#model railroads

[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…

[kingthomasfan121]

Last month’s submission for the #AwdryDioramaChallenge!

[athoughtfullyautomaticcollection]

Yesterday was the big train show. As usual I came home with a few items more than I planned on. But I am wondering how to explaain my new train engine to my wife.

It’s a bit bigger than the normal stuff I buy.

[alyssa-ai]

It's time to go home, I love the journey on this little regional train that crosses the countryside 😊

[adventurelandia]

Model for Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

[welldigger62]

From East Lansing Michigan-

Went with a friend to a model railroad show in East Lansing. No, I don’t have a model set but my son in law is building one.

The whole venue was as large as a football field and there were so many people there that you could hardly move.

It’s amazing the amount of detail that goes into these. The sets in the bottom two pictures are made so they can be taken down after the show.

I had no idea that there was that much interest in model railroads any more. A good day. 😃

Happy Sunday folks 😊

[davidnajewiczphotography]

Was cycling in upstate NY on the Erie Canal trail, ran across this model railroad museum

[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.

[sharknoseshenanigans1951]

STEAM POWER RAHHHH

I LOVE NEW YORK CENTRAL 4-6-4 HUDSON STEAM LOCOMOTIVES

HERES A COOL VIDEO

AND GIFS

[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!!!

[trainsinanime]

Today was a successful day! I've been dreaming of getting the Olympian Hiawatha from Katy for literally years (I think I first thought of it 2016 or 2017?), but it was always hard to justify. It's cheap per car, but not cheap in total, and I already have several Kato american train packages (Super Chief and Broadway Limited), and at well over a meter long each, they're not actually all that practical. But they are cool. Anyway, one of the german importers for Kato had sets of this at basically every train show, and it seems they finally wanted to get rid of them, so they were now heavily discounted: 100€ for the full nine-car set with display tracks. Well, that was not a hard decision.

I don't have the right locomotives yet, they didn't have those there. My options right now are to buy the FP7s from Kato, or wait until someone makes the Bipolars or Little Joes in N scale, maybe, eventually, some day. I do know one store in Germany that still has a very limited number of the FP7s in stock unless their website is lying. If I go that route, do I need an A-B-A set or is A-B enough? …do I want an A-B-A set? Will I put Digitrax decoders in them or solder myself? The last one's actually easy, soldering in normal decoders is easy enough, cheaper, and in my experience it works better.

[woodsmanwife]

My beautiful Florida wife is modeling on the railroad tracks. Right behind me, cars were slowing down to watch as she took her dress off. It was the middle of the day, probably a few drivers on their lunch breaks. I hope they enjoyed the show.

The tracks are such a cool spot to take photos.

[athoughtfullyautomaticcollection]

The Train Show!

I’ll drive to Amherst tomorrow for the big January model railroad show. It takes place at the large exposition center called the Big E. Yes. I have been there before. But this model railroad show is a continually growing and changing phenomenon. If you miss it one or two years running, that third year, it’s an entirely different sort of show.Model railroading is a hobby and an industry where…

[woodland-scenics]

my shelf display model is now completed, WM #208 looks really good on it! i started working on this in december and it's finally done. I'm overall pleased with how it came out, but there's definitely a few things i could improve on for my next project.

[ai-satin-chic]

"Yeah, its.. uh.. great, but it's not quite the railing I meant".