The Train Guy

Lighting - The Magic Happens

2008-03-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

I finished up the preliminary lighting for the layout, and I'm really happy with the results. I've always find that the lights really add something to the layout and make it come alive. A preliminary plan was to light every house, add street lights, and one or two traffic lights. I chose a 4-way traffic light and added a traffic light controller. I couldn't believe how cool it worked. The controller runs a realistic lighting pattern through both sides of the traffic light, and you can sync multiple lights together.

The house lights and street lights were wired in series in pairs, and then each pair was connected in parallel. This dims the lights realistically, extending life but if one burns out I only have to check two bulbs instead of the entire layout.

Adding Ground Cover and Ballasting the Tracks

2008-03-13T13:41:00.001-07:00

My three year old son and I made about 50 trees or so for the layout. The trees are made of two parts the branches, and clump folliage. You twist the tree shapes to make the branches the shape that you like, and then cover them with tacky glue. This tacky glue needs to dry for about 15 minutes before applying the ground foam. We had trees sticking to everything, and everyone, but it was a lot of fun. To make things easier, my son and I "planted" the trees into spare Styrofoam, and then sprinkled the foam over.

The next step was more fun, spreading ground foam around the layout. I used a series of different colors from lush grass, to a dead/dying grass color for around steep slopes. After this we planted the trees by drilling holes and gluing them in to place.

I then ballasted the track by spreading buff colored ballast down the rails, cleaning of the tops of the rails. Finally I sprayed the entire layout down with "wet water." Which is water with a few drops of liquid soap added to break surface tension. After wetting down the layout I went back through and sprayed a 50/50 mix of elmer's glue and water to hold everything in place. Here's what it looked like when I finished.

Plaster Cloth & Painting + A Little Fun

2008-03-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

There be Mountains! The next step is to take plaster cloth dip it in water and lay it over the newspaper balls. The important thing is to make sure you have at least two layers of plaster over all of the newspaper for support. I like to lay one layer front to back, and then the other layer across the entire length.

It takes about 48 hours for the plaster to fully dry and harden. Now the real fun begins -- painting the mountain. This step was far easier than I thought. The paint you use is really diluted down and goes on like a water color. The trick is to brush it on and let it run down into the nooks and valleys. This way the crevices will collect darker colors and the tops of the mountains will be a little more bleached. When I finished, I couldn't believe how well everything turned out with so little effort.
I took this picture right after I had painted the mountains and laid down the track bed. A couple of buildings were placed to make sure everything is fitting well. I plugged in the DCC system and ran my first DCC train engine around the layout. I couldn't believe how well everything worked, and having an engine with sound completely changes the model railroading experience. I'm still getting used to DCC after having spent decades with DC trains. So far my feelings are mixed, the control and sound capabilities are amazing, but wrapping my head around all of the commands, specifications, and lingo can be a little daunting.

Making Mountains out of Newspapers

2008-02-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

The risers are in place, and now we can move on to the fun stuff. Creating mountains! The first step was applying profile boards along the edges of the layout. To cut these, I bought a Woodland Scenics Foam cutter. This uses a wire to quickly cut through foam, and since the foam included in the kit is made to work with the cutter, no harmful fumes are released while you are cutting. The only other tool that I had to buy that wasn't included in the kit was a low temp glue gun and glue sticks.

You can see the profile boards in place here, after placing flat foam areas wehre houses will go and the sides of the tunnels, it's just a matter of building up the contours. A liberal supply of masking tape keeps all of the newpaper balls in place.

This angle shows just how these balls of newspapers are used to create the undulating mountain texture. To create the 4'x8' layout required about 10 Sunday newspapers.

On to Scenery Building

2008-02-03T08:09:00.000-08:00

I decided to try out Woodland Scenics' Subterrain system. I don't have the carpentry skills required for L-girder construction, didn't want the mess of carving out pink foam, and wanted something more sophisticated than a plain 4x8 sheet of plywood with green flock grass. Also, I knew that I wanted to carry their products, and by building a layout from the ground up with it, I can help customers with pitfalls to avoid and things that worked well for me.

Since I was also working on getting our internet train store up and running at the same time, I decided to use a kit so that I wouldn't need to spend time on creating a track plan figuring out grades and ordering individual pieces. By using the Grand Valley Lightweight Layout Kit, I was able to get everything that I would need to construct the scenery in one package.

Step 1 of construction is gluing down the risers that the track will rest on. The beauty of using these risers is that your scenery can be below track level or above it. This gives some of the flexibility that you normally get with an L-Girder system, very quickly and easily. In total I spent about an hour laying out the risers, and getting everything glued.

The other nice thing about the Woodland Scenics kit is that I saved over $250 vs. buying the pieces separately. We're selling the kit for $380.97 to members which is less than I've found anywhere else on the Internet.

Building a new 4 x 8' layout.

2008-02-01T07:54:00.000-08:00

Trains, I love them. I've wanted to build a permanent pike for the last 25 years or so, so when I opened up SPTrains.com, I took the plunge and devoted a 4' x 8' area of the store to an HO Layout. The first step in the process was to create a layout table. I used 10) 2 x4 x 8' and cut one of them in half this allowed me to run 3 of the 2 x 4' s along the full length, and then the 2) 2x4x4' pieces on the two sides.

I cut the rest of the 2 x 4's in half and ran cross braces every two feet, so I ended up with a grid that looked like


+----+----+----+----+
|    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+
|    |    |    |    |
+----+----+----+----+

Each open area is 2'x2' so there is plenty of support for the lightweight scenery shell. The remaining 2x4's I cut to 40" long and put 2 of them together to create a 4 x 4 post, anchoring these to each side to create legs. I chose a 40" height because it works well with a stool, and keeps the trains out of reach of young children, while providing a great viewing height for standing as well.

I used 1/2" MDF for the top and for a shelf that I use for controls and electrical elements.

Here is how the table turned out sitting in a corner of the store.
I added casters on the bottoms of the legs so that I can move it around easily.