My stay-at-home project

[jpachl]

As a stay-at-home project during the corona curfew, I started to buid a new US prototype TT scale diorama. It's a fictitious small station somewhere in the Rust Belt. Next step will be ballasting.

 

[SteveyDee68]

So many modellers at this time are going to be happily progressing their layouts, whilst non-modellers go stir crazy once they have watched everything Netflix etc has to offer! Assume TT is 3mm/foot?

 

Stay safe and keep well.

 

Steve S

[jpachl]

3 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Assume TT is 3mm/foot?

 

In the UK, TT is known as 3mm scale, which means 1/100. However, outside UK, TT is 1/120, which means 2.5 mm/foot. The 1/120 scale was invented in the US to simplify scale calculations in the non-metric system. By that scale, 1 inch on the model equals 10 foot in reality. Today, 1/120 TT scale is almost extinct in the US and only popular in metric countries where that advantage doesn't matter. The only exception might be New Zealand, where TT scale (there called NZ120) is quite popular because you can use N scale bogies and drives to make meter gauge TT scale eqipment.

[backofanenvelope]

TT/3mm has always been a Scale I have wanted to dabble in but never got round to it I did do some plans for a TTm Swiss metre gauge layout but never got further than the back of an envelope

 

A good start there and looking forward to seeing it progress..

[jpachl]

23 hours ago, backofanenvelope said:

...but never got further than the back of an envelope

 

Maybe, a small diorama might be a good start.

[backofanenvelope]

I’ve got way to many things to distract me at the moment but I will have a go at a diorama at some point

[jpachl]

In the meantime, the diorama is almost finished. Here is a first photo of a total view, still without backdrop.

 

[Sweet pea]

This is a great little diorama with some nice detailing. Perfect for the lockdown.

[jpachl]

Here some more pictures. Since the diorama is more or less finished, it's now time to stop the lockdown.

 

Finished diorama with backdrop by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr

 

The old tower by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr

 

Police action I by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr

[jpachl]

With the end of the lockdown in Germany, I also finished my diorama. For convenient storage and transportation, the diorama was designed to fit into an office storage box of which the cover is used as a backdrop. 

 

 

The diorama shows a fictitious scene with an old station depot located at a junction at the edge of an industrial area somewhere in the Rust Belt in the 1960s. The interlocking limits controlled by the tower near the depot are only partly shown. The map below shows the cutout to be seen on the diorama. The turnouts and interlocking signals are outside the modelled scene, only the train order signal is present there.

 

 

While the depot is a laser-cut kit, the tower is a resin model. For more pictures, visit my Flickr account or follow me on Instagram.

Edited June 21, 2020 by jpachl