N Scale Model Railroad Build

[pmmjarrett]

I'm getting back into N scale model railroading after selling off everything when I was medically retired from the Army over 6 years ago. Although I have a 16' x 32' attic I could use, I'm going small. Either a 36" x 72", 36" x 80" (hollow core door) or a 36" x 108" layout. I just ordered a truckload of goodies from M.B. Klein today so I can't wait to get started on the layout. I do need to get a couple more track pieces from my LHS (local hobby shop).

For those not familiar with "N" scale or Nine millimeter scale, it's 1:160 scale, roughly half the size of "HO" which is half the size of "O". It's the second smallest scale (Z scale is 1:220) and also the second most popular scale in the US, HO is still the king of popularity in the US.

I'm leaning towards the 36x80 hollow core door layout as it's still small enough to be portable in my pickup or possibly the basment of some fifth wheels, small enough to move to a different room of the house if needed, large enough to look OK running slightly longer trains with the modern equipment I like and gives me a bit more room for some of the details I want to implement.

A small layout will get me up and running quickly as I enjoy watching them run and it isn't overwelming to finish or detail. The emphasis of this layout isn't size, it's detail. Superdetailing a small layout like this could take years and never be finished and I want to see har far I can push it on detail with all the cool stuff that's now available in N scale these days.

A small N scale layout is something many that live full time in an RV could do.





I'll be starting off with the Woodland Scenics Scenic Ridge N scale layout kit which is a single track folded dogbone layout and modifying it as well as modifying the track plan as follows.

1. Stretching the plan 8".... A mere 8" x 36" is huge in N scale, a 1.3" x 1.3" square is one scale acre in N scale so a 8" x 36" strip of real estate is 170 acres in N scale.
2. Utilizing Atlas finescale Code 55 flex track and #5 turnouts... It just looks better than code 80 snap or flex track.
3. Minimum radius of curves is 12.5"
4. Adding 3- 80' (6") plate girder bridges, a 240' (18") curved wooden trestle and a 133' (10") truss bridge.
5. Turning the passing siding into an interchange.
6. Adding 2 industrial spurs

Here's the track plan I like best, Magenta is the curved trestle, red is the plate girder and truss bridges, ignore the green blue and black, it's all the same, color was something I was doing to keep track of modifications as I went to calculate supplies I ordered and forgot to change it back to black when I was done.

For Motive power I have an Athearn BNSF Warbonnet SD75i and an Athearn BNSF Heritage SD75m This consist will be pulling 3 detailed and modified, 5 unit articulated sets of Walthers TTX Thrall double stack well cars loaded with 30, 40' - 48' containers.





Standards. You have to have some standards. Keeping to a good set of standards for the build will let these small trains run trouble free. Here are my standards.

1. Body mount couplers, truck mounted couplers are for toys that don't go in reverse. Try backing through a set of points with truck mounteed couplers and you will derail 99 times out of 100. There's a reason the run body mounts or drawbars on the 1:1 trains. NOTE, when testing during the build I will have truck mounts and will change them when I detail the Thrall cars.
2. Micro trains, Kato or McHenry knuckle couplers.... No Atlas knuckle couplers (have had lots of problems with them in the past) and no rapido.... IMHO they are ugly and junk.
3. Fox Vally Models or BLMA finescale metal wheels. Plastic wheels dirty a track faster and microtrains standard plastic wheels don't run well on atlas code 55 track, the flanges hit the spike heads.
4. Track, wheels and couplers gauged and set to NMRA (National Model Railroad Association)standards........ They are the RVIA of Toy trains.
5. All rail joiners soldered
6. All turnouts switched with Caboose Industries ground throws... Keeping it simple.

Here's a couple shots of the EMD motive power.

Athearn BNSF Warbonnet SD75i

Athearn BNSF Heritage SD75m

Consisted

A couple close ups

A couple refference shot showing size vs a Bic lighter and a dime.

 

[mrcomer]

Very cool and thanks for sharing. Looking forward to following the progress.

BTW, my neighbor when I was growing up had a huge layout in his basement and once a year they would put on an open house. He was part of a club or something and all the guys involved would do this. COuld make an entire day going from house to house. Rally cool stuff.

 

[TravelTiger]

Very neat, keep posting the pics as you go. As a kid, I enjoyed working with my dad on N scale projects. We never actually built a real layout, but we enjoyed collecting the rolling stock and building/painting the various kits for houses and buildings, setting it up on the dining room table and running it. I'm 40 now, and still enjoy trains. My husband and I enjoy riding real trains when we get a chance.

 

[cookie]

That's some cool stuff Mike. Now I cant wait for this seasons series to unfold.

Peace
Dave

 

[Terry H]

Mike,

As always you are purchasing good equipment and doing it right. I have been a member of NMRA for about 30 years. I have a unfinished HO layout in a spare 14' X 17' room. I have not finished it because since I retired I have been traveling for fun from 3 to 8 months a year. NMRA members have access to a lot of resources, including regional and local clubs with conventions with layout tours and how to do seminars.

 

[pmmjarrett]

Dave, this seasons thread might last 20 years or so.

Terry, A railroad is never finished no matter if it's a prototype or a model. You could do like Rod Stewart and take some building kits on the road. His HO layout is featured in IIRC Model Railroad mag again. Awsum layout with incredible detail.

As far as equipmet and standards go..... Boy I had some expensive lessons with some cheap crud over the years. You'll be hard pressed to find anything from Bachmann or Lifelike on this layout unless it's some old stuff I have laying around and I build a scrap yard scene.

Not a huge fan of Walthers stuff either but these articulated die cast Thrall cars are heavier than plastic well cars and can can be made a lot nicer and are good runners with a little work and some parts from Gold Medal Models, Fox Valley and Microtrains.

 

[pmmjarrett]

While I wait for the bulk of the materials to come in to build a layout I'll get started with what I have on hand.

Let's start with a Walthers 5 car articulated Thall double stack car.

The Walthers cars have some good and bad features and are fairly easily modified to be exellent runners with decent detail.




The good......

1. Good paint and lettering
2. Good weight as they are die cast metal
3. Easy storage as they can easily be broken down into individual cars.
4. Easy to place individual cars on the track.
5. Easily modified.

The bad.....

1. Rapido couplers
2. Cheap plastic wheels with cookie cutter flanges
3. Poor molded details.
4. uncouple too easily when running because bolster pins don't protrude far enough at connection between cars.
5. Ride height of a monster truck.

Note: I am not going to kitbash correct Kato 125 ton trucks with 38" wheels for the articulated joints or using BLMA 100 ton trucks with 36" wheels as a close runner up. I will be using 70 ton trucks with 33" wheels all around to get the ride height down as low as possible and keep them level. I'm not into that level of prototype finescale modeling insanity.




Parts I'm using for modifications....

1. Microtrains 1036 barber roller bearing trucks without couplers.
2. Fox Valley Models (FVM) #3301 33" metal wheel sets. These are precision machined 33" blackened brass wheel sets with low profile flanges, fine wheel rim and a dished contour.
3. Coupler boxes off some old Microtrains 1035 trucks
4. Micro-trains 00-90 5/16" screws.
5. Gold Medal models 160-52 detail kit for the Walthers thrall 5 car articulated set.
6. Polyscale 404067 TTX yellow paint
7. BLMA 402 freight car stirrups
8. CA Glue (super glue)

TTX car #72836 Prototype Photo

TTX car #72836 N scale model....... Has a long way to go.

Good paint and printing but poor molded detail unlike some of the nicer units like the Athearn Husky Stacks or the Deluxe Innovations Gunderson Maxi III sets. This is gonna change.

Ride height is horrible... That's gonna change too.

Step one..... Rip it all apart, only thing being saved is the wells and the bolster pins.

You can chuck all the tread plate, trucks, brake wheels, couplers and wheels in the trash.

 

[porthole]

In case you need ideas

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/exhibit/video/4-minutes-wunderland/

 

[nscaler2]

Hi!! I too model in Nscale. My layout is still in our condo in Florida. We part time in our BH in the summer. We almost bought a toy hauler just to have the space in the back to carry around the layout. However, I figured the vibration and all from carrying it around in the back of a trailer would be just too much. Here are a few pics taken a long time ago with a camera that didn't have much resolution. But, they will give you an idea of what it looks like. It is an L shaped layout that is 30" x 96" on one leg and 78" x 48" on the other leg. It is a freelance of a mountain town on one side of the layout and mountain mine and stamp mill on the other. The other leg is a farm and yard with roundhouse, coaling tower and turntable.

 

[ChopperBill]

In case yo need ideas

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/exhibit/video/4-minutes-wunderland/

All I gotta say is WOW!

 

[pmmjarrett]

The Wunderland is incredible, thanks foor sharing.

Thanks for sharing your layout Tom, nice work. The tail of the trailers are pretty bouncy. A small coffee table layout in the middle of the coach might ride OK. Just put away the train when traveling.

I invite everyone to share stories and pictures here, this is a fun thread and it's our thread, not my thread, and it doesn't matter how far off track we get.

 

[porthole]

This has always been a favorite of mine for over 45 years now

http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/...ia/berkscounty/shartlesville/roadsideamerica/

 

[pmmjarrett]

This has always been a favorite of mine for over 45 years now

http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/...ia/berkscounty/shartlesville/roadsideamerica/

That would be a great place to visit for those that attend the annual RV show in Hershey PA.

 

[pmmjarrett]

Well we're in the Car shop working over the A & B units of the Thall cars with the torch and grinders......... er.... exacto knife, needle nose pliers and some jewlers files.

If you want to switch to body mounts and have microtrains trucks with couplers on your cars you can cut the coupler box off the truck to mount them on the car bodies. If you reuse the truck vs replace it, you may have to round the edge where you cut off the coupler box for clearance.

Prepping for the Gold Medal Models detail kits. On the A and B units you need to remove the grab iron posts at the extreme end of each unit. They snap off easily with needle nose pliers and then file them smooth with some jewlers files.

Now flip these 2 cars over and snap off the stirrups and file the whole underside in this location smooth in preparation for the body mount couplers.

Now this being a Union shop:angel: I've worked so hard for the last 15 minutes I need to go take a couple hour nap before I clock out for the day.

 

[skyguy]

Great layouts, and great links, all!

I also dabble in trains, but on a larger scale - G-Scale, sometimes known as Garden Scale. It's approximately 1 inch to 2 foot. I'm glad the geography of the land around our S&B home isn't suitable for a true garden layout, otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to afford our Bighorn!

Here is a C-16 from Delton, I bought this back in 1989 I believe...

These were some of the first plastic models in G-Scale, Very nice, not necessarily totally to scale or realism, but look good all the same. There was a mechanical problem with these locos, the gears would start slipping due to lousy engine mounts. I sent mine back to Delton, they repaired it, and it has run without a hitch ever since.

With a little photo work, I produced this as a Christmas Card:

I'm the Engineer, family is in the coach!


Building a small N-sized layout in the Bighorn is on my bucket list....

Al S.

 

[pmmjarrett]

The Delton 2-8-0 is now made by Aristocraft should you ever need parts. It's 1/24th scale, slightly smaller than the narrow gauge G scale which is 1/22 but slightly larger than the 1/32 (MTH) or 1/29 (Aristocraft and USA trains) It's still in production and they have both freight and passenger cars available if you decide to expand your roster.

Aristocraft is one of the companies out there that can campare to Heartland for listening to customers and has a Forum much like this one.

I had just started in G scale right before I was medically retired so all that stuff was sold too. I had an Aristocraft BNSF Dash-9 and a N&W 2-8-8-2 Mallet and a bunch of USA trains rolling stock. Elevated outdoor layoout never was completed before I had to sell stuff to put food on the table. Pricy stuff that'll put you in the poor house quick.

 

[ChopperBill]

Really got me interested in this stuff! N scale (so that is where nscaler got his handle!) would be good because of lack of room in the stick home. The door deal would be neat! So what are the good brands and what are the ones to stay away from? I would be wanting to build something along the old west with steamers and 20's-30's autos. Ebay used a good idea?

 

[kkamshop]

Back in the 70s my brother gave me a huge amount of N scale railroad & supplies. Some hobby shop in Chicago was going out of business or something.

Anyway, Ken built a really nice "cooke cutter" layout from 2 sheets of 4 x 8 plywood. We got as far as laying all the track and running the engines a little before life (kids & work) got in the way.

But we wrapped the whole thing in plastic and hung it from the ceiling of the garage. We keep saying "someday" we will get it out and finish it. Maybe when our grandson is old enough to help with the landscaping.

If we wanted to take it with us though, we'd have to trade for a toy hauler!

 

[pmmjarrett]

Really got me interested in this stuff! N scale (so that is where nscaler got his handle!) would be good because of lack of room in the stick home. The door deal would be neat! So what are the good brands and what are the ones to stay away from? I would be wanting to build something along the old west with steamers and 20's-30's autos. Ebay used a good idea?

In N scale, Kato hands down is some of the best stuff out there, Atlas and Athearn are very good. Bachmann does OK with HO scale stuff but a lot of their N scale stuff has been umm "not good" to put it mildly, stay away from the train sets that you find all over this time of year, those things run like slot cars. Now the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 Consolidation is a nicely detailed model and a decent runner but wobble a bit and can be found cheap on evilbay or even online hobby shops. MSRP was about $160 but you can find them new for $60. Be very careful on Ebay, it can be a dumping ground for someone to unload a "NEW, test run only" loco they ain't happy with.

The Kato 2-8-2 Heavy Mikado might be a good choice for your era. Can pick up new ones for around $120 - $130

You really need to be carefull with the steamers. Many older ones run like slot cars with their 3 pole motors.


On the Hollow Core Door layouts..... Don't lay or nail track directly on the doors, it sounds horrible, that's first hand experience talking to you. Did that once and tore the whole thing apart the next day. Foam between the door and the track road bed is a must.


Now for those following this that may be beginners considering getting into the hobby.

It ain't cheap..... but there are also a lot of things you can do that will cost a lot more than this. And for the wives holding hubbies purse strings..... It ain't cheap but you'll know where he is at night, sitting at the table playing with trains instead of bar hopping chasing ??????? So crack that purse open a wee bit and let him play at home. It'll cost roughly $1,000 to get the layout built and operational as I am building it. The benchwork, track, Scenic Ridge layout kit and a decent power supply will set you back $500 - $600 alone.

I probably shouldn't have started this thread with an advanced topic by kitbashing some Walthers freight cars but I'm killing time waiting for the big brown truck to arrive with some goodies. Need to get my butt to Home Depot and my local Hobby shop to pick up materials for the benchwork and get some track pieces and kick this off from the beginning with building benchwork.

Benchwork is simple, A cheap 36" x 80" Hollow core door, some folding table legs, a piece of 1x6 I have laying around, a little wood glue and a few drywall screws. Cost for the benchwork should come in about $60.

 

[ChopperBill]

Thanks for the heads up on the N scale products. Looks like a hobby that I can enjoy on our 3 month stay in AZ and at home. Can build things for a layout in the trailer and put it all together at home. Going to look into it more.