Model Railways

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Do you add flora and/or fauna, and ballast to your model?

I add flora and(or) fauna
0
No votes
I add just ballast
2
20%
I do both
7
70%
I leave the plain baseboard visible
1
10%
 
Total votes: 10

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Redirect Left
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

Pilot wrote:Why not make a little train lift? That way the trains can go up vertically, and would probably save you space as well.
You mean an entire section of track that just directly goes up and down and trains park on it? Would need to be a large section of track for larger trains though, and also would need to be able to pass along signals to tell the train when it is time to move again etc.
I guess that is possible, but possibly introduces a critical failure point and potential damage point. Also getting it to lock securely into the track on each level to pass current and not derail a train might prove tricky, its ambitious but probably do able...
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pilot »

Redirect Left wrote:
Pilot wrote:Why not make a little train lift? That way the trains can go up vertically, and would probably save you space as well.
You mean an entire section of track that just directly goes up and down and trains park on it?
Indeed I do.
Redirect Left wrote:Would need to be a large section of track for larger trains though
You could have the track snake around itself to be able to fit larger trains on board.
Redirect Left wrote:its ambitious but probably do able...
I've seen similar done with a model airport (the idea coming from the Airport at the Miniatur Wunderland), so I imagine it's the same principle here.
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pyoro »

Urk, those connections between levels are always troublesome (also visually ^^). On my current layout, it's some 13-14 tracks or so (180mm length) between levels, and I don't think much steeper should be advised, although if it's straight and trains aren't too long it probably can be done.

Märklin recommends 3° (and less for the first and last tracks). I'm not sure I'd go for much steeper on anything that is part of a regular track (it just plains looks ... not like something one might see in real life, whether it works or not), but if it's just to switch levels and that's not something that's done constantly something somewhat steeper is OK (4-5°? Maaaybe 6°) - in my experience, it truly gets troublesome if tight corners and steep inclines are combined, or if it's a really steep section (my father's layout has one section that's just way too steep, it's a constant annoyance. But I couldn't tell you how steep it is exactly. 8° maybe? ^^; ).

Not sure I ever saw anyone build a train lift. It'd certainly be an impressive feature for any layout :wink:
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

Pilot wrote:I've seen similar done with a model airport (the idea coming from the Airport at the Miniatur Wunderland), so I imagine it's the same principle here.
Well, if they can do it with their multi-million revenue budget and hundreds of model experts, how hard could it be? :P

If I go up a wall at about Pyoros suggested 2', it would take an entire wall to climb one level. Now I understand why software doesn't really support multi-shelf-layer sets. Really hard to do the getting up and down :P
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Geo Ghost »

We have a couple of visitors to our club layout last week.. ;)

Running video
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Been putting quite a few photos and videos on our club page. Feel free to check it out and give a follow :)
https://www.facebook.com/StevenageAndDistrictMRC/
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pilot »

Geo Ghost wrote:We have a couple of visitors to our club layout last week.. ;)
All you need now is an 88 ;)
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pyoro »

Oh, they look nice :)
Redirect Left wrote:If I go up a wall at about Pyoros suggested 2', it would take an entire wall to climb one level. Now I understand why software doesn't really support multi-shelf-layer sets. Really hard to do the getting up and down :P
What are you using? WinTrack certainly allows that kind of thing:
download/file.php?id=166888
You can even look at it in 3D and check how steep your rails needs to run etc.

Although I never bothered to check what type of tracks it all allows. More than Märklin definitely, but eh...
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

Pyoro wrote: What are you using? WinTrack certainly allows that kind of thing:
download/file.php?id=166888
You can even look at it in 3D and check how steep your rails needs to run etc.
Yeah. I'm using a free alternative, WinTrack is €99. I'm using SCARM. Which might actually allow it but its a very stupidly designed thing that's a bit clunky to use.
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pyoro »

Going by their screenshots it should be possible, but if the usability sucks ...
http://www.scarm.info/Sample2_N_2.jpg
(seems like they use roughly about 10 track pieces to get up one level in that example)

And yeah, Wintrack is crazy expensive. It's really nice and fun to play with, but, eh, I can certainly understand rather spending money elsewhere ^^;

€: love those layout posts by other ppl:
http://www.scarm.info/layouts/pics/Maer ... 2D-640.jpg
http://www.scarm.info/layouts/pics/Maer ... -1-640.jpg
I'm not "track-shy", but, seriously, is that a competition to cram as many as possible in as little a space possible? xD
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

For me they just look like they've crammed too much into such small space, and the end result looks... super crowded D:

and yeah, the €99 of that WinTrack, i could buy an entire model loco using that.

Does anyone have any idea what sort of scale is being used in (i suggest you turn your speakers down before clicking) this video?


@Geo Ghost: Only just noticed your post, those are some ace looking models. Time to search for them D:
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pyoro »

Yeah, it's awful. Frankly, I went through all H0 layouts there and while some are OK I found none all that appealing. Oh well, whatever people like.

Are those Lego tracks? Vid is a bit blurry. But that switch with the yellow, err, switching thing for example looks right. And those "nubs" or whatever on the sleepers. There's also a brief moment where these:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Nr6rxJ3a7FU/T ... /7939e.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jEsE2hvbkHU/T ... /7939f.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-szU0quvQMoo/T ... /7939g.jpg
are visible.
Yeah, I'm convinced. Fits that set perfectly at 1.40.

€: I should've kept watching, a little later the train enters the house and you see all sort of Lego stuff xD
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

The video is worth watching to the end to be honest. It's a rather neat little thing, i'm not sure if they specifically set it up for the recording, or if its there 24/7. I'm assuming the former. During the garden part, other trains are visible, i've tried to look them up and find out what scale they're modelled to (if Lego even does proper scaling)
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Geo Ghost »

Redirect Left wrote:I've been looking into the feasibility of creating a replica of London and its transport system, spanning the most outer tube stations and everything in between, including overground stations and network rail stations.
As it turns out, completely not feasible, due to the enormous size it'd be, and thats before you get to the other issues like how annoying so many stations in that small space on a layout would be, or accessing the centre of the layout.
Some years ago, I did work out how large a miniature railway of the whole UK would be.
In Z gauge, it was the area of Stevenage. So as you can imagine, OO gauge was quite a lot larger! :P
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

Geo Ghost wrote:
Redirect Left wrote:I've been looking into the feasibility of creating a replica of London and its transport system, spanning the most outer tube stations and everything in between, including overground stations and network rail stations.
As it turns out, completely not feasible, due to the enormous size it'd be, and thats before you get to the other issues like how annoying so many stations in that small space on a layout would be, or accessing the centre of the layout.
Some years ago, I did work out how large a miniature railway of the whole UK would be.
In Z gauge, it was the area of Stevenage. So as you can imagine, OO gauge was quite a lot larger! :P
Haha. I can imagine, considering just London is 0.31/0.41 mile. Although i can shorten that a bit by removing lots of excess distance on the outer stations.

It's still something i'd love to do, but money. I'd try to run it as a profit thing, a display sort of thing with intricate detail etc. Also not the sort of thing people would buy into for crowdfunding :P

I spent last night staring blankly into a models internals, trying to find space for a camera and a backup battery / supercapactiro for when power was down, if I did the vertical lift thing outside of powered track times. Think those seats are going to need to come out! Not too bad on this one, as the windows are tinted, but on others it'd be noticeable if i had to remove seats for all.

Mods: is there any way to delete the poll and add a new one? Been a while since that one was there, maybe ask the modellers a new question? :mrgreen:
Last edited by Redirect Left on 01 Apr 2017 21:57, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Model Railways

Post by AndersI »

Pyoro wrote:Are those Lego tracks? Vid is a bit blurry. But that switch with the yellow, err, switching thing for example looks right. And those "nubs" or whatever on the sleepers.
A more 'model-ly' LEGO train layout was found (actually there were four or five layouts!) at our (SWEbrick's) yearly exhibition - picture from the "I've been playing with LEGO again..." thread:

Image

More pictures in that thread, and
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonas_wid ... 1514/page3
https://www.flickr.com/photos/86394332@ ... 8205506664
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Pilot »

Redirect Left wrote:Haha. I can imagine, considering just London is 0.31/0.41 mile. Although i can shorten that a bit by removing lots of excess distance on the outer stations.
Hmmm, I want to steal this idea and buy up one of the large abandoned mills near the M60 and build it! I'd probably want to do it without shortening distances out to Chesham/Amersham as well, just being a purist. Out of interest, how would you show the Underground sections? Maybe have it one floor up with a clear base, so that people could and see things like the Waterloo & City or the Victoria line? It'd be brilliant if you could do a proper day/night cycle with it as well, and have the Sleeper roll out late on, with all 16 carriages (and an 87 on front, not the 92!)

I guess I'd have to bring you onto the team as well, to make sure that you didn't sue me for stealing your idea ;)
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Redirect Left »

Pilot wrote:
Redirect Left wrote:Haha. I can imagine, considering just London is 0.31/0.41 mile. Although i can shorten that a bit by removing lots of excess distance on the outer stations.
Hmmm, I want to steal this idea and buy up one of the large abandoned mills near the M60 and build it! I'd probably want to do it without shortening distances out to Chesham/Amersham as well, just being a purist. Out of interest, how would you show the Underground sections? Maybe have it one floor up with a clear base, so that people could and see things like the Waterloo & City or the Victoria line? It'd be brilliant if you could do a proper day/night cycle with it as well, and have the Sleeper roll out late on, with all 16 carriages (and an 87 on front, not the 92!)

I guess I'd have to bring you onto the team as well, to make sure that you didn't sue me for stealing your idea ;)
The original idea i have typed down in google docs calls for a plexiglass seperator between 'underground' and surface, as well as the Thames not being full of water and just plexiglass too, as The Thames has a lot of traffic running under it. I do concede there probably is a more viewer friendly way of doing this, I struggled for a while to come up with anything mildly viewer friendly at all, although having said that, my original plan from yeeears again depicted doing it all with Lego instead of normal Hornby/Lima/etc track. I did love that idea, but then the floor is made out of the stuff you need to attach lego stuff to, and i've never seen clear strips of that.

Day / Night cycle isn't too hard to replicate in a controlled environment, using the physical buildings lighting an dimming the lights whilst simultaneously turning on some additional LEDs on set. Probably best to not leave the night part running for too long, as there isn't much traffic in the night, as my original plan called for running to actual timetables with as much accuracy as possible, some Tube lines have trains every 2-3 minutes, so together there is activity everywhere, although I early on accepted it'd be much easier to ignore that, and live with the severe OCD pain it would cause me.

The most awkward thing to do would be figuring out where to place holes in the layout for a human to step into and intervene should a pair of mammories start to point in an upwards direction and a train derails (Politest way of terming that without being rude :p)

There certainly are buildings large enough for 0.31/0.41 miles, but they're most commonly found as supermarket distribution centres or Amazon warehouses.

Original post where I laid down my maths is here. The 0.31/0.41 i quoted was N scale. You might find fault with my maths there, I'm not all that good at maths :p I love a good challenge, and this would certainly be a challenge. Possibly enough interest from other rail fans to try crowdfunding should I become mad enough to seriously try it.

Should you get bored, feel free to ask for further detail. We could even go complete mad nutters and try to do it :mrgreen:
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Re: Model Railways

Post by kamnet »

Tangentially related, but recently Facebook started to show me ads from this company, who makes model railroading tables. Maybe somebody is interested?

http://www.kamkonnect.com/
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Re: Model Railways

Post by Railwaymodeler »

Nowadays I work in a hobby shop. In addition to helping the owner, Bob, who has been one of my closest friends for about 15 years, I run a model railroad club, and handle train repairs. I just finished fixing a 1920s American Flyer set. The customer had no transformer, and a local second hand store happened to have a vintage American Flyer transformer that has been sitting there for a year, so I finally bought it, found the coils inside were junk, and put the guts of a 1950s Lionel transformer inside, which was a much more roubst design. It has the look to match the old set, the technology is the same, but this way the guts are far more durable.

Plus a man who is rather influential at City Hall has been a steady source of repairs of old trains. He has lots of old Lionel, some of it in such rough shape that other shops have told him "Unrepairable". Burned motors, breaks in solenoid coils, really pretty far from "Unrepairable" to me. I'm finding a niche in repairing and restoring antique trains. Of course, even newer stuff like Tyco, I've worked wonders on for people. Rebuilding those Powertorque motors (The poster child for junk to many hobbyists) to run smooth and quiet is not something most people do.

Life is good now that my life passion is also my source of income.
Without Trains America Stops

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Re: Model Railways

Post by Gwyd »

With the whole London idea, maybe you could just do a couple of streets around each route, and with the tube lines, the structure holding up whatever it may be in could be the colour of that line. Do the whole Oyster zone why not?
It goes to Gatwick now. But, iirc, Clapham Junction is within the proposed zone...
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