Model Railroading Blog

******************************************************

New and Updated Pages...

Common Electrical Switches Used in Model Railroading

A description and comparison of some of the more common electrical switches used in model railroad wiring.

Decorating Your Layout for the Holidays

"Modeling the Holiday Season" by Debie Baker-Snell is a nice article in the Dec., 2008 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman all about decorating your layout for the Holidays. Several holiday tips are outlined, including how to attach little wreaths (that you can buy from your local craft store) to the front of your engines or the backs of your cabooses. Another neat decoration is to use metallic yarn to wrap around some of your evergreens or around lampposts. You can also buy scale-sized holiday figure sets through the Walthers Catalog. You can add different-colored LEDs to an evergreen to make a Christmas tree that can be removed and replaced with a regular evergreen when the Season is over. Craft stores also have small decorative red bows that can be attached temporarily to street lamps. Small decorative signs or reindeer can be added to houses or buildings for roof decorations. Let your imagination be your guide. Show off your decorated layout to all your family and visitors to your home this season. This is something everyone would enjoy!

Train Layout Design Elements

How to use train layout design elements (LDE's) to develop your own model railroad trackplan

Modeling a Winter Scene

How to create a complete winter scene for your model railroad, including methods of making snow, ice and icicles.

Building your own model railroad website

If you're at all interested in building your own website or starting your own blog about model railroading, SiteSell now has a special going on. You can obtain the complete course, all the tools on how to find and use the right keywords, instructional videos, domain name, everything you need to develop a very successful website of your own for only $100. This entire website that you see here was created by me in my spare time (which isn't much) with the sole investment of $100 (The usual non-special price is $299). The site paid for itself within the first 8 weeks and traffic is growing more and more every week. There have been over 55,600 page views on this site since its inception in April, 2008. It's actually been fun to build and exciting to watch the reaction.

If you belong to a railroad club, you could assign different articles to be written by various members of the club and have a complete site written and running in only a few months. Or if you want, SiteSell Services can build the whole thing for you according to your specifications. The other option is to have SiteSell provide you with a personal coach to help you. I elected to do it myself by taking the self-study course, although I'm sure it would have been easier with a personal coach. At any rate the decision is yours.

If you've been thinking about it, now is the time while the rates are low. Let me know if you do. There's like a whole brotherhood of SBIers out there that are very friendly and help each other out every day in the forum.

Click below to get to the SBI (Site Build It! by SiteSell) Homepage and read more...

Tip from a visitor on Scratchbuilding

In the Scratchbuilding page on this site, a method of making windows for a styrene wall is described. One of our readers sent in a comment which should make this a much easier process...

"When cutting window openings in styrene, (For starters I would suggest .040 not .060) you can cut the lines for the outside of the window, and then cut an X from corner to corner.

This allows the opening to be snapped out without having to glue the rest of the wall back together.

Use a small file to clean up the opening.

Much less work!" - Russ Venlos

Thanks, Russ, for the great tip! I'll be anxious to try this soon.

Pokie Roads Layout Expansion Project

My new N Scale layout is currently under expansion. Pictures are now available to show (show off?) the progress. I'll post more updates as the process continues. Let me know if you have any comments...

Railroad Position System

An exciting new development in model railroad electronics is the RPS, or Railroad Position System. This is like GPS for your railroad!

Requirements:

~ DCC control,
~ N-Scale or larger locomotive with decoder and open grill on top,
~ a PC or MAC computer,
~ JMRI (a freeware computer software program),
~ a transmitter in your locomotive,
~ 3-4 receivers mounted over your layout, and
~ line-of-site from your loco to receivers. (May not work for trains in large tunnels unless you put receivers in the tunnel)

No complicated wiring is necessary. It can be used for location of trains (e.g, in a hidden staging yard), train identification, control of signals, turnouts, trains, sounds, lights and other automated actions. It can actually create a map of your layout by following the loco around the track.

Starter set costs around $400 including base station, transmitter and 3 receivers.

Building Your Model Railroad - A Comprehensive Guide

All the information, tools and techniques you need to design and build your own realistic, artistic and fully operational model railroad.

Traffic Signals for Your Model Railroad Layout

How to install traffic signals on your model railroad layout.

Your Model Railroading Tips and Comments

Share your own model railroading tips and comments to help other model railroaders improve.

A New Model Railroad Layout!

Ideas, dreams and musings about building a new model railroad layout in addition to the main layout.

Making Roots for Trees...

This is another great tip from Model Railroader magazine, written by Cody Grivno, entitled Model the Edge of a Forest on a Bluff, Oct., 2008, pp.34-35. demonstrating how to attach metal tree branches from a Woodland Scenics tree kit to the trunk of a Grand Central Gems fir tree by drilling small holes in the side of the trunk, gluing in the branches, covering the attachment with putty, painting with Polly Scale Earth color and imbedding the tree on the layout at the front of a forest or on a hillside. Great stuff!

A New Model Railroad Magazine!

A new free e-zine called Model Railroad Hobbyist will be available in January, 2009 for your viewing pleasure right on your computer screen! It's all electronic and will give you lots of model railroad news and informative articles about model railroading. It's all supported by sponsors, and did I mention, it's free! Here's the link. Check out the demo pages...

Model Railroad Operation: A New Adventure!

How to conduct sessions for model railroad operation.

Train Camera for Your Model Trains

Using a Train Camera System to enhance your model railroad layout - a way to view your train layout from a different perspective.

Superelevating Model Train Track Curves

How to superelevate the outer rails of flextrack in a model train track curve.

Model Train Track Codes

Description of various track codes and tips for laying model train track for a realistic and prototypical appearance.

Visual Illusions and Mirror Tricks for Your Model Railroad

Tips on how to use illusions to enhance your model railroad layout.

Building Your Model Railroad - Sitemap

Building Your Model Railroad - Sitemap: Navigate to any page on the site with one click.