Model Railroad Blog

N Scale Rolling Stock Strategy

A tandem of Micro Trains boxcars sit temporarily in the street trackage of 1st Avenue.

We’d all like to have our cake and eat it too but, unfortunately, life rarely pans out that way.  An N scaler has the enormous advantage of being able to have a rather significant railroad virtually in their hip pocket.  The small size also opens up the ability to have much more realistic scene composition by virtue of having the space to spread things out as they appear in the real world.

For all its positives, however, the scale poses significant challenges, especially for the realism orient modeler. When it comes to rolling stock those challenges are:

-Truck mounted couplers

-Massive ‘pizza cutter’ wheel flanges

-Oversize couplers

-Unrealistic ride height to clear the truck mounted couplers

-Cast on details analogous to the HO scalers old “Bluebox” days or….

-or…if the details aren’t cast on they tend to be grossly over sized

Whew!  Did I miss anything or are you back to HO already!  The situation isn’t hopeless though.  The rivet and seam detail tends to be very finely cast to scale which is no small thing.  Also, the pad printing is typically well done.  So all is not lost.  However, if you hope to achieve any semblance of a plausible end result, and do so without spending weeks on each car, it’s important to come up with a strategy.

The starting point of attaining visual realism is the realization and acceptance of how much color treatment and weathering has on overall appearance, far more so than prototypical accuracy.  Once that realization is embraced, you can direct your efforts in that direction.  Since the overall casting detail is generally excellent, the use of dark washes will “pop” that positive attribute out.  Off the shelf, all rolling stock of any scale, has very vivid lettering.  For WW2 era that is usually white.  This brilliant white needs to be toned down but very subtly.  The cars above were first given a thin wash of burnt umber and black artist oils.  When that dried, I used an airbrush to fog on an ultra thin mix of Dullcote dulled with a drop or two of Model Master Army Helo Drab.  Dark brown and black chalk was then rubbed along the outside bracing. Surprisingly, with this color treatment the cast on details are less objectionable than cars that come with oversize stand off details.  In summary, apply a thin brush wash of dark artist oils followed by an airbrush hazing of US Helo Drab to knock down the brilliance of the white.

Moving on to ride height….stock wheels and couplers are immediately stripped of and consigned to the trash.  BLMA makes an exceptional N scale truck comprised of thin, small flange, metal wheels.  What’s particularly interesting is the bolster has an ingenious downward offset that lowers the car’s ride height.  Atlas has picked up the ball and integrated this product into their production line (I generally use BLMA #9045).  Putting these wheels in place and body mounting the couplers generally puts everything (car and couplers) where it needs to be vertically.

The final issue is the couplers.  Gosh, you HO scalers have it so nice.  This is a “down the road” issue I’ll need to experiment with and sort out in the weeks ahead.   For now I’m using body mounted Z scale couplers simply to have something there that isn’t so huge.  However, the Z scale couplers don’t really have a prototypical appearance and give cars in motion that maddening yo-yo/slinky effect.  I may be able to mitigate that a little by adding friction to the wheel bearings.    The new Micro Trains scale couplers look nice, don’t yo-yo, but have a massive coupler pocket that creates clearance problems in their own right.  If I can come up with some form of modified pocket that may be the best bet.  Stay tuned…..

 

 

 

Brooklyn Terminal ProRail Ops

Wayland Moore and Riley Triggs running the Brooklyn Terminal during ProRail 2018

 

ProRail, the national operations convention, is now in the bag. I was a little surprised how drawn the attendees were to running the BT layout.  For the most part it ran well although some minor track tuning issues cropped up.  Approaches to this entire “operations” thing varies from person to person and layout host to layout host.  For my part, when I stage a session I put a lot of effort into trying to get the operators away from the natural tendency to fall into what I call a “check list” mentality when it comes to an operating session.  By that I mean where the mindset becomes one of “give me a list so I can work through that list”.   I want it to be of a case of “experiencing” what it would be like to be in a specific time and place and to be able to enjoy that experience without undo pressure or frustration.  There are a few ways to help this along.

  1. One is to not overload the session with too many moves.
  2. Another is to avoid building in operational “gotchas”.
  3. The third is to let the operator know that it doesn’t matter if the switch list is completed or not.  After a set time period, the session will be declared “done” and the power to the layout will be turned off.
  4. Encourage the crews to take real time coffee breaks during the session.
  5. For switching layouts, emphasize that you’d like the speed limit not exceed the third speed notch on a throttle.

This takes the pressure off so hopefully they can just relax and get a sense of what it would feel like to be in say 1945 Brooklyn.  I staged the layout with only 13 cars and set up a simple switch list.  Over the course of the event three operators ran the layout on successive days and to my surprise the relatively small 13 piece car count  took about an hour and half to spot.  The fact that only a dozen cars will fill out a session takes some pressure off me as it will be a lot easier to fine tune the rolling stock. I see the exceptional BLMA replacement trucks are back in stock so the focus in the next month will be on lowering the cars, tuning couplers, and adding weight.  I’ll also be working on some track fine tuning.

I’ve never understood the hobby culture in terms of how smaller layouts are often viewed.  It seems to be one of “settling”.  One of making the best of a bad situation (limited space).  During ProRail I had all three layouts running.  They ranged in size from the Downtown Spur at 400 sf to the Brooklyn Terminal at 30 sf.  Watching the guests run the layouts I really didn’t notice any difference in how much they enjoyed the larger vs. smaller railroads.  Without feeling contrived, something like the Brooklyn Terminal will easily spin out a relatively long operating session and will serve up many, many years of construction enjoyment and it’s of a size attainable to anybody with any living situation.

 

Here’s the switch list I used for ProRail 2018. It’s just a simple Excel spreadsheet and took operators a relaxing ninety minutes to run through.

LAJ Video

I always look forward to the LAJ videos put out by Los Angeles Rail Productions.  For those that share my interest in the LAJ, check out his excellent video from January.  Link HERE.  He shot this in HD so treat yourself to watching it in full screen.  Some things that jumped out at me:

-At the :47 mark notice the conductor locking the crossing signal box.

-At the 1:27 mark note how how the trains stops at the grade crossing to pick up the conductor.

-Note the ARMN reefer in the opening sequence

-Note overall the really slow running speeds, an aspect of prototype operations many modelers struggle to represent.

-At the 12:50 mark there is a super cool sequence where the LAJ switch job “meets” with a UP  switch job.  Don’t see that very often.

Enjoy!

Brooklyn Terminal 4/15/18

This weekend’s activities involved getting some more structure mock ups on the layout.  I also kept most of the structures from my old Monon layout and they’re serving as hand stand ins for now.   Everything is up and fully operational at this point.  The plan is to operate it for a few months and then move to replacing the mock ups (track and structures) with the final detailed pieces.

Time

The timeless 80/20 rule, model railroad planning is not immune. All too often we have our 80/20 priorities backwards.  We spend eighty per cent of our time wringing our hands over what I would consider more tactical issues and only twenty per cent on the much more important strategic questions.  What curve radius to employ, how many staging tracks to use, what type of bench work footprint is best?  These are all tactical issues.  They do matter, but they are of much less importance than the one central litmus test.  The hallmark of a good design?  It’s pretty basic when you step back and think about it.  A “successful design” is one that results in a model railroad that produces the maximum level of enjoyment given your own personal interests, skills, weaknesses, and lifestyle. It’s a design that targets and hones in like a laser on the areas of the hobby you find most satisfying and maximizes the timeyou spend on them.  It also minimizes, to the extent possible, time spent on those areas you find less enjoyable.   Maximizing ‘fun time’, that’s the target, that’s the “eighty per cent” that should be our strategic focus.   It seems so basic, so obvious, and yet it’s all to easy to give it lip service, not see the forest for the trees, even for  experienced modelers.

Model Railroading is recreation, and the hallmark of a good design is one that recognizes that reality and zeroes in on it.  We all have an intuitive sense of whether we are enjoying our hobby or not.  Sure, there may be times when we need to grind through a mundane task such as wiring, but at some point we become aware of whether we are enjoying the model railroad we are building (or have built) or whether we are not.

Reducing a successful design to its most basic level, the bottom line becomes a) how much enjoyment we are having  b) how long  that enjoyable period lasts and c) how often are we able to get into the layout room.  In other words how much fun we are having, for how long, and how often. A times B times C.   It’s the time element I’d like to delve into here and how it impacts all facets of design, construction, and operation.  Long before we get to the tactical issues of design, the minutiae of the X’s and O’s, it behooves us to address the more important strategic issues and do so effectively.  If you don’t address those big picture questions, you run the risk of correctly drawing the wrong design, a design that is technically correct but leaves you flat and unmotivated to interact with the layout.  Before you pick up that pencil and straight edge, or open up your CAD program, give some serious thought to TIME and how important it is to what you’re trying to do.  Here are some questions to get you started:

-Once I start construction, ideally how long do I want it to be before I can at least do a little bit of train running (say over 20 feet of track)?

-How long do I want it to be before I can run my full schedule?

-A layout never needs to be totally finished but it’s nice to have enough done that you and your visitors can see at least some portion of your vision.  How long will it be before, say a third, of my layout is totally done (track, scenery, structures)?

-What aspect of the hobby do I want to spend most of time on? Scenery? Structures? Operation? Freight car assembly? Other? A good design will be skewed so that is in fact where you are spending your time.    If you love scenery and don’t give a rat’s rear about operation do you really need a plan with a hundred turnouts?  If you love structures, but are ambivalent about scenery, do you really need bench work that is three feet deep?

-Whether you are a die hard operator or railfan, how long do you want your ‘running sessions’ to last?  Twenty minutes, three hours?

– How often will you run.  A few times a week, once a month, once a quarter?

-How much “high energy” time do I have to work on the hobby?.  You may have three hours of time in the evening but, if you’re totally fried after a long work day and commute, that time isn’t something you’ll be able to take advantage of.

-Where are the potential time sinks and how can I minimize the chance of getting bogged down by them?  For example, if you want detailed hand laid track, you could quickly tack down some flex track temporarily, get trains running, and then gradually replace it with more detailed track at your leisure.

A design isn’t complete until it can honestly and accurately address these types of time related questions.

In my experience I often see designs (again, often from very experienced modelers) where the owner has designed in a lot of hoops they must jump through before they get to the ‘good stuff’, the ‘fun stuff’, what they truly enjoy.  Sadly, they frequently burn out before getting to the promised land.  Or, they design in complex, time-consuming-to-build, features that they don’t really care about.

We increase the odds of maximizing how much we enjoy our hobby if we put TIME, in all its iterations, front and center and at the absolute earliest stages of the planning process.

Shown above is an example of how awareness of time can be applied to layout design.  Let’s say an individual is:

  • Primarily a rail fan and, as such, wants a relatively long main line run
  • Enjoys building rolling stock
  • Is less interested in building structures and scenery
  • Has limited time

The bench work depth has been minimized to speed up construction.  Scenery is relatively simple and would go quickly given the narrow bench work. The turnout count is low as is the amount of track.  An optional staging yard is shown to store additional rolling stock.  Putting it all together, we have a layout that would relatively easy to build in a short time and is skewed to the owner’s specific interests.