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Thats a long time away! Well, maybe not "away", but stored in the back of your mind for some time. That's how I look at hobbies that sit on the back-burner for a while. The club in town runs Digitrax and I have seen that in depth and run trains with it before. However, I have a preference for...

Old thread but I happened to come across it here. With the outside track - are you powering the rails? Or do you run off batteries in a car? Reason I ask is one of the big challenges with outdoor garden layouts is track maintenance and keeping rails and wheels clean where they can conduct might...

I tried the denatured alcohol. That helped things along. The continuity isn't 100% but I got it to work some. I stacked several cars behind it to give it a good load to where I could crank the transformer up without sailing the loco off the track. I ran that a few circuits. That helped the...

O scale, yes, which is why I posted in the O scale portion of the forum here. The brushes pop in and out real easy - that is the 2 assemblies in the first picture (one before cleaning, one after - they are both "clean" as pictured installed in the loco in the 2nd picture). As to the alcohol...

I have been working on one of my steam locos here. I got the brass spring contact strip cleaned off where it contacts the brush frames, as well as the brush frames themselves. I also got the outside of the rollers cleaned. However, the inside hole of the rollers to the pins is where I don't...

Does anyone know where pictures may be posted of the 2008 Trolleyville N-Track set up? It had over 700 modules and 116 scale miles of mainline. I can only find write-ups in the Trolleyville Times and no pictures.

Are there any layouts out there that can run 80+ car trains? If I did the math right that is a scale mile - 5280ft/160 = 33ft, 33ft/5in or so for a car is right about 80. What are some larger layouts that you know of? I have seen several layouts that are very intricate with scenery, yards...

That is where planning on taking things apart and building in segments is key. That is the only way I am starting my layout - built to take apart again.

I have three different curves on two different types of track for O scale. The newer/modern O scale track has two different curve radiuses. I am assuming the tighter one is 027 as that came in a kit I got in the mid-90s. I am not sure what the wider one is. I have some pre-war O scale gear and...

Coffee in hand to start the day. I should be off to an earlier start. It was so foggy last night when I left the office I could hardly see across the parking lot. Dense fog advisory this morning now with storms. Looking out the window it doesn't look too bad, just wet and gray so far. There is...

Curt - N scale for now. Layout is to experiment with DCC so there will be switches, but I want to run trains on a main line as opposed to yard and industry ops only on a switcher table. We'll see where the design goes.

Agreed - there are a lot of factors, benefits, and drawbacks. At some point I want a big building, regardless - storage for equipment, boat, atv, work shop wood + metal. As for trains - havent thought through that too far, probably many years down the road. Just an initial thought, though -...

That may mean a quick sale. Not to discourage you at all, from what I know about RV's trying to sell one can be the worst aspect of ownership due to rapid depreciation. If you have a lot of interest that may actually be a blessing, even if you aren't getting what you think it should bring. I...

Garry - Scale is N, modern era. My goal is to use the layout as a platform to experiment with DCC. The layout design is an L shape - 9ft on the long side with a 4ft depth, 7'4" on the short side with a 3ft depth (I think... unless I change it up some). The first track layout I have drawn up is...

Hi Frank. I am scanning through some threads on the Forums here and ran across yours. I like the way you're thinking with the modular layout. I am thinking along the same lines. Maybe we can share some ideas together. There are a couple threads around I have started the past month or two so...

Hi All. I just stumbled in to the thread series here. That is neat to have a "chit chat" place here, as opposed to specific topic threads. Not much to add from my end. Coffee has already gone down the hatch, along with some real Baileys. I have been off on a work trip for too long. Now that I'm...

Dave - I am still in the planning stages right now. I have been swamped with work the past couple weeks since after the holidays and things are only piling up more there. The model railroading is on the proverbial back burner for a while. As I get back to things I'll pick at the threads I have...

Thanks for the insight again. Era I am envisioning is everything modern - so last 10 years or so. That isn't to say I may run a steam loco/passenger train or something else out of era, but the focus would be modern.

Ah. Thanks for the insight. I see there is still lots I am not aware of with trains. Learning as I go. I am looking in to setting up an intermodal container train for N scale. It looks like all the sets I have seen are "5 unit cars" with 10 containers, like the Kato sets. It looks like full...

Are intermodal container cars always in sets of 5? Mainly in reference to the double stack 40ft container cars. It looks like the truck between the cars in the set of 5 is shared, then every 5 the "set" is split?