Notes on Designing, Building and Operating Model Railroads

With the impending arrival of warmer weather, I notice my schedule has several interesting events. Before getting to that, here’s a recap on recent modeling and design difficulties and progress.

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It seems I’ve been keeping busy with lots of little projects since the last post. One of those “little” projects actually turned into a large project and occupied a good chunk of time.

I’ve been the webmaster for a model railroad club in Morgantown, W. Va., and a member since the group formed back in 1987. The members have been building a large HO scale model railroad since the early 1990s. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to create a web page tour of the model railroad but I really didn’t have enough quality images to do this well. This project has been on my mind more since moving away from Morgantown early in 2009. It’s not an easy task to convey a model railroad with 500 feet of mainline into a few web pages and images. Lots of pondering and idea scribbling happened on paper before the computer was even turned on.

I visited Morgantown at the very end of December 2009 and spent a day just taking images along the mainline to capture the flavor of the railroad at this point in time. A tripod was used to steady my Nikon D60 and the white balance settings for the camera were adjusted for the layout room. All focus was done manually and a timer was used on the shutter release. Several images were taken at each location using various exposure times at the smallest aperture opening of the camera lens. After getting back to the Ohio home, the images were reviewed and several were chosen for web use. These were adjusted, enhanced, cropped and sized using Photoshop for use on the web pages. Descriptive text was written then new web pages were created for each location. A couple of new graphics were developed to assist with the tour and everything was carefully compiled into the HTML code. The project wrapped up about a week ago. A model railroad is ever evolving, but at least this layout tour captures the efforts of one club in the middle of a long journey.

Between the web work tasks, I’ve also been sorting out the freight car fleet to see what fits and what does not. We accumulate hobby stuff like wild animals. I’ve pulled several items and upgraded some to encourage an easier sell at the spring train shows. Along the way I spruced up a recent purchase and documented some weathering techniques. You can find out more at this Model-Railroad-Hobbyist blog entry.

There has been some progress on the home layout. A few more 1926 era freight cars are being constructed and I have a better understanding of the Wheeling & Lake Erie freight car fleet of that time. I may elaborate more on that soon.

And no, I still have not sanded the layout room floor.

On November 6th, I journeyed to Syracuse, NY, to participate in a Free-Mo meet at the Great New York State Model Train Fair. About twenty participating model railroaders came from central New York and from as far away as Boston, MA, and Akron, OH. Most of the participants brought one or more Free-Mo modules to assemble into a linear model railroad. Click here for a PDF of the overall plan.

Modular display layouts have become common fixtures at large train shows. Many of these layouts are composed of modules that are built to published standards to ease assembly into the large display. The N-Trak standards were one of the earliest accepted design standards I can recall. The National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) modified these for use in other scales and variations of these standards continue to be followed. A typical presentation features a multi-track mainline running through individual scenes in a large circle. The Free-Mo standards enable a single track railroad display using Digital Command Control (DCC) to move trains along the route. At this time, I feel the Free-Mo standards set a level for a display layout that enables use of the most current model train control ideas and technology.

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The seasons have turned from summer to autumn, and winter is arriving soon. All around my region projects are being completed. Familiar orange and white highway barrels are disappearing and the last harvests are being gathered. Meanwhile, my home layout project has stalled. The layout room floor remains untouched and in need of sanding and finishing. Someday soon this task will be completed and I can begin erecting the layout benchwork. For the want of a nail…

Other projects are moving forward even as the layout has not progressed. I’ve turned to my large stash of freight car kits and started building a few. Several are now ready for the paint shop. So to make this a more interesting read, I offer a progress report from the car shop foreman.

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