HINTS AND TIPS - THE FOLLOW ON
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LED Headlight and Light Shields
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
For an LED, a "hood" of aluminium foil will block light from the shell of a locomotive without shining through, especially the thinner ones. The foil can be pressed to the shell or shaped around the LED. I would not recommend this for an incandescent bulb as even microscopically there would be too much heat.
Similarly for the inside of houses, that “glow†which permeates the plastic would be stopped dead in its tracks by using Aluminium foil lining the interior of the building.
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Securing Ground Foam to Model Trees
From Tony Nash
Use a 50/50 mixture of white glue to water; coat the armature with the mixture then liberally pour fine or medium ground foam to the armature. You can dip the whole thing in a tub with ground foam. Allow the tree to dry and then spray with the cheapest (preferably least smelling) hair spray you can find to help fix things in place. Matte medium (found online or in art supply stores) dries flexibly rather than rigidly as does white glue. This makes Matte Medium better for fastening ballast as well.
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Recycling Plastic Containers
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
Let's hear it for used plastic food containers of all sizes! My wife will not re-use any container if it is anything but pristine when it comes out of the dishwasher, so I have a continuous supply of 'good enough for the railroad' freezer boxes and such to choose from.
My most unusual use is as a safety container for a homemade power supply. The lid of the box has three screw terminals, and is glued on. A power cord (ex light duty extension cord) passes through a grommet-fitted hole in the side. Inside: a low-cost filament transformer, and a couple of wire nuts. In my case Input 120vac (from a breaker-equipped outlet strip) - output 12.6vac, center-tapped (which gives me 2 6.3vac lighting circuits) - capacity 36 watts (never approached in ordinary operation.) The box keeps careless fingers out of the house current.
I personally use a spaghetti storage container for storing 'useful' lengths of rail, brass tubing, small dowels and such.
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Making Fence Posts using Nail Gun Nails
From John Challenor
Working in 00 and wanting some approximately 3" square posts (which is the same thing I'm thinking), I used some brad nails I had for a cheap nail gun. They came glued together and it was a bit fiddly separating them and filing the small heads to shape. However, after painting, they didn't look too bad. They also have the advantages of being able to be hammered straight into my base board and don't break when the 'big hand from the sky' accidentally bumps into them!
I have seen packs of replacement brads for about £5, the price varying with the length of the brad, but for this you do get loads more than you are likely to need for your fencing.
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A great wiring idea for thick tabletops From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
Plywood has to be drilled, but a large upholstry needle will make quick work of unobstructed foam. If you are going through really thick foam, the coathanger "needle" is one possible solution.
Another is to take a full length of 1/8" tubing, file 'teeth' in one end and chuck the other end in a cordless drill. When the tube end appears under the mountain, shove the wire into the tube and raise the drill out of the hole. If the tube is clogged, release the drill chuck from the tube and push the clog out from the top. The tube might require some persuasion for removal if the drill is not available to rotate it.
My own roadbed is thin foam over plywood, so a 1/16" drill works just fine. Then I push a piece of wire with slipped insulation down the hole, plug the feeder wire into the open end of the insulation and push it up from the bottom.
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Soft Drink Cans as a Detail
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
I think this is scale-dependent. O or G scale modelers might beat a crushed can into a reasonable facsimile of a crushed car as part of a 'stack of scrap' carload. The material is way too thick to represent crushed sheet metal in the smaller gauges. On the other hand, it could be cut up with snips and painted/weathered into reasonably convincing chunks of scrapped ship hull plating.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 2
From Terry Smith (Ontario)
I have a few things planned for my expansion, a Barber pole on a building, a welder inside a shop and flashing lights on some emergency vehicles. These are all subtle things that you will not catch right away and they will not take away from the detail and the trains.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 3
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
Implied movement that is not such as a Traffic accident or stop, Vehicles waiting for the pilot car where the road is running one-lane, Ceremonies where people stand still such as an Outdoor wedding, medal award or school graduation and Passengers waiting for their train(s).
While it would be nice to recreate every action seen in the full scale world, realistically it is not possible. So we have to choose which things to animate and which things to leave static or to leave out altogether. A display layout could/should have more, at least some operated by pushbuttons on the fascia.
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Painting Small Objects
From Anthon Matteman
Especially when you're painting miniatures you want to be able to paint very tiny things. For this you obviously need a small brush. You can take a brush (e.g. size 0) and cut the outer hairs so you are left with a brush that is thin enough for even the finest work.
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Foam as Trackbed
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
I am using very thin foam over very thin plywood, cookie cutter construction with wide open spaces between subgrade sections. Everything above the bottom of the subgrade is fastened with latex caulk. There is absolutely NO layout noise that doesn't come directly from the locomotive except for the click-click of metal wheels on rail joint gaps (four wheel cars. Anythin with bogies such as US prototype would go cli-click - cli-click.) Things are so quiet with my better-geared locos that those rail joint clicks are clearly audible at three meters' range.
The plywood ranges from 1/4" to 3/8" and the foam is fan-fold underlayment, about 10mm thick. I also use a layer of cardstock between the foam and the tie bottoms - track templates, cut full size and left in place under the flex and hand-laid turnouts. Some, but only a minor percentage, of the plywood subgrade had to be beaten into flatness by bolting on chunks of steel angle iron.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the silence is due to the sandwich of different materials and the fact that no metal fasteners penetrate from tie strip to plywood. The plywood is screwed (up from below) to risers fabricated from pieces of steel stud, using very short screws that barely penetrate into the foam from below. Track nails that actually encounter anything solid are removed - they are not driven in hard to begin with.
None of my track has been ballasted as I write this. The hardening effect of ballast MIGHT change things, but it is not intended to go below the top surface of the foam.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 4
From Alan Jones (Queensland)
I used a microwave turntable motor to turn a ventilator on one of my Walthers freight houses. It revolves slowly. I might try one in the window rotating a fan like on the White River site. If you do this be very careful of the mains voltage that is used by these motors. I put the motor in a metal box so only the rotating shaft is sticking out and all the nasty voltages are safely inside.
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Night Operations
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
Take a trick from the theatre. If the room is lighted with dim blue light, or not at all, put some low-intensity lamps close to the floor in the aisleways. Special effects are interesting and fun, but your safety is critical especially limited space areas.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 5
From T B Daniels (Queensland)
I have made a single signal (as my layout is a yard with staging), that is connected to a train detector on the staging bus. When the signal is green, it is safe to run trains into staging - so it looks good and performs a role.
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Reusing Old Track
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
I have always salvaged every inch of rail, flex or loose, from every layout I've built. As a result, I have some flex that has probably served on five different layouts since I acquired it. I use the really ugly sections of flex to lay hidden track. As long as it is in gauge, who cares what it looks like if you have to lift a mountain off it to see it? Some of my loose rail, laid on pine planks without ties or roadbed, now serves as the stub ends of two hidden yards.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 6
From Steve Sabo (Canada)
A few years back I was at a train show where a man had his layout set up, and he had a small urban scene with moving vehicles. I cannot be certain, but I think he used something similar to a bicycle chain with magnets mounted underneath the layout. On the surface, he had vehicles with magnets mounted on the undersides. It was a pretty cool effect. The only drawback was that all the vehicles followed the same path at the same rate. I suppose you could have multiple chains going to have different routes at different speeds, but that would be a lot of engineering to pull off.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 7
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
I would prioritize animation ideas as:
1. Essential to operation such as Signals (especially semaphores), Turntable and Coaling station (sound is animation, too.)
2 Nice to have for operation items such as Crossing gates and flashers, Live mineral loaders (coal or ores), Devices to load or unload open-top cars (logs, pipe, crated machinery, containers…), Operating hopper car unloaders (rotary or tilt dumpers.), Rail related action (sound and light shows simulating shop work, passenger operations…) Operating car ferry aprons (assuming you model a port that was served by car ferry as in railway carriage carrying barges)
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Making Scale Rope
From Phil Russell (Utah)
At the fabric store, ask for "Upholstery Thread". It is heavier than regular thread and it is 100% synthetic, so it doesn't have any fuzzy edges. This thread also works well to simulate metal cables (wire rope) on things like cranes. Typically it comes in 3 colors - black, tan, and white. I use tan and color it as necessary with paint washes.
Because it is synthetic, you can use a soldering iron to melt the ends into little balls instead of tying little knots.
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Layout Animation Ideas Pt 8
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
3. Nice but not really railroad related items such as Windmills, Traffic signals, Moving vehicles (at scale speed, realistic actions.) Bells ringing the hours (church or city hall)
4. Somewhat hokey items such as Construction machinery, (Operating pile driver anyone? How about a TBM?) Carnival rides. (The show stops for a few days, then leaves…) Moving vehicles (hurky-jerky or moving at speeds measured in Mach numbers.) Model airplane pilot flying his U-control aircraft. Anything having to do with moving watercraft other than car floats/ferries. (This includes both moving vessels and moving bridges.)
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Using Single Edge Razors for Model building
From Graham Ross (Adelaide)
I recommend cutting styrene parts by scoring with a Single Edge Razor Blade. A razor or utility knife blade is .022" thick. An exacto blade is .018" thick and a SERB is .002" thick. Cutting with anything thicker than a SERB will leave a ridge on the cut edge and will have to be sanded. After scoring, bend at score line. .015 parts can be cut with one or 2 passes of a single edge razor blade. A Single edged Razor Blade can be difficult to hold by itself, but you can make a holder from a number of sources from your scrap materials.
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Foam for Yards
From Charles Beckman (Nevada)
Most yards have drainage contoured into the ground below the gravel surface, which is built up to (or close to) tie-top level to provide a safe walking surface. It is there, but not very visible. If some spot develops a persistent case of, "Too-wet-itis," a French drain would be the most probable solution. Again, not very visible.
My prototype does have drainage ditches in yards - recognizable as a line of concrete pavers between tracks. Lift the pavers and, viola! drainage ditch.
From the modeling point of view, all of the above can go on a perfectly unmodified foam surface, which is the way I'm going about it. The contouring will take place beyond the yard fence. On the other hand, mainline and other through-traffic tracks should be on raised roadbed, just like the prototype.
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