Model Railroad Blog

New Design Blog Posting

I’ve just posted a new layout design blog on my business site HERE.

For reasons that are understandable, many assume that I’m an advocate of small, switching layouts.  That’s not really true.  I’m actually  more of a proponent of layouts that are simple enough to build (and yet still interesting)  that  those on the sidelines are motivated to jump into the fray of this great hobby of ours.  There is no “right” way to model a railroad and for many, long main line runs are more captivating than switching a more compact area.   Large layouts need not be complex hence the subject of the blog.

New Pavement Image

distblvdmedianc

The current project on my workbench is the pavement for District Blvd. in Vernon.  The prototype is comprised of 12 foot traffic lanes, a 12 foot median, and 10 foot parking lanes.  I used Google Streetview as a guide but didn’t use that imagery.  Instead, I was able to find a street overpass in town that allowed me to safely photograph the street below.  Using more than a little photoshop to cut and paste and change the pavement color and striping patterns, I was able to put together the image above.  This is a fairly common arrangement so I’ve posted it to my photo wallpaper section.  Print it out 10.8 inches wide on high-quality glossy photo paper, knock the shine off with Dullcote, and then affix it to your styrene base with 3M Super77.

Mixing It Up

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With the discovery of Ed’s TrainCrew audio app., the next step was to see if I could overlay those sounds seamlessly on top of the locomotive audio  being fed from the under layout sound decoder to my wireless headphones.  Anticipating this need, awhile back I picked up an audio “mixer” from Pricom.  One side of the board has four ports to accept incoming sounds, on the other side is an output plug for the headphones.  I loaded the TrainCrew app. on my iPhone and plugged the phone into one port.  I ran a cable from the under table layout decoder plug to another port.   I turned on the throttle and the locomotive sound audio was feeding through the mixer without issue.  So far, so good.  Next, I hit the brake wheel function on TrainCrew.  A perfect sound overlay!  It works!

All is not resolved, however. The way I’ve set this up, you are essentially tethered to one location due to the plug connecting the phone to the mixer.  If you want to “trigger” the sounds on the phone you need to walk over to the phone which is plugged into the mixer.  No problem on a small switching layout like the LAJ or East Rail.  On larger layouts like the Downtown Spur you need to walk back to the phone everything you want to trigger a sound.  There are a number of work arounds for this I’m sure.  Progress is being made.

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Update:  After posting the above blog.  Jeremy F. was kind enough to come up with a solution for un-tethering the iphone via bluetooth.  He writes:

“The solution to untethering your iPhone is a simple little Bluetooth receiver like this:

http://m.gearbest.com/musical-instruments/pp_211703.html

Should give you about 40 feet of range in an open space. I use one in my car for music and podcasts, and it sounds great.”

Thanks Jeremy!