

[RangerNeil]

Glad you all are enjoying it!

Neil, I hadn’t seen that live steam stuff before, that’s crazy! I think it was more than the voltage differences that kept it from becoming popular; it seems pretty complicated and finicky to run.

I have a friend who is into the 00/HO side of things who bought one of the engines - I think the Flying Scot. Anyways he told me that, although it needed far more attention than normal - regular water top-ups - what put him off was not being able to run other trains. He sold his a little while ago to make room. I suppose if they had brought out more loco's more people might have gone that route? A question we'll never know the answer to.
I saw one operating in Hamleys in London just after Hornby released itand was very taken even though I'm not a train person

[BobM]

Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 Consolation DCC Repair

As I mentioned in a prior post, my 2-8-0 steam engine that I broke the frame on while attempt to repair DCC electrical connectivity issues has been waiting for a new frame to arrive. Well, on Saturday, it did!



There was a choice of green or black when I ordered, I needed black. But as you can see they didn’t have any so I had them send green. Nothing a little Stynylrez Gloss Black can’t fix. I included the original broken half for context.



Power for the DCC decoder is picked from the tracks through this chassis. This means the wires must be attached to the chassis; as I said before, it is very difficult to solder directly to the chassis. This was the problem I originally had, the solder joints failed. The main problem is the metal just draws all the heat way from your iron very quickly so you just can’t get it hot enough. One solution is to install some small screws that can be soldered to.

The first step is to mill a flat area low enough so the screws will not interfere with the body shell. It would be a simple task if I actually had a small hobby mill; I don’t. Milling was done while the two halves were joined using a Dremel and some files.



I have a few very small brass screws I had saved. Unfortunately I have no idea their size/thread pitch. So instead I drilled holes large enough for them to be a tight fit so that I was able to carefully screw them in and “cut threads”. It seemed to work well enough for this.



I next removed them so they were easy to pre-tin. I needed to recut the screws’ slots through the solder so I could reinstall them. Then using a large soldering gun I was able to make reasonably good (but ugly) connections.



From here it was a matter of lubing and reassembly.



During the assembly process I used my adjustable DC power supply to test that things were working. The cool thing about some of these DCC decoders is that if they don’t find the DCC signals, they operate just as normal DC.

Of course the wires need to be carefully tucked away and contained to make it easy to install the shell. Capton tape is great for this.



Finally, the shell and tender can be installed and it is read for testing!



And here it is in action!



The good news is that after all of that, it is now running much better than ever!

[digger303]

Sweet result even if the repair did cost more than initially bargained for.

[RangerNeil]

Lovely job - I like the Dremel and file solution too. Did you solder the wires to the top of the screw heads? or lay them in the driver slots to solder?
Looks good running in the video.

[BobM]

Digger: The cost was minimal. In fact, shipping was more than the frame! I’m just glad they have spares.

Neil: I pre-tinned of the frame, plus a bit extra. Cut slots so I could screw them back in. Pre-tinned the wires. Laid the wire across the top of the heads and applied as much heat as I could. Then crossed my fingers. Had the slots been at a good angle, I would have laid the wires in them, but they weren’t.

[BigWall]

It looks like your layout is running nice and smoothly. Good work!

[ForbesHutton]

I've got a couple of Intermountain SD40-2w's, the older DC ones have LEDs mounted to the frame, getting DCC boards in is easy enough (screws out, split the frame, make the switch and put it all back together) but for the lights I have to snip the LEDs from the DCC board and solder the wires from the frame mounted LEDs onto the stubs of the DCC board ones. Pretty easy, except I've never solder before, the results are ugly, but hidden under the shell.

[BobM]

Thought I’d share an update on an electronics project I started probably a year ago, but just finished up today.





This is the control panel for all of the turnouts on my “mainline”. And here is the underside rat’s nest.



This is all controlled by an Arduino Nano that receives button presses and controls all of the LEDs and turnouts. There are a total of 11 turnouts (including 4 pairs of 2 ganged together to act as 4 crossovers), 7 momentary push buttons, and 18 red/green bi-color LEDs. The push buttons connect directly to the Arduino’s input pins. The LEDs are wired in 7 groups in such a way that each group can be connected to two output pins and switched between red and green. This requires 14 output pins which are provided by a PCA9685 16 channel PWM driver that is also controlled by the Arduino via I2C.

Finally, I2C is also used to control the turnouts via 3 PCF8574 8 bit I/O expanders driving 4 L293D motor drivers. Each L293D is capable of driving 2 turnouts/crossovers. Here is the board for controlling the turnouts.



The gray wire on the left is the I2C bus coming from the control panel. On the bottom is the outputs to the 7 turnouts/crossovers. On the right is the input 16VDC power that is controlled by the L293Ds to throw the turnouts. The turnouts are thrown by sending a short 16VDC pulse; the polarity of the pulse determines the direction the turnout is thrown. The L293Ds can be configured to have two outputs each that can be independently turned on or off and have their polarities controlled as well.

A relatively simple program (sketch?) on the Arduino detects a button press, switches the appropriate LEDs, and sends a pulse to the correct turnout/crossover. The state of each turnout (through or diverging) is maintained so that on the next button press, the turnout can be thrown to the opposite state. When power is first applied to the control panel, the state of the turnouts is not known, so they are all initialized to “through” and all turnouts are thrown in that direction(which does nothing of the turnout is already in the right state).

This was a fun project. I had actually completed most of the electronics some time ago, but just this week I settled on how I would do all the wiring to the layout and finally got it installed. There were a few hiccups, one of the turnouts had gotten some paint and/or glue in it during installation. I had to remove that one, clean it, lube it, and replace it; it’s working fine now. One of the crossover gangs was “non-conventional” so it was wired wrong and that just had to be redone, nothing difficult.

So far I’m really happy with the result, though I haven’t been running it much (the track needs a good cleaning!).

Thanks!

[BigWall]

Nice clean wiring! That's a huge leap forward

[digger303]

I've got a leading question. Since railroading is just watching trains go round and round the same track does that wear thin and is the fun more in the creative building side, recreating various train combinations or even just collecting
Don't get me wrong I like trains, just trying to understand the that side of the hobby. You certainly have a bigger set of skills to learn in order to master it.

[Twokidsnosleep]

I've got a leading question. Since railroading is just watching trains go round and round the same track does that wear thin and is the fun more in the creative building side, recreating various train combinations or even just collecting
Don't get me wrong I like trains, just trying to understand the that side of the hobby. You certainly have a bigger set of skills to learn in order to master it.

This is my feeling about radio controlled cars and planes….fun is in the building and repairs, running them is dead boring for me after a very short period

[BobM]

I've got a leading question. Since railroading is just watching trains go round and round the same track does that wear thin and is the fun more in the creative building side, recreating various train combinations or even just collecting
Don't get me wrong I like trains, just trying to understand the that side of the hobby. You certainly have a bigger set of skills to learn in order to master it.

This is my feeling about radio controlled cars and planes….fun is in the building and repairs, running them is dead boring for me after a very short period

Yes, for me planning, building, and maintaining are the big draw. That plus the variety of “disciplines”, modeling, electronics, woodworking, scenery, 3D printing, etc. Second for me might be collecting. And as “boring” as it sounds, I do enjoy watching the go round and round!

There are also those, especially with larger layouts, that enjoy emulating a working railroad, transferring loads from industry to industry performing various prototypical switching maneuvers to get cars in and out of sidings, etc. On large enough layouts, there can be multiple operators running the layout. They’ll develop waybills that determine which load go to which industry and run on a strict schedule. This is often done at a club layout, so I guess there is a social aspect to it as well.

Others will have smaller switching layouts that will be a model of a yard where they need to arrange the cars in the yard into a train in a specific order to be “delivered” to the industries. Or they’ll model just the industry sidings and perform switching operations to breakup the”incoming” train and set the cars at the designated industries. Some are setup as puzzles and they even have competition to see who can complete the switching operations in the fewest moves or the fastest.

[digger303]

I've got a leading question. Since railroading is just watching trains go round and round the same track does that wear thin and is the fun more in the creative building side, recreating various train combinations or even just collecting
Don't get me wrong I like trains, just trying to understand the that side of the hobby. You certainly have a bigger set of skills to learn in order to master it.

This is my feeling about radio controlled cars and planes….fun is in the building and repairs, running them is dead boring for me after a very short period

Yes, for me planning, building, and maintaining are the big draw. That plus the variety of “disciplines”, modeling, electronics, woodworking, scenery, 3D printing, etc. Second for me might be collecting. And as “boring” as it sounds, I do enjoy watching the go round and round!

There are also those, especially with larger layouts, that enjoy emulating a working railroad, transferring loads from industry to industry performing various prototypical switching maneuvers to get cars in and out of sidings, etc. On large enough layouts, there can be multiple operators running the layout. They’ll develop waybills that determine which load go to which industry and run on a strict schedule. This is often done at a club layout, so I guess there is a social aspect to it as well.

Others will have smaller switching layouts that will be a model of a yard where they need to arrange the cars in the yard into a train in a specific order to be “delivered” to the industries. Or they’ll model just the industry sidings and perform switching operations to breakup the”incoming” train and set the cars at the designated industries. Some are setup as puzzles and they even have competition to see who can complete the switching operations in the fewest moves or the fastest.

Thanks Bob for that insight I enjoyed reading that....thank you.
I can understand the building and have it work as one envisages, it's extremely satisfying. Last night I watched a tv show about Hornby which I enjoyed although if there is another I hope they show more about actually how to achieve a particular result.

[RangerNeil]

I think the craziest - and scariest - layout I ever saw was in the clubhouse of a model railway club at the location I used to store an MV at. Using aerial photographs they had recreated the rail head at Fords Dagenham plant in the 1960's - in OO/HO scale. So coke and Iron etc coming in for the blast furnaces, coil steel and components coming for the MS&B and PTA plants as well as paint. CIoth and foam for the Trim plant. Built cars leaving on transporters - and the main passenger line to Southend runing through the centre...

[aur0ra145]

I've got a leading question. Since railroading is just watching trains go round and round the same track does that wear thin and is the fun more in the creative building side, recreating various train combinations or even just collecting
Don't get me wrong I like trains, just trying to understand the that side of the hobby. You certainly have a bigger set of skills to learn in order to master it.

This is my feeling about radio controlled cars and planes….fun is in the building and repairs, running them is dead boring for me after a very short period

Yes, for me planning, building, and maintaining are the big draw. That plus the variety of “disciplines”, modeling, electronics, woodworking, scenery, 3D printing, etc. Second for me might be collecting. And as “boring” as it sounds, I do enjoy watching the go round and round!

There are also those, especially with larger layouts, that enjoy emulating a working railroad, transferring loads from industry to industry performing various prototypical switching maneuvers to get cars in and out of sidings, etc. On large enough layouts, there can be multiple operators running the layout. They’ll develop waybills that determine which load go to which industry and run on a strict schedule. This is often done at a club layout, so I guess there is a social aspect to it as well.

Others will have smaller switching layouts that will be a model of a yard where they need to arrange the cars in the yard into a train in a specific order to be “delivered” to the industries. Or they’ll model just the industry sidings and perform switching operations to breakup the”incoming” train and set the cars at the designated industries. Some are setup as puzzles and they even have competition to see who can complete the switching operations in the fewest moves or the fastest.

Very interesting, I had no idea. Makes me wish I had paid more attention to the few local train oriented hobby stores that were around here. One of them wasn't really a store, some guy had a pretty big setup in a retail space, and went there to work on it and let people stop by and see it. The model train supply store had been going strong, then one day it was closed. The store had a couple of actual box cars and a caboose outside. Really neat!