Report from the Narrow Gauge Convention

Last week was the 39th annual National Narrow Gauge Convention in Sacramento where we had our biggest yet AsiaNrail layout.  This was a great, well organized convention which included contest room, 2 vendor rooms, many clinics, and of course a large layout room.

In the layout room besides our AsiaNrail layout there were several other really great layouts in several scales, all narrow gauge.

Just one example is this great scene is from an On30 layout called "Storm King".


One nice feature of this convention was that the layout and vendor rooms were opened from 8:00am to noon and from 6:00pm to 10:00pm.  So everyone got a chance to get out in the afternoons to the California State Railroad museum and to the many home and club layouts that were on a self guided tour.  Our crew visited 9 layouts including 2 garden railways.  While I have seen many G scale modular layouts at shows and a few at botanical gardens, this was the first time I had ever seen one in some ones yard and can see why it has become so popular.

This is an overall view of our layout.  It was a triangle of 2+ meters on each side with Paul's wye module in the foreground feeding long branch and the 4 way junction feeding a pair of short branches.  We set the layout at the 51 inch height.

My new highway module was part of the long branch line.  With the magnets holding the vehicles on the highway I was able to put different vehicles on the highway every day.

Paul has also been working on some new modules.  With this new port module we now have inter-modal operations including a container crane and Kato container trailers.

For this new port module Paul came up with a way to make the water that I had never seen before.  He used obscured acrylic sheet bumpy side up with smooth color sheet on the bottom.

Paul has also been working on a car card traffic system for the layout and built some card boxes with a clever little table that folds out.  Here he is explaining to the crew how the system works.

Sam did not have his new module ready for this show but still made the trip up from the Los Angeles area and brought a nice table top display of items including an old steel herald from the front of a Japanese passenger train.




This was another successful outing for the modules.   I don't get to as many N scale conventions as I would like and after attending this narrow gauge convention I know I will attend others in the future.  It gives me more options to attend an event without too much traveling.  I may even be interested in attending a garden railway convention if it's close by.

Vehicles for the highway

When we build scenery on modules for public display we have to decide if motor vehicles will be glued down permanently or just set on the module.  I like to have as many as possible not glued down so I can set them up differently at each setup.  The problem is that when the module gets bumped, the vehicles slide around into unrealistic positions.   With this module I wanted to try something different.

A few years ago I had purchased 100 small magnets on ebay and have been using them for various projects.   I glued several of these under the lanes of the highway in various places.






My first thought was that I could just place small pieces of metal under my vehicles but because the base of the highway is 1/2 inch thick plywood the magnetic pull was not strong enough.  I wish I had used some thinner material for the base of the highway instead of using the section I had cut from the base.

So plan B was to use the same magnets in or under the vehicles.  Mostly trucks and buses will be displayed on this highway so space for the magnets should not be too much problem but because it is going to be magnet to magnet the polarity of the magnets will need to be tested for attraction before installation.

The buses were easy as they are low and plenty of room between the frame and interior insert.

The the frames on the larger trucks are higher so a black painted magnet under the frame was the answer.

With some minor modification to the chassis and window unit I was able to get one of these magnets into the TomyTec Nissan 350Z and also a Honda Fit.

I had kept a box that an ipad had come in and found that it made the perfect box to store these vehicles in.  Some cardboard was used to make a tray with dividers in between rows.  Heads from roofing nails are glued to specific spots for the vehicles to be held in position.

Highway module - Details and Done.

Over the past few days I have been adding some of the little things to the module.  Biggest of which were the overhead trolley poles.

The forest that I had started has been augmented with some shrubs and forest debris.

I have a Greenmax sign set but the speed limits seemed too low for a highway so I found a graphic on the Internet for 90 kmh and made a decal that I applied to one of the Greenmax signs.

Of course I added some vehicles to the highway, more on that in the next post.

Another custom sign I made was something I had seen several times when riding the bus through the mountains in Japan.  It is a sign warning of monkeys possibly crossing the road.  This again was a decal made from graphics mounted on a Greenmax sign.

I had an idea to have a few model monkeys on this module but not finding any I used the two remaining deer left in a Pieser deer set. 

This module is now ready to go.  With the time left before the convention I hope to add a few things to the Musashi-Koyama modules.

Fourth update on the new module

This is the fourth general update on the rebuilding of this very old module.  Things have been moving along quickly and now it's almost done. 

A single section of Peco code 55 flex track was enough to complete this small module end to end with a couple inches left over.   I normally use while glue for laying track but on this one I used my stronger water resistant E6000 adhesive.  Track was painted with Testors Rail Brown.

This is a view of the bottom of the module showing the wiring and connections to adjoining modules.

After the track was down and feeders installed I was able to complete all the wiring under the module.  As pointed out in blue in this photo, areas have to be kept clear for the legs and for the clamps that will hold this module to others.   That can be a bit of a challenge on a small module like this one.

This module was then tested with other modules being connected to it and a locomotive run back forth so that all the connections could be verified as working correctly.

Borrowing another good idea from our friends at FreemoN, I picked up a few welders clamps from Harbor Freight for holding the modules together.

I used Arizona Rock & Mineral ballast.  The specs for AsiaNrail modules call for a switchable block gap so I cut those with a razor saw.  This was done before I ballasted but I forgot to get a photo then.

While I was running the test train between the modules I started to plant the forest.  There are still some details to add and some touch ups to take care of but this module is almost ready.

Another curved railroad bridge part 2

Finally we get to the second and final post on the curved railroad bridge.  I needed to get the highway done first before installing the bridge.

The bridge assembly was air brushed with Testors pale green and then weathered with Testors acrylic weathering wash and Bragdon Enterprises weathering powders.

The highway sign was made from a photo I found on the Internet.   The printout was glued to a .020 thick piece of styrene which was then glued to the bridge.

The support columns were paint Testors concrete and given the same weathering treatments before being glued into place in the highways center divider.

With the bridge installed, the module is now ready for track and ballast.

The Highway

A module called the highway module needs to have a highway and I intend to have this be the focal point of this small module and will use the space to display some of my Japanese vehicles.

The highway surfaces were cut from .030 Evergreen 24 inch long styrene sheet and glued onto the base with Liquid Nails adhesive.  The lanes were then painted with Testors acrylic Reefer Gray and the striping was done with Builder In Scale products.  Then the road was given a spray of Dullcoat.

I picked up Kato set 23-213 Guardrails and Road Fences to make some highway guard rails for a scene on my American prototype layout and used it again on this project.

These are really handy sets to have around.  They have both highway guard rails and the type of street fences that are common in Japan both in various lengths.    I will be adding some of those street fences on the Musashi-Koyama module set and will post on that when I do.

To make a double sided guard rail I removed the posts from one section and filed the backs of both sections flat.  Then I glued them back to back and brush painted them with Floquil Old Silver.  To create a long guard rail several shorter sections were used with the joints staggered.

A few of the standard posts were cut off and a hole drilled in their place.  Then a short length of .040 steel rod was glued into the hole.   These longer post were glued into matching holes in the center divider between the lanes.

Here is the finished highway.  The glue in the center divide has not dried yet and has just gotten some ground foam scenery material blown onto it.  I may also add some small shrubs under the guard rails between the post when I am adding details.

Third update on the new module

This is the third general update on the progress of the new curved highway module.  Since the last update land forms were created with my usual method of foam insulation board glued down on the module and shaped by carving and sanding.  Then this was covered with plaster cloth and a coat of sheet rock joint compound smoothed out with a wet paint brush.

Before I got much further I wanted to provide the means to attach acrylic shields to the sides of the module like I had done on other modules.   Using the shields from the other curved module as a guide I drill holes and installed 8-32 Tee nuts.

The hills were given a coat of brown and green acrylic paints so none of the white would show through the scenery and some small rocks were added here and there.  Then the retaining walls were air brushed with Testors concrete.

A base coat of sanded grout was applied over the entire area and when that dried several different shades of Woodland Scenics ground foam was applied.  The steeper areas were left showing more of the sanded grout as bare soil.

I am trying some Testors black weathering washes on the retaining walls.  I like how it settles into the recesses on the tiles and in between the tiles.

Using Greenmax wall sets

On the Hot Springs Junction Ntrak module, I had made my own retaining walls using Styrene sheet and rod materials.  This came out great but was quite a bit of work so this time I found a ready made product by Greenmax.

Greenmax makes 3 different patterns of stone walls that come in a 3 pack with each of the 3 sections measuring 60mm in height and 200mm long.   I choose number 2107 which is an interlocking pattern of square tiles.

To get the height right all of the wall sections needed 2 or 3 rows cut from the bottom leaving the header row at the top.

The length of my retaining walls was long enough that I had to use two sections on each side.  The patterns will line up when the uncut ends are placed end to end.

As the highway crosses the module at an angle, the ends of the wall sections needed to be cut at an angle to match the edges of the module.

On one of the module edges I cut away several rows of tiles to simulate how a wall like this might get lower following the terrain.

I had placed the walls so that the header on top was just above the edge of the module base.  After the wall section was glued into place, the header was cut away in the area where the bridge would be so the bridge could sit on the edge of the module base.

Another curved railroad bridge part 1

It often seems that on a small layout or on a module the track must make curves and if you want to have a bridge scene of any length some of the curve may need to go over the bridge as well.

On the Hot Springs Junction Ntrak module I had this situation on the AsiaNrail connection to the Ntrak mountain division track.  On that one I started with the sides cut from an old Atlas bridge and built a straight bridge wide enough to accommodate the slight curve.  A couple of posts from November of 2012 cover how I built this bridge.

For the rail bridge over the highway I again started with sides cut from old Atlas through girder bridges.  These were glued to a base of tempered hard board which was the same thickness as the cork road bed.  This would be a ballasted deck curved bridge made from two straight sections.

Each of the Atlas bridge sides had to be shortened.  I put the cut off ends in the middle and added a section of .080 x .030 styrene strip between to match the other ribs on the sides.

As this is a two section bridge, it would need support columns where the sections join.  For this I used a pair of used Rix bridge columns salvaged from past projects.

After some cleaning up I spliced the two together into a single unit with 4 columns to match the width of the bridge.  Styrene strip was added to the beam on each side to strengthen the splice.

In this photo the darker line is the center line of the track and the lighter line is the center line of the highway.  Holes were drilled into the module base for the bridge columns along the highway center line.

Here the bridge is set loosely in place on the support column structure.  Everything seems to fit fine and is ready for paint and maybe some weathering.

Second update on the new module

With the plan to do the layout in Sacramento in September progress on this module has been jump started.  This is what has been accomplished within the past few days.

Masonite fascia boards have been added on both sides and all exposed surfaces have been re-sealed with a primer coat.   With both ends being held straight for 5 inches, the bent stick method was used to mark the track center line.

Then the outside of the module frame was given a coat of black enamel.   Cork road bed was installed along the track center line.  The base of the bridge over the highway made was from a scrap of Masonite.

The bridge will be a two section through girder type on a curve.  To double check the clearances I temporarily pinned down some track and I used an 89 ft American passenger car which is longer than any of the stock that would run over this bridge.

I also ordered and received some Green Max retaining wall sections which are are the gray pieces shown set loosely in place in this photo.  Both the bridge and retaining walls will be covered in more detail in future posts.

First update on the new module

Several things have been accomplished over the last week or so in the rebuilding of this module. The modification to the module that I started to give it a channel for a highway underpass is now complete.

The underside has been re-sealed with some left over paint and the aluminum brackets for the electrical connections pointed out here with the blue arrows are done.

I finished a new set of legs for this module.  This is a copy of the set I built for the first module last year and is covered in some detail in THIS POST.

These legs are adjustable to the 2 heights we set the layout up at.  Both sets are shown here with each being at a different height.