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On30runner

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  1. On30runner

    fiddle yard!

    By On30runner,

    I have obviously now got quite a lot of stock for what is really not a very large layout. I also got a bit irratated by the fact I could only have two complete trains on the layout at one time. So I knocked up a small fiddle yard that sits on the end of the layout. It has no legs (mainly so I can pile junk under it!) and is supported by a strut that comes out from the main layout legs. Add this to the bolts holding it in position and it becomes very solid. I mean you wouldn't want to lean on it but as it holds stock you wouldn't need to! Once the board was all aligned etc I ran a point off the mainline and via a Peco three way point ran three sidings onto the deck. These hold the average length of train the layout can deal with and keeps it all out the way in a nice compact corner. I added a combing round the edge to prevent any near misses! As you can see to the left, it JUST clears my door, which was a very important thing to consider! So there you go, for the price of a three way point I had a fiddle yard meaning I can now store complete trains (three on fiddle yard, one on layout).
     

     
    Another new addition was a tool shed which was built from a Mount Blue Models kit. This is made of wood and took about a week to make as its quite well detailed and the painting took up some time too. It turned out beautifully though.
     

  2. On30runner
    For Christmas 08 my family very kindly bought me a Bachmann inside frame 4-4-0 locomotive. This loco runs well and is well detailed, but I wasn't quite sold on it initially. It looked too low when viewed from the front. It wasn't long before I weathered it and this seemed to make it change shape, and it is now one of my favourite locos. As it comes it has lots of additional detail parts to give some variation, and I used some of these. The changes included changing the front bogie to one with disc wheels (I didn't think it looked right with spoked wheels!). I changed the fuel from coal to oil and put a suitable chimney on. You'll find out what happened to the rest of the detail parts eventually!
     
    the first picture shows the engine as it arrived and the second as it turned out. It is generally the first choice for passenger trains though it does see use on freights as well.
  3. On30runner
    well at this point I finally figured out what I wanted to do with the track layout. Once again the list of parameters came into effect:
     
    1) It had to have a means of running locos round.
    2) It had to have sidings to do some shunting.
    3) It had to have at least a loco siding. Narrow gauge US tends to have uncovered loco yards on logging lines, and I wanted somewhere to display locos not running.
    4) I had to be able to store more than one complete train on the layout at one time.
    5) NO Hornby points! I have yet to see a Tenshodo spud successfully get through one.
    6) Minimum radius of 2nd.
     
    What I ended up with is what you see in the first picture. I got my nice long loop by using set track 2nd radius curves for the ends of the oval and using curved points at either end. When surrounded by flexi track the set track appearance disappears. The two sidings give me a maintenance of way yard for shunting and off the end of that I have the loco spur. I broke the 5th rule once, with the point in the goods yard. Nothings derailed there yet...though it hasn't seen a SPUD yet!
     
    I got all the points motorised and spent a couple of weeks playing trains. I wanted to make sure that it all worked spot on before I did anything else. Once I had done this I sprayed the track with Railmatch track grime and let it dry. I had never done this before and it made the track look considerably better. Once I had got that done I could ballast it without any problems. Ballasting is something I usually get on with quite well and this time was no exception. Point motors are Peco PL10s with Hornby levers actuating them, I find them more railway like to use than toggle switches!
     
    You may (or probably may not) be wondering why I have used OO gauge track on a narrow gauge layout and not the more obvious O-16.5 track Peco make. The reason is that the Peco track is horrendously overscale for an American "main line" narrow gauge line such as this. OO track is not quite large enough but its close with its sleeper size and spacing. This is why I used it. It makes the scene look more open. The Peco O-16.5 makes it look far too crowded. I hadn't done the goods yard sidings at this point because I wasn't sure what was happening there at that point. Buffer stops on the sidings are very simple and are merely wood stained bits of balsa strip. With careful staining they look like old sleepers placed across the ends of the sidings.
     
    thats all for now!
     
    PS please ignore the fact that in the first picture the mogul is very clean and...yellow, and in the second has been judiciously weathered. We haven't got to that bit yet!
  4. On30runner

    A start is made

    By On30runner,

    well christmas 07 came and went, and left me with a bright yellow Bachmann Mogul and matching Rio Grande wagons, and a lovely set of mine tippers. The whole lot was sent belting round an oval of track loosely laid on the board and a lot of fun was had.
     
    The loco is actually not a D&RGW (Denver & Rio Grande Western) loco but is the generic loco Bachmann use in their sets. Its actually a pretty accurate model of a Colorado and Southern mogul with a few bits altered to make it more like a D&RGW loco. This railroad had very similar locos so its not too far out, and though I have contemplated repainting it my railroads standard loco livery (i.e. black!) I think it would be a shame to lose the lovely printing and paint so I have left it alone. This is why I have the excuse that somewhere down the line is a junction with the D&RGW.
     
    The rolling stock is all very nice. Its all fitted with metal wheels throughout and Bachmann's version of the ubiquitous knuckle coupler (their E-Z mate). These work well and couple to Kadee number 5s no problem. The caboose has working interior lights which is a nice touch. The side tipping wagons have a really natty linkage mechanism that moves the side doors as they tip.
     
    At this point the track wasn't fixed down but I had laid down some perameters for the new layout.
     
    1) It had to be properly thought out and built to the highest standard possible. The old layout just grew without thought and it wasn't very well executed.
    2) Minimum radius had to be 2nd radius. This was so I had no limits (within reason) on what I could run.
    3) It would be its own company so I could run what I wished!
    4) All points had to be motorised.
  5. On30runner
    well hello there, my names Matt, a 20 year old modeller from the South near London. I noted a distinct lack of On30 type stuff on the forum (or at least I haven't stumbled onto it yet!) and thought I would rectify the situation. As a lot of my layout is already built, I shall cheat a bit and let you have snippits of info at a time to keep things interesting. Fortunately I take pictures of everything as I do things so I shall have plenty of archive to fall back on. As its twenty to one at night I won't kick off properly but will instead quickly hammer out a rough guide to myself and the layout.
     
    I started somewhat unsurprisingly with the train set on the floor. The only odd thing was this train set was three rail Hornby Dublo (my other interest!). I eventually got me a two rail set (the Tees Tyne Pullman from Hornby) and this was developed over the next 8 or so years into a bit of an odd layout really. It had fully working signals and reasonable (for my age) scenery but was always let down by the 1st radius curves and the set track. There were check rails everywhere that I fitted in an effort to keep my new Bachmann 4MT Ivatt on the rails (echoing my future career choice of Pway engineer) but it became apparent to me that hobby wise this was a dead end if I wanted to progress to better things. So I ripped my beloved layout (and I still have some regret about it!) back to bare board and I started again.
     
    The layout sat for a bit while I decided what to do. I considered a light railway approach and even re painted some locos to suit (note the green L&Y pug with dumb buffers replaced with spring ones to make a Peckett thingy) but having seen On30 at exhibitions (and having got a bit tired of British OO) I got a Bachmann train set one xmas and that kick started me off.
     
    These models were a totally new thing for me and it has been very exciting. All the locos run superbly and as as example I was astounded about an hour ago when a Porter 0-4-0 crawled round the layout with some log wagons in tow at a very slow speed without once stalling. I've done some bashing and lots of weathering (one of my favourite things) as well as my main interest, scenery.
     
    I'm not entirely hell bent on On30, I do have some OO too and I will sneak that in whenever I come up with something interesting. The new Heljan Kestrel has filled me with more enthusiasm for the more unusual models we have on the market at the moment.
     
    Anyway if you do read this I will endeavour to get the first post up tomorrow evening. In the meantime here's a picture of a very bare board two years ago!
     
    Night!!
  6. On30runner

    getting things moving

    By On30runner,

    of course at this point I only had the one locomotive. Add the fact that it only had a rear coupling on the tender and operation became a bit limited. It could only face and travel in one direction if it were to be able to do any shunting. I therefore had to get another loco to address these problems. As I was still fairly new to On30 I decided to get the ubiquitous Bachmann Porter 0-4-0 as the next loco. This was mainly because it was small, allegedly ran well, and was also very cheap (a critical factor in student layout building!). I ordered one from the USA and while waiting for it to arrive I set to and weathered the mogul.
     
    This was done mostly with acrylics, and it turned out rather well I think. It was copied from a picture of a D&RGW 2-8-0 C-16 and this helped a lot in getting the loco to look authentic. Some real coal in the tender and already the model looked considerably less like it was from a train set! Compare it with the picture on the entry "a start is made" to see what I mean. Somehow the weathering has made the chimney appear taller, don't know how that happened!
     
    The Porter arrived, and was put to work before I weathered it, so I could see what it was like. For someone used to the high speed antics of Hornby 0-4-0s, this one was a totally new breed. It ran slowly (very slowly, I once timed a two minute circuit of the layout as a test) and pick up was good. However after a while the loco began to stutter and no amount of cleaning would get its awesome running back again. I took it to bits and discovered the keep plate on the bottom had some nibs bearing on the axles. This was keeping it all too rigid which meant on rough track a wheel would lift off the rail head and the loco would stall. I therefore filed some material off them. This is shown in the second photo and the result was a more floppy chassis which wouldn't lift off the railhead due to the extra vertical play I had put in.
     
    That done the loco had its bufferbeams painted red and the loco weathered and numbered. As it was the first loco of my own fictitious company it was of course going to be number 1.
     
    Luckily for me at this point Bachmann had paid close attention to their customers comments and made a replacement pilot for the mogul with a working coupling built in. I bought a set (they come as a pair for some reason) and fitted it which meant the loco could tow tender first at last. You can see this in the first picture.
     
    thats all for now really. Please note the pictures of the locos were taken only a moment ago so the layout you see them on is a bit more developed than it was then!
     
    cheers!
  7. On30runner
    I started some scenery soon afterwards. This was initially limited to some scatter material at the front around the passing loop. Nothing special, just Woodlands Scenics on wood glue. I had managed to get hold of a D&RG passenger coach at this point and this was soon weathered, simply by breaking up some coal dust and running into the wood plank detail, just like the real thing. It looked passable from a foot and I was happy!
     
    I got round to ballasting the goods yard, this had to look different and as though it was ballasted with ash so I used very fine black ballast. When this was glued down with dilute glue I covered the track with a mix of medium and fine scatter material and left it to dry, vacuuming off the excess when it was set. It has given the track a very overgrown appearance. I glued in some Noch flowers to give the impression of larger plants. These were sprayed with Busch spray adhesive to set them (they are fragile when this isn't done). The only problem I have had with these was my 4-4-0's cowcatcher would catch one of them when shunting!
     
    The hilly bit at the back corner is simply a card frame with Mod rock on it. This was painted brown, covered in scatter and Noch grass and sprayed with the Busch adhesive. A Woodlands Scenics tree was planted and some flowers and logs thrown around and I thought it all looked presentable. The sides were dyed grey to give a earth rock look, though I think the sides are too sheer to be truly realistic hence the wooden retaining wall. Never mind, my excuse is they blasted through solid rock to get the railway past!
     
    Just to prove its not all On30, my friend Steve tested his T9 on my layout. At the same time he gave his terrier and M7 a go round and they are all seen here on the goods yard and main line in a Southern Railway line up! The terrier from the Isle of Wight (number 2) is mine. I was most impressed with the T9, its haulage capacity was pretty good (better than the M7s) and when doubleheaded the T9 and M7 pulled about 15 coaches round 2nd radius curves with no slipping from the T9 and only occasional slips from the M7.
     
    Oh and they look nice too!
  8. On30runner

    imported goods arrives

    By On30runner,

    I was browsing ebay US at this point and discovered a massive job lot of On30 bits from someones railway in the States. There were a lot of interesting bits, including a pair of scratchbuilt Forney locos, built on old RTR chassis. As well as those there were about 8 box cars and a ice scraping caboose. I decided not to go for the locos as they were sold as non working and as they were on old american chassis I wasn't sure about getting spares should I need them. I decided the boxcars were worth going for and bid on about 5 of them and the caboose. I won two boxcars and a rather nice water tower they were selling as well. After a two week wait the bits arrived from across the pond and I immediately set about getting them runnable.
     
    First impressions were good. These were well made wooden models with Kadee couplers and metal wheels so I had at least won some cheap parts. The cars run on Bettendorf trucks which isn't at all right for narrow gauge but as they are low slung you cannot tell. When they arrived I tried running them only to find the couplers were set to On3 height which is about a couplers worth lower than On30 height which is the same as HO scale (so you can couple your HO scale locos to On30 stock, I guess it would make a good miniature railway model!). This was very easy to fix, I just slipped some washers between the bogies and bolsters to bring the cars to the right height. Some bits had come off the cars and these were reattached and there we had it, two well made boxcars ready for a new life working in this country. I think its a shame I couldn't get corresponding numbers (I ended up with 22 and 24) but I think its nice someone else's freelance road has contributed to another.
     
    The water tower is a fantastic model. I think its semi scratchbuilt. The pier it sits on is wooden but the top half looks plastic so maybe its a american toy train tower detailed? Either way, it really looks the part.
     
    Another new addition was another Porter, but this time a 0-4-2 variant. No excuse for this one, I needed another loco but this was all funds could stretch to! It had the same modification as the 0-4-0 one and was weathered and numbered as 2. Since the arrival of larger locos these Porters don't see so much action as they did but I generally keep one of the pair on the layout at one time as they are quite useful little locos. The attached picture shows number 2 with one of the imports, the flash photography has highlighted the old road name on the box car which was scrubbed off before it came here. Doesn't get much more prototypical than that! The picture also shows how suitable the cars are behind a porter, with near enough the same proportions.
  9. On30runner
    I've finally caught up with myself. After the last entry I've been playing trains, and just generally enjoying my layout. I've also been building locos, with two new locos taking up residence.
     
    The first one is number 6. This was a Bachmann Forney that I bought but discovered it was too long to go round my curves without derailing whatever it was towing. What to do? I thought about selling it, but its a nice model and I rather liked it, so I elected to buy the Backwoods conversion kit to turn it into a much more flexible (and in my opinion attractive) tender loco.
     
    Now this conversion is a bit drastic. It entails clamping the entire loco in a vice and sawing it in half, and this was quite a character building moment let me tell you! Nothing went wrong and I managed to get the loco back together without anything going REALLY wrong. I did omit the tender pickups, as it was hard enough stretching the circuit board wires between engine and tender, so I chickened out. I also cut the footplating a bit longer than recommended as there didn't appear to be enough practical room for the crew to work!
     
    For the details I did a bit of recycling. The previously mentioned 4-4-0 number 3 came with LOADS of detail parts that are alternate so you can make it look different. I did not like the Forney chimney, and I really didn't like the chimney Backwoods supply with it (I've saved that for another loco!) so I used the original copper capped chimney from number 3s box and I think it looks pretty nice. At the same time I fitted the tool boxes to the running board just to use up the space, it looked a bit thin on the ground before. Weathering and coal finished the job after transfers were applied. In typical 2-4-0 manner its a really rough rider, its got such a short wheelbase it really swings through pointwork, but it does look good on my passenger train and is one of my "operators choice" locos. I'm afraid the photo has made the weathering go a bit funny, the brown splodges actually do look like rust in real life, its just the flash highlights them a bit too much.
     

     
     
    The other new loco is a modified Bachmann mogul. I had always wanted another of these as they run so well, but I just didn't want another mogul! I had seen people turn these into 0-6-0s on the web and decided it would be logical to have a go myself. Its not very difficult to do, all it entails is shortening the front end and fitting a front coupling in the bashes most basic form. I took it a little further by adding some smaller detail and a new tender from a company called Wiseman, this is a resin kit derived from the mogul tender but is shorter and taller and looks more in keeping with the stumpy 0-6-0 than the long low slung tender in its standard form. Once again a coat of paint and transfers and a bunkerful of coal resulted in a good looking loco that is currently being weathered still. One thing I did do is detach the headlight bulb as not all locos run with the headlight blazing! I'm really pleased with it as it has come out exactly as I wanted. I will be doing a tank engine with saddle tank along the same lines to make a class 48 style loco.
     

     

  10. On30runner
    I decided I wanted to try DCC, and having helped film the BRM DVD for the Select I knew what I was in for if I bought that. I got one and wired it up and having got over the initial problems I suffered (compatability issues with Bachmann decoders) it worked reasonably well though it sometimes crashes if you get it too confused!
     
    One thing I had been wondering about was what to do around my loco spur. Its quite an expanse of board space to fill up and I couldn't decide what to do with it. Now I like gadgets and the Select DVD had given me an idea. In it Simon Kohler explains how to use DCC to make the Hornby turntable work......bingo! Problem solved, I would get a turntable. Now the obvious choice for me was the Peco On30 turntable kit, its basically the OO/HO one with a wider deck and enlarged planking detail. I could have used the Hornby one as its grossly overscale so more suited to On30 but as it looks horrendous I decided not to.
     
    I got the kit together in one evening with Plastic Weld so that helped speed construction along a bit. The next day I was off work and got the table motorised and set into the board.
     

     

     
    The drive is one of those cheap multistage gearboxes you can buy, it simply mounts onto some 2x1 I glued to the base of the table well. A Hornby decoder later and the turntable was working. It gave some minor trouble initially but it now spins a loco round no problems. Its a little juddery but this is from the drive and I can't really do much to stop it short of starting again. What made me laugh was the price of things. My turntable cost the same as a Hornby one without a decoder, and it looks better! Come on Hornby, you can do so much better than that!
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