#Model Train

[sibmakesart]

day 4 of the ✨ONE PIECE ADVENT CALENDAR✨

[laughingsquid]

An Outdoor Model Train That Runs Along a Wooden Fence With a Snowplow to Keep Its Path Clear

[ghostowlattic]

Model Train Garden

[thunderstruck9]

Andrzej Jackowski (British, 1947), Standing Train II, 1997. Oil on canvas, 141.7 x 162.5 cm. National Museum Cardiff

[whirligig-girl]

Eaurp Guz's roughly 1:30 scale live-steam model of Slaibsgloth Coal Railroad No.32, a ~1.6 meter gauge 2-8-8-2 garratt steam locomotive built on planet Mellanus in (earth-)year 2346 and retired in 2379 (two years ago) for service bringing coal carriages from the coal pits up to the interchange at the Glooiw & North Eastern. It is unusual for a coal burning steam engine to remain in revenue service--the majority that remained in use after the development of Diesel-Hydraulics were decommissioned with nuclear-powered railway electrification in the 2360s, and the ones that remained were mostly converted to oil burning. The Slaibsgloth steam engines meanwhile persisted right up until the closure of the coal mine. Glooiw & North Eastern has acquired the 40 locomotives. Their fates are uncertain but railway preservation groups remain optimistic.

When Guz first came aboard the Cerritos she was overworking herself constantly, which lead to her being so tired that she was leaving residues on the consoles and generally doing sloppier work. It turned out that Guz had been working double shifts, and when Billups found out he put a stop to that. That's when Guz turned to a hobby she'd done a lot of before joining starfleet--model rocketry. Armed with far more advanced tools than she'd had on Mellanus, she made accurate working model replicas of real historical prewarp spacecraft from a variety of planets and would fly them in real space whenever possible.

Eventually, she also found a new appreciation for her childhood love of trains, and her model-making skills and tools translated well to model railroading as well. She has a little shelf layout in storage that she occasionally tinkers with, and she runs large scale model trains on the holodeck. She could run full-scale holographic trains on the holodeck too of course, but it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. And then there's the 1:5600 scale BM-gauge railroad she's building on a microscope slide! (Bµ gauge is "Byte micrometer" gauge or a track spacing of 256 µm)

Guz eventually wants to build a roughly 1:80 scale modular layout of the Slaibsgloth Coal Mine, with smaller scale electric-powered models of the Slaibsgloth coal-burning steam engines and enough track to wrap around a room and give them a good run, but unless she can rally support for a Cerritos chapter of the Starfleet Rail Transport Modelling Club or she can get her own crew quarters, it's a pipe dream--or maybe something for her retirement.

Replicators and advanced computer aided design tools reduce the amount of time it takes to get modelling projects done by whatever factor is desired. Technically Guz could probably replicate fully assembled working models as long as they fit in the replicator bed, but where's the fun in that? But she's still only got so much time in an off-shift, and doing it 'properly,' scratch-built using machine tools like 'real' modellers on Mellanus, or manually defining all of the geometry in a CAD program like modellers on Earth, would take too much time.

see also: alt versions of the locomotive.

[kcvulpinestudios]

Just a little scene based on some of my old art depicting a freight train in a cloudy desert scene.

The rain effects in the video came from Sai Kiran on YouTube. Enjoy!!!

[higherentity]

[vintage-tech]

Model train bits and pieces at an estate sale dealer.

[trainsinanime]

This is the newest section for my model railroad. Yes, it seems chaotic, but that's the point.

My model railroad consists of small sections that I build whenever I feel like it, and arrange on a suitable table. Since my apartment isn't that large, I have exactly one model railroad table, which also serves as a general hobby and random stuff table. That makes it difficult to actually run trains - there's always random stuff in the places where I want to put model railroad sections. This here is the solution. Hopefully.

It's a model railroad module that also serves as a holder and organiser for random stuff. The idea is that it remains in place at all times, and I can connect other modules to it as I want and need. And I get to have model trains running through my pencils, cutters, dead battery boxes and so on.

Just to be clear, by definition, anything that is in the fields of that module is stored away properly and organised. This means I will not take any criticism about the way things are arranged there (and it's bound to change anyway).

Some technical details:

This module (mostly) follows the T-Trak standard for small table-top modules in N scale. As part of that, the tracks at the ends are Unitrack. The main semicircle is Tomix track, which offers a few more options, in particular these nice curved turnouts that mean the module works as a crossover as well. As of right now the turnouts are hand-controlled, I plan to add a DCC decoder at a later date (potentially much later).

The basic construction is probably mostly what you expect: A plywood box with strips as dividers.

Main box, floor and track section are 7 mm pine, the inserts are 4mm poplar. Some inserts end up mostly or fully covered, those have access from the bottom to put cables in. The whole thing has power connections, which is not required by T-Trak standards, but I put it in every module anyway.

The edges of the road bed are covered with a 1mm thick strip of wood from an architecture supply shop, which makes the edge look smooth (it's not, I cut it out with a jigsaw) and holds back the ballast.

Because this wouldn't hold any pens or similar, I designed some special inserts with higher interlocking parts.

Those were a bit annoying to build. Finally the whole thing was painted in varnish, giving the look you see now. I'm really happy with how things turned out there, and I think this'll be a useful addition to my model railroad table for the years to come.

Now I just need to find a different space for my 3D printer, and build some curves to run the trains around the WiFi router and…

[missedmilemarkers]

[kumatajdg]

Trojan Makes a Friend (and other stories)

[zoomar]

This one has bums

[eopederson]

Farewell to the 2023-24 Holiday Season.

Epiphany (Three Kings Day) marks the traditional end of the holidays

This model train set was installed at the U.S. National Botanical Garden on the National Mall for the holidays and was a great draw for children and adults alike.

[blockygraphics]

PE02339_WMF, created August 11, 1997; clip art included with Microsoft Works 4.5.

[lomotunes2008]

We're now running substantially less colourful trains 🎉

[whirligig-girl]

Can you believe it's been over two years since we all met Eaurp Guz?

EDIT:

woagh... she is my two thousandth post... thank gooness...