Tuesday 28 December 2010

More planning... the shelf layout design phase continues.

I've continued to work on the track plan for my shelf layout, this latest version has been optimised slightly to reduce the amount of track, and allow more room for scenery.









This version of the plan also shows the proposed fiddle yard/cassette at the right hand side.  All switches are No.6 size (Medium Peco) and the cars on the plan are 53ft HiCube size although I will plan to use 50ft when I am operating the layout to allow even more clearance.

The next step will be to order the necessary track and build a real-world mockup to try out the plan for real.

Monday 20 December 2010

Planning... the Shelf Layout idea takes shape.


So i've spent the last week or two working on my switching layout trackplan, using the free XtrkCad software to try out various different ideas.  It's a great piece of software that allows you to draw and actually operate your trackplan right there on your PC desktop.

I've been trying to get something urban, originally I was looking for a city-centre plan similar to 'Sweethome Chicago' but I have since started to be more influenced by the DCON Detroit Connecting Railroad and the industrial traffic still going on in the Detroit area.

This plan incorporates four business spurs and a runaround loop, it is designed for engines no bigger than GP38 size, and trains no longer than four 53ft boxcars.

I'm pretty pleased with this plan and I think it will be the one I end up using.  I will be trying out the plan some more in XtrkCad before building it in Peco track to try for real.

Saturday 18 December 2010

Local HO Discoveries - Finding US Outline Rolling Stock Secondhand

So this week I visited the secondhand toy store in a street near me, it's a small shop with heavily shuttered windows, and from the outside it never seems to be open, but I was walking past the other day and lo and behold... the door was open.



I went inside and was confronted by the most ridiculous array of old toys and trains, piles of battered corgis and dinkys and hornby in every corner, shelves piled high with meccano and scalextric, and in the corner of the window beside all the Triang and Lima and OO wagons I found a pile of HO american trains!

This was quite a stash of HO, including some repainted Spectrum Bachmann Dash-8's and some old wide-body Athearn, nothing really that exciting, but then underneath a stack of old toy life-like wagons I unearthed a Atlas, and not just any Atlas either, this was a Norfolk Southern GP38-2, the EXACT model that I had been unsuccesfully bidding on ebay for! What are the chances of that?  Not only was there some US locomotives in this tiny shop, but there was actually the one I wanted to get.



So naturally, I bought it there and then.  It's a bit rough around the edges, some broken handrails, busted couplers and missing a horn, but it runs great and I have already got the missing parts ordered from ebay.

This is my first ever Atlas model, twenty years ago when I was collecting HO last time, my entire collection was Athearn except for a single Spectrum Switcher.  I suspect this model wasn't available then, but it's certainly a great addition to my fledgling fleet now.  The detail is amazing, including visible fan details on the roof, and an interior with crew, it has a crisper moulding detail that the Athearn, which may be because it doesn't seem to be painted, it's just a black plastic shell with printed details.

This new engine brings my roster up to three GP38-2 although one of those is the basket-case Chicago Belt locomotive that will need a lot of work to bring up to scratch.  I've been watching some replacement shells on ebay for that one as the existing shell has some damaged mounting clips.

So all this new rolling stock needs somewhere to run, and with that in mind, I've been spending a lot of time with XtrkCad working on my layout track plan.  More on that soon.

Tuesday 14 December 2010

Athearn GP38 (ebay basket case)


Here's a quick look at the state of my first new locomotive.  This is an Athearn GP38 RTR model, in Chicago Belt livery.  The ebay picture showed the model in the box, so it wasn't until I got it that I realised just how bad it really was.

Luckily I got a refund for most of what I paid for it, so in the end it has only cost me £15 which is a reasonable price for an Athearn.

I've ordered some new Cannon & Co. parts to detail it with, and some replacement Athearn plastic handrails. The biggest problem is the body mounting lugs, which are in bad shape.  I may need to get a replacement body for this one before I spend time detailing the shell.


Monday 13 December 2010

Back once again to the modeling bench.

I used to love model railroading, as a child I spent hours poring over the Hornby catalogue and I still remember those old Bernard Cribbins TV adverts...



I never had the big Hornby set of my childhood dreams, times were hard so I had to make do with a cheap Lima set of continental equipment painted BR Blue!   I eventually bought a large lot of secondhand Hornby and Jouef trains and as I got older Lima began to release some very nicely detailed OO engines and I amassed a large collection of detailed models and joined the local OO railway group in my small town.

Then at the Glasgow train show one year, I bought a few bits of cheap American outline equipment made by 'Athearn' some company I'd never heard of.  They were very cheap and very solidly built, and once I put them on my layout and fired them up... well the UK OO models very quickly looked dull and uninteresting next to these powerful interlopers.  I was soon seeking out more US engines to add to my collection.

For the next few years, my collection continued to grow until I had amassed a modest collection of Athearn locomotives and a number of boxcars and other wagons, and my loft layout was reconfigured as a West Coast desert run.

After I left home to Study, the model railroad went into boxes, and then into the garage, and finally all my equipment was sold off.  I didn't expect that I'd be going back to it again.  Even when I found a few leftover wagons a couple of years ago, I just ebayed them and forgot about it.

Then a few weeks ago, a new model railway shop opened in Guildford where I work.  I was passing on lunchtime and there in the window was an Athearn train set!  I went in and got talking to the shopkeeper, and I nearly bought the set there and then.

So after browsing ebay for a while, I quickly found myself making purchases, and now I've got a whole mess of Athearn on route from various parts of the globe, as well as some Cannon & Compnay detailing parts, a Bachmann DCC control and even a Sound Decoder.  Things could get out of hand!  :)

I'll be updating with more soon, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of my newly purchased Athearn 'blue box' kits.  These are my first train purchases in twenty years, and direct replacements for some of the kits I used to have.