What did you do on your layout today? (N scale)

[JR 500系]

That is excellent work IST san! Those flower landscape look amazing!

 

* Side note, cpu has been down for a week now... only barely able to check the forum from my Engineer's rather old and slow  CPU...

[NXCALE]

What I did ysterday... I edited some footage into a video.

This is a about a "point to point" layout. At the moment, it is just a draft so there is much things ahead to do.

Things like: place crossovers, design a yard, decide between a 3 o 4 car formation, see if I can fit a bus line and more...

 

 

Btw, does anyone know an alternative "free" software instead of SCARM? Let me know and feel free to ask and/or give advice.

Cheers.

 

 

[Kiha66]

Looks like a good plan!  Are you planing to automate the layout?

[cteno4]

Great mock up nxscale! Love the tomix track supports.

 

jeff

[NXCALE]

2 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

Looks like a good plan!  Are you planing to automate the layout?

Thanks Kiha66!

I was thinking about the Tomix Automatic Operation Unit (5563) but not 100% sure.

Actually I have also other ideas (a level crossing, a bus line, etc) but all will depend about the layout space.

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Great mock up nxscale! Love the tomix track supports.

 

jeff

Thanks jeff. Thats was a successful test.

I will need to add more track and keep running trains to see if all is ok.

[Pauljag900]

4 hours ago, nxcale said:

What I did ysterday... I edited some footage into a video.

This is a about a "point to point" layout. At the moment, it is just a draft so there is much things ahead to do.

Things like: place crossovers, design a yard, decide between a 3 o 4 car formation, see if I can fit a bus line and more...

 

 

Btw, does anyone know an alternative "free" software instead of SCARM? Let me know and feel free to ask and/or give advice.

Cheers.

 

 

Hi buddy,

try ANYRAIL,they do a free download of 50  track pieces with no limit as to how many times you can use it.The full version costs about £40 but you get it for life and can load it to as many computers as you like,the big plus is that’s its very easy to use,

hope this helps mate,

paul

[Pauljag900]

Baseboards complete,more or less,just need to tape around the edge to protect the polystyrene and to stop the underlay foam from lifting.

i screwed 12mm mdf to the framework but left the front infill loose for access,hence the 2mm gap.

i then glued 6mm high density laminate floor underlay to 25 mm thick polystyrene boards and placed on top.These wo nt be fixed down as I intend to use the same method for hiding the wires as I did on the tram,by feeding the wires through and digging out the polystyrene then glueing the wires to the underneath with hot glue.

tomorow I ll start loosely laying some of the track.

the table on the left is where the tram module will be and the one on the right is a small work table,tho in time it may end up as a goods yard/ industrial area.

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Pauljag900

[NXCALE]

12 hours ago, Pauljag900 said:

Hi buddy,

try ANYRAIL,they do a free download of 50  track pieces with no limit as to how many times you can use it.The full version costs about £40 but you get it for life and can load it to as many computers as you like,the big plus is that’s its very easy to use,

hope this helps mate,

paul

Thanks for the information Paul. I will try ANYRAIL for some days to see how it is.

Cheers.

[Khaul]

I have decided to build a small residential area near the station. I got a few houses for that. Ideally I'd like to replicate the messy Japanese urban environment combining houses, shops, little factories, shrines... all in a torum revolutum.

 

That's an idea for the urban plan. There will be a road in the North. Some footpaths and maybe a playground and/or carpark in the back of the houses

 

I also got the Tomix battery powered lights for the houses. That's going to be quite some work.

[beakaboy]

20 hours ago, nxcale said:

What I did ysterday... I edited some footage into a video.

This is a about a "point to point" layout. At the moment, it is just a draft so there is much things ahead to do.

Things like: place crossovers, design a yard, decide between a 3 o 4 car formation, see if I can fit a bus line and more...

 

 

Btw, does anyone know an alternative "free" software instead of SCARM? Let me know and feel free to ask and/or give advice.

Cheers.

 

 

I like your  idea of a point to point. Hopefully with working signalling. You've got a nice long run there

[NXCALE]

1 hour ago, beakaboy said:

I like your  idea of a point to point. Hopefully with working signalling. You've got a nice long run there

 

You are reading my mind beakaboy! I would like to have traditional signaling!

That's the reason I am thinking about only having short trains. So there would be more space for signals, overlaps and other stuff.

 

I made the video below quite time ago. I am not sure if I will use the same train detection system (from the video) or I will try something else.

 

[Kiha66]

That's really neat!  Does the signal require a sensor be constantly covered, or does it work on long sections of track too?

[JR 500系]

That's really fun! I like the idea of a longish layout! Would you be automating it?

[NXCALE]

8 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

That's really neat!  Does the signal require a sensor be constantly covered, or does it work on long sections of track too?

Thanks Kiha66. Each track section has a group of sensors in series. In that way, a train is detected if any sensor or sensors (of a track section) is covered.

In theory it could work on long sections but it will require lots of sensors (and making holes in each piece of track for those), lots of wiring, and the same about time/effort.

So I still need to think what to do about it.

 

7 hours ago, JR 500系 said:

That's really fun! I like the idea of a longish layout! Would you be automating it?

Thanks JR500. Yes, it looks fun and so far all is going well.

I have in mind to use the Tomix Automatic Operation Unit -5563 (maybe, Mode 4) for a basic automation. Cheers

[railsquid]

And starting to hide the chopsticks...

 

tunnel-hill-4 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[brill27mcb]

Bear in mind that with the Tomix 5563 Automatic Operation Unit, only one train runs at a time.

 

Rich K.

[JR 500系]

9 hours ago, railsquid said:

And starting to hide the chopsticks...

 

 

tunnel-hill-4 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Now you see it, now you don't! Very nice hill coming up!

[gavino200]

Just got three new Takis to add to my freight thrain. The Takis and Kokis will be separate trains when I manage to get a decoder into my EF210. The second taki has little red LEDs. I'm amazed that the Blue Thunder can haul all these cars with no sign of strain. Up and down the incline with no speed change whatsoever!

 

 

[railsquid]

3 hours ago, gavino200 said:

Just got three new Takis to add to my freight thrain. The Takis and Kokis will be separate trains when I manage to get a decoder into my EF210. The second taki has little red LEDs. I'm amazed that the Blue Thunder can haul all these cars with no sign of strain. Up and down the incline with no speed change whatsoever!

 

 

Well it is designed to haul freight in the mountains. Is that the Kato version?

BTW you can put takis and containers on the same consist, though (AFAIK) not randomly mixed.

[nah00]

4 hours ago, gavino200 said:

Just got three new Takis to add to my freight thrain. The Takis and Kokis will be separate trains when I manage to get a decoder into my EF210. The second taki has little red LEDs. I'm amazed that the Blue Thunder can haul all these cars with no sign of strain. Up and down the incline with no speed change whatsoever!

 

 

The 'bigger' locomotives seem to have no trouble pulling a prototypical size train of Kokis, both of my EH500s (the older Tomix first edition and the latest Kato one) and my EH200 have no hesitation pulling whatever I hook them up to. Only ones that give me grief are ED75s, I could likely take care of that by double heading them (I'd like to) but the 3 of them are about ten years apart in age each so it's hard to get them to sync up. 

 

Also I thought I lost a koki the other day and finally did a count...over the century mark on them now. 

Edited January 24, 2018 by nah00

[gavino200]

10 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

Well it is designed to haul freight in the mountains. Is that the Kato version?

BTW you can put takis and containers on the same consist, though (AFAIK) not randomly mixed.

 

Yes, it's the Kato. It's beautiful and super strong. I bought it at the Kato Hobby Center so it's also a souvenir of our trip to Tokyo. I love it. 

 

That's good to know about the Taki/koki consist. But it was a nice excuse to get another Japanese freight loco :)

[gavino200]

6 minutes ago, nah00 said:

 

The 'bigger' locomotives seem to have no trouble pulling a prototypical size train of Kokis, both of my EH500s (the older Tomix first edition and the latest Kato one) and my EH200 have no hesitation pulling whatever I hook them up to. Only ones that give me grief are ED75s, I could likely take care of that by double heading them (I'd like to) but the 3 of them are about ten years apart in age each so it's hard to get them to sync up. 

 

Also I thought I lost a koki the other day and finally did a count...over the century mark on them now. 

 

BTW I once removed the drive shaft connecting the two loco units, out of curiosity, to see how much that contributed to the pulling power. Without the drive shaft connection it can barely pull three or four cars up the incline.

 

The only downside to this loco is that it's an extremely difficult DCC conversion. It took me a year before I succeeded. For a long time I thought it was going to be a permanent static ornament. I think that makes me even more fond of it now that it actually runs.

Edited January 24, 2018 by gavino200

[gavino200]

On 1/7/2018 at 5:40 PM, gavino200 said:

I added a double crossover. The other one ended up in the station due to some layout modifications. Kato doesn't make it super easy to do this, unfortunately. I had to modify the viaduct a tiny bit. 

 

 

 

I was asked about this today, and shared the process by PM. I figured I'd cut/paste it here, in case anyone else is ever interested.

I didn't have to saw any tracks. The lengths worked out perfectly. Here's the process. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of modified viaduct, but I'll try to describe what I did. Kato doesn't make a special viaduct for crossover tracks.

 

Kato straight viaduct comes in three lengths. Long medium and short. I used a long and a medium viaduct.

 

 

The double crossover plus a 'short' concrete slab double track (comes with a short viaduct), are exactly equal to the length of a long viaduct plus a medium viaduct.

 

 

 

This part is the toughest part. There are three small changes you need to make to the viaduct. Regular concrete slab double track has recesses to fit the protrusions on the viaduct underside. The double crossover has a completely flat underside. If you don't alter the viaduct, the crossover will not sit well and you'll have derailments.

 

1. Remove the protruding hooks (red circle)

 

2. There is a ridge in the center that runs all the way down the middle of the viaduct (blue arrow). This fits a recess the runs down the middle of the concrete slab double track. I used a dremmel (well, an $8 Harbor Freight fake dremmel) with a grinding attachment to grind away this whole ridge. 

 

3. Cut away some of the plastic cross attachment (green circle) so that the resulting groove becomes a conduit for the crossover electrical wire. You have to make a slight enlargement of this goove at the point where the wire leaves the crossover. 

 

Then run the wire to the viaduct junction. You need to make a channel in the concrete pier to pass the wire. Then simply drill a hole in the layout board under the pier. The wire is completely hidden. 

 

The dremmel grinding is the hardest part. That part alone took more than an hour. 

 

I hope you find this useful.

 

 

 

 

[railsquid]

13 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

 

BTW I once removed the drive shaft connecting the two loco units, out of curiosity, to see how much that contributed to the pulling power. Without the drive shaft connection it can barely pull three or four cars up the incline.

 

The only downside to this loco is that it's an extremely difficult DCC conversion. It took me a year before I succeeded. For a long time I thought it was going to be a permanent static ornament. I think that makes me even more fond of it now that it actually runs.

 

Interesting about the drive shaft; was it pulling the dead weight of the non-motorised unit too?

 

I've got a MicroAce EH10 which "solves" the problem by having two motors, while it's theoretically powerful, any brief loss of power to either motor makes it run very jerkily (one day I'll wire them together).

 

Fortunately I'm too far down the rabbit hole to even contemplate DCC...

Edited January 24, 2018 by railsquid

[nah00]

Did a bit of rearranging in my second container yard, I was never really happy with only the two tracks and the #6 turnout just seemed to take up too much space.

Before:

 

Kind of boring, there was no real organization to the stack of containers to the right and no logical for a truck or trailer to be unloaded/loaded. Fixed it problem with the #6 by switching it to a #4, kokis are pretty forgiving and I'm not going through these at speed. The amount of space I gained from the switch was pretty big, I'm able to fit another koki-100 series on each track now. Also was able to make the container yard a little more organized and used PVA glue on the edges of containers to keep them stacked neater. Unfortunately the property value of the house with the green roof suffered somewhat. 

 

 

Also added a wye after the #4 switch, now I'm able to fit another 5 koki in the yard (and more importantly finally get my UM14s on the layout). The track isn't ideal for unloading but if I wanted to I can use the track to the right of the viaduct to shuffle them around, still have to back on the mainline to do that though. Overall I think it looks much better and the perimeter track acts a scene break along with the viaduct. I also learned (well I kind of already knew this but this reinforced it) that it's MUCH easier to get one piece of foam board and cut it to fit for a base than to try and use the scraps you have and try to cut them so they match, particularly when a long straight line is involved. 

 

Edited January 24, 2018 by nah00