Getting back into it!

Now that the weather is warming up again and daylight savings has started it's time to descend to the basement again and work on the model railroad.

I've been struggling with the logistics of the thing on a number of fronts:

• It's too hard to reach the tracks at the back corner of the system and I'm worried about losing stuff there;
• The foam base is fantastic but too hard to attach my servos to for point control;
• I can't easily work on the wiring and program the points without considerable logistical difficulty - it's all too far from teh computer and too hard to mount control systems to;
• I could not find a nice way to build the tram into the system and make the gradients work.

Well, a number of solutions came to me last week:

• I reworked the layout so all the rear tracks were much closer to the front and within easy reach. I also came up with a scheme for ensuring trains in tunnes are accessible from the side or below the layout;
  
• I noted that all the main points are concentrated in a central region of the layout so I've decided to build a timber framed removable central section with a slide out drawer to house the compute. This can then sit on my desk and be built up with tracks, point servos etc, all the points calibrated and a nice neat wiring job to boot;
  
• The new layout allows for a much longer tram track which can reach the heights I want and use standard peco curves. Much simpler and makes for smoother operation.

N-Scale Lego Train

I found this one day on BrickShelf and thought it was totally cool - it's a Lego train set in N-scale. Obviously some hacking of bricks took place to get the engine working. Uses real n-scale track but the houses etc are all Lego.

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=115907 

Take a look!

I also thought this n-scale bridge made from Lego was rather clever.

 

Beecroft Model Railway Show

This year, the show was very quiet with a well stocked second hand stall (see myearlier post!). I had never seen any of these layouts before and some of them were partuiclarly impressive - especially the scratch built O-scale model of New England - it was spectacular.

Marklin HO layout:

O-scale Narrow Gauge New England layout.

This amazing layout took the build team months of dedicated work based on actual field research in New England. Models were mostly scratch built and the layout is painstakingly put together. The water, in particular, was amazingly realistic. Most models were built from card and balsa.