Main staging yard bench work - Part 2

This second part of building the staging yard bench work will be to add the upper deck.

Side rails and cross braces for the upper deck were made from more 1-1/2 inch strips of plywood. The cross braces got 3/4 inch holes for wiring done on the drill press prior to installation.  Openings were cut in the lower deck for access.  Once the top is on the upper deck this box shape will give this section greater strength.

I'm a believer in sealing all bench work.  Sometimes for a module bottom I use some left over paint from some other project.  For this layout I found a light tan color in the bargain bin.  Before installing the deck for the upper level I painted those areas that would be harder to reach with the deck on.

Here is the yard section outdoors with the upper deck added.  I have left the entry end of the upper deck open as that part is still a bit unsettled as to the mounting of the turnout motors.  I do almost all of the cutting and sanding outdoor to keep the train room clean.

Main staging yard bench work - Part 1

In my last post I had just brought home the first sheet of plywood for building layout bench work.  Since that time, I have been able to spend several very pleasant afternoons building the first phase of the main staging yard section.  At 10 feet, 4 inches long it is likely going to be the largest single section.

In this first phase of building the staging yard,  I built the deck of the lower level.  To determine the size and shape of the upper deck, I needed to pencil in all the tracks and determine how many staging tracks and their spacing.  Also, the placement of the turnout motors and any linkages had to be considered.


I settled on a 22 inch width for the main part of the yard, 5 staging tracks for the SP on the lower level and 4 for the WP on the upper level.  Shown here is the end that balloons out to 32 inches where each of the lines will loop back at a 14 inch radius.

Here is a closer view of this part of the yard.  The green pencil lines represent the upper level and the red pencil lines represent the lower level.  The paper turnout templates were printed from the Fast Tracks web site.

The entry end of the yard will partly extend over onto the outer part of the helix with only two turnouts for each line actually being in the yard section. Here I had accidentally placed two templates on a blue pencil line and crossed them out in Photoshop.  That particular blue line represents the division between the lower and upper levels.

This view shows what the underside of the yard module looks like.  I found some large shelf brackets at the local hardware store that were just right for this application.  There's enough room between the brackets for my big train cabinet or other large items.

Ready for that next sheet of plywood !

Staging yard design

At the western end of the paired track just east of Winnemucca, there is a double crossover.  This point on the railroad is known as Wesso.  From Wesso the Western Pacific and Southern Pacific routes diverge as they continue west.  So this is actually a form of junction and junctions provide for interesting operations.

After each of the single track lines leave the junction they will enter staging through a helix.  I have a length of about 11 feet for the staging yards and turn around loop.  To properly simulate the prototype operation I want each single track line to have it's own staging and  loop back to itself.  After playing around with several ideas, this is the design I came up with to accomplish this.

It's hard to visualize from this one drawing but what happens is that at the west end of the layout the two lines will leave the layout disappearing behind some hills or buildings of Winnemucca to enter the double track helix down to this staging yard.  At the bottom of the helix the WP line will leave the helix first at one turn above the bottom and enter the staging yard on a level at the back half that is higher than the SP yard.  The WP return loop will pass over the SP return loop and then over the SP staging tracks to re-enter the higher level WP staging yard.

I'm ready to start building this and today picked up a nice sheet of 1/2 inch birch plywood at Home Depot.

Installing a Showcase Express display case

It's been a few months since I posted anything on this layout blog.  Again, most of my model railroading time has been taken up with module projects and some DCC installs but that is also rewarding.  The train room has now been through a summer and has been very pleasant to work in.  On some days it is actually cooler than in the house.  Also, as long as I keep the door to the garage closed dust is minimal.

The LED lighting for the layout has advanced to the point that I am beginning to build some permanent bench work.  I hope to post more on both of those subjects soon.  Recently I installed a large display case along the wall between where the lower staging yard will and the highest point on the layout.

Several years ago my wife gave me as a Christmas present this Showcase Express display case for my n scale trains.  This is the set that has 10 two foot long sections.

This system uses specially made aluminum channels that interlock when stacked on top of each other.  It's a flexible system.

I really like this one so when I had the chance to buy the set of 10 four foot long sections I knew just where I could use it in the new train room.

The goal is to mount this set as 2 sets of 5 high placed end to end.  I had already installed some shelf brackets that will support the east end of the layout which will be Carlin.  In order to mount these display case channels, I needed to build a frame that would allow the case to clear those brackets and still be securely mounted to the wall.

The channels have a groove along the back that help guide where the mounting holes will go.  I aligned these with the vertical sections on the frame I built.  There is also black plastic links that can be fitted to the top of the inside of adjoining channels.

These display case channels are designed to fit a standard Micro-Trains box including the lid.  Locomotive boxes, or larger Micro-Trains boxes do not fit.

The way I prefer to use these display cases is to put the locomotives and rail cars directly into the case without their boxes.  There are a pair of grooves on the bottom of each channel that are a perfect match to N scale wheels.

Here is the display case with all 10 of the 4 foot sections mounted temporarily in place with a complete train placed in the bottom channel.  Hey ! that's just about how long a train is going to be on this layout.  With these being just above the staging yard and the layout being multiple eras, I plan to park the out of era items on these display case channels.  Before mounting these permanently I need to get the shelf that will support the Carlin section of the layout in place.

Continuing development of LED lighting

It's been a couple of months since I've posted anything on this blog.  During that time I've been working on my Japanese Ntrak module quite a bit and also completing some DCC decoder installations.

Where I left off last time was that I had found a great little panel on ebay that contained 48 SMD LED's and that is intended to use as replacement interior dome lighting for vehicles.  Then I tested them by taking a series of photos of one of the Ntrak modules with different color locomotive, freight cars, and building to determine if the colors would come out true.

Another thing that got accomplished with the LED panels was they got installed in the travel trailer and in May we took a little trip and they worked out quite well.   One thing I've been aware of is that women are much more critical of the color temperature of lighting and with the lights in the trailer meeting with approval of both Nona and a woman friend of ours,  I have more confidence that these little panels are going to be good for the layout.

I mentioned that I got these on ebay.  Buying them in packs of 10 gets the price down to about $2.00 per panel.  There are both the white and warm white types.  I intend to use the warm white type for the layout.  At that price point, you can't expect the best quality control.  About one out of 10 of these have the red and black wires backwards which is easy to correct.






Using these small panels, I wanted to have a way to mount them in groups which could be customized depending on the area to be covered.  Most of these will be mounted under cabinets which might be of different widths.  In the area where I am starting there are four 30 inch wide cabinets each with a pair of 15 inch wide doors.  So for this first section, I came up with a 14 inch long module holding 5 LED panels and built 8 of these to match that section of cabinets.  One of these units is shown in the photo below.

This next photo shows some of the construction details.  The mounting brackets are made from brass strip and angled so that the light is not shining in the operators eyes.  The angle is only slight so the vertical space needed for the lights won't change much.  The angle can also be adjusted by bending the brass mounting brackets.  The planned 3 inch valance placed along the bottom of the cabinets will cover the height of the modules.  Notice how the second panel from the left is wired backwards.  That is how I corrected for the ones that were wired backwards on the panel.

Some calculations

Now that I've got an idea of how to use these LED panels, I needed to determine how many it will eventually take to light the entire layout, how much they will cost, how much power they will consume, what type and how many power supplies will it take to light them all up.

First the cost:

The planned visible mainline run which would receive full lighting is 62 feet.  At 4 panels per foot thats 248 panels needed.  That's over 11,000 indiviual LED's !  At $2.00 per panel, it's going to run about $500.00 spent over time.

Then the Electrical:

I had measured the current drawn by a single 48 LED panel at 75ma with 12 volts applied.  With 5 panels on each of these modules, a single module would draw 375ma.   8 modules on this 10 ft section of layout would then draw 3 amps.  I've seen a lot of laptop power supplies on line and in my local electronics surplus store rated at 5 amps and my next step will be to pick up one of those to try it out on this first section of lighting.

Experiments with LED lighting

With this layout being in a garage without any air conditioning, I was really concerned about any waste heat being generated by the room and layout lighting so LED lighting for the layout really seems to be the way to go.  I am already lighting the room with LED fixtures and that has work out really well so far.  The technology is hitting main stream lately with the products becoming more practical and more affordable.

I was also concerned about using lighting that would make the layout look good, like natural light.  Setting up a couple of those little LED light panels shown in the last post, I thought things looked good but did not really trust my own color perception completely.

Having noticed in the past that a camera sometimes sees things that my human eye does not, I took some photos of my Ntrak module to test how true different colors are represented under this type of lighting.

Using various locomotives and rolling stock, I was able to check a wide range of colors and have quite satisfied with the results so far.  All of the colors shown in these photos appear very true to the actual items.

So if I use this type of lighting, how many will I need for the whole layout ?

And how many 12 volt DC power supplies ?

These are the next questions that will need to be answered.

Evolution of LED lighting for layouts

From the first time I saw a bright white LED in a locomotive I have been fascinated with the idea of using them to light model building interiors, street lights, vehicle head lights, or anything else where a light bulb would be used on a layout.  Another area that I have wanted to use these is for layout lighting.

With this layout being in a garage without any air conditioning, I was really concerned about any waste heat being generated by the room and layout lighting.   The technology is hitting main stream lately with the products becoming more practical and more affordable.  The room that the layout is in is lighted with 3 LED light fixtures with great results.  To light the layout itself, here are some products I've experimented with.

It must have been about 10 years ago now that I picked up this set at Ikea for about 35 dollars to use under some cabinets to light part of my California Northwestern layout.

While this did work rather well to light up a small part of that layout it were not practical due to cost.

I got this 18 foot long LED rope light for about 10 dollars at Costco last year.  The price was better but a single rope was not going to give off enough light so it might take several of these running side by side to light an 18 foot section of the layout.

Looking for LED replacements for the interior lights in our travel trailer I found this product on ebay. There are a total of 48 LED's on a small circuit board with a 2 pin connector.  The kit includes 3 different types of automotive bulb type bases with connectors.  After buying a few to try out they seemed very promising so I bought a larger order and was able to get them for about 2 dollars each.


In my next post I'll show what I've been doing with these to further determine their sustainability for lighting my layout.

Layout version 4 - turning everything around

While I liked the last layout design, there was one big problem with it.  The primary staging yard for this layout needed to be on the west end of the layout.  Up to now my orientation for the layout was looking north, left is west and right is east.  Following this orientation the west end staging yard would be on the shorter wall not allowing enough space for primary staging.

The solution was to turn everything around so that the orientation was looking south, with left being east and right being west.  This drawing shows this new arrangement without the track itself being shown.

Because in this configuration the Palisade tunnels would be on the other side of the room, I decided to use the tunnels to disguise the lift bridge at the entry door.

Another change is that the bump out for the helix was reduced from 4 feet to 2 feet after I realized that the modeled scenes could be extended onto the first turns of the helix so the space is not really wasted.




This drawing reflects how the room was actually built so while this may not be the final version of the layout, additional changes will need to fit within this space.

Another thing that I believe may be an advantage to this arrangement is that on the western end of the layout the WP line will be closer to the front edge of the layout which I find more interesting.  On the eastern end of the layout after the lines have crossed in the canyon, the SP line will be toward the front edge in Carlin which is where there is more going on.

At this point in early 2014, the blog postings have caught up with the events. Future posts should all be "current events".

2013 - Working with the AnyRail drawing program

I'm not particularly good at learning to use various computer programs.  I learned to use Microsoft Visio quite a few years ago and got good at it so I have tended to rely on it for all types of drawings.  While it is great for many types of drawings, to draw a layout plan there are several programs available that are especially designed for this type of work.

In the past I had tried XTrakCAD and CAD rail but had trouble of getting the hang of either of them.  Then one of my local N scale modeler friends suggested AnyRail and I found it to be much easier to learn to use.

This is a drawing I did showing the 10 foot section of the layout that will represent the east end of the modeled area.  The program allows the user to set up what the minimum allowed track radius will be and then as the track is placed in the drawing it will show if  and where the track is tighter than that minimum.  I'm still just getting started with this but already I would recommend it for anyone looking for layout design software.  It can be downloaded at http://www.anyrail.com.  The free trail version can do small drawings and does not have any time limit.