Temporary Layout - questions from newbie

[locidm]

I started my first temporary layout couple years ago and have since acquired a few train sets, buildings, and tracks. The layout measures roughly 6 feet x 3 feet, and basically sits on 6 Ikea LACK tables and covered with a piece of green felt cloth, with the wiring sent to the nearest crack between the tables (no other base plates). 

 

As I'm moving forward with the layout, there a few things I'd like to do, and would like to get input on:

 

1. How do you guys come up with a background for large layouts? I was looking up panoramic posters available for purchase online and they are ridiculously expensive, not to mention it's tough to find a background I like.

 

2. Since I've got no base board I can drill into, I'd like to build small tree/vegetation clusters that I can easily remove when needed. I see that most trees available for cheap does not come with a base. What materials (easy to work with ones) do you use to create small patches of vegetation? 

 

3. I'm thinking about getting a Kato Sound Box, but does it mean it'll only work on part of my layout since I'll have 2 controllers?

 

[cteno4]

Locidm,

 

Hey great! this is a great way to start and just keep on going! 

 

for the backdrop photos there were a few threads here on the forum with some picts on the web that can get adapted into your own background prints. you can either try to seam pictures together out of your printer on some backing material (foamcore etc) or take it to kinkos to res up and print on one of their inkjet printers that prints off a roll so you can print long! does cost a bit but getting cheaper.

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/1105-japanese-backdrop-scenes/?hl=%2Bbackdrop+%2Bphoto+%2Bprint&do=findComment&comment=12568

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/1950-sumida-crossing/page-6?do=findComment&comment=31168

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/7848-backscenes/?hl=%2Bbackdrop+%2Bprint#entry86609

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/6781-backscenes/?hl=%2Bbackdrop+%2Bprint&do=findComment&comment=75872

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/666-urban-backscenes/?hl=%2Bbackdrop+%2Bprint&do=findComment&comment=5626

 

for doing trees and scenery bits on a table like this you can do great little scenery islands that are just small strips or blobs of scenery to place anywhere. easiest to just use 020 styrene for the base material. its cheap at the hobby shop and stays pretty flat. you can cut them into organic shapes with some heavier scissors. Spray paint it brown and then just do standard scenery techniques on top of them, including glueing trees down on them. heres a great article by Barry Lovell about making little scenery islands like this or larger bases you can plop a building on and it has the surrounding scenery around the building.

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/666-urban-backscenes/?hl=%2Bbackdrop+%2Bprint&do=findComment&comment=5626

 

the cool thing about this also is you can learn scenery techniques this way and play with them to get it to how you like it with very little investment in time and materials. they become great little samples of different techniques for you to have around when considering doing more or anything permanent or comparing techniques! super fun and easy to do and you can move them around and reuse on a permanent layout later by just gluing them down and faring the scenery into them.

 

have fun, looking really great!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[railsquid]

Depending on how much storage space you've got, you could also use styrene blocks for some more vertically ambitions scenery (hills and stuff). It's easy enough to work with - I carve it with a sharp knife - and provided you glue everything in place quite robust. Though I have a fixed baseboard, most of my scenery isn't actually stuck to it, and for me it's much easier to remove blocks of scenery to work on than bend over the layout.

[locidm]

Thanks guys for the advices!

I think I found from on of the links provided a suitable background that gels with my layout which is part city part rural. Now to see if I can print it! This is the backdrop I am thinking:

I have never worked with styrene before but can give it a try. I try avoiding painting anything. Have kids at home and don't want them breathing in that stuff. And I don't have an area I can set up well ventilation. How do you guys deal with paint? I have some enamel paint in tiny jars would those work? Other than paint and styrene, sounds like I will need some glue, foliage, and obviously trees. If you have specific products that you recommend please let me know. There are so much out there that it's hard to differentiate what's easy to work with. I live in California US by the way.

Regarding mountain scene I'm not quite ready for that yet but maybe one day! I've done reading and YouTube on this topic. While it doesn't seem too hard, it's hard to find a big enough block of time for me to do stuff like it, especially with young children around. I only have a few minutes here and there throughout the day to do hobby stuff. Just putting together those tomytec buildings may take me a few sessions to complete! Ridiculous I know. :)


Thanks again for the help. I've learned so much from this forum already!

Edited September 29, 2016 by locidm

[kvp]

For paints, you might want to try Vallejo acrylics. They are kid friendly water based plastic paints, that could be applied with a paintbrush. One of their main intended uses are painting plastic figurines. The resulting painted surface (once completly dry) is also water resistant.

 

For an easy to use base material i (and Tomix) would suggest foamcore boards. These are foam boards with paper on two sides. Easy to plant trees into (just poke a hole and push/glue them in) and the thickness of some boards are good matches for Tomix or Kato street tracks. Actually Tomix sells some pre painted gray sheets, but getting the the standard white and painting it gray or green is easy and much cheaper. Since the top is paper, you can glue most things on top, like road markings or sponge based bushes. They can be cut with a hobby knife.

Edited September 29, 2016 by kvp

[railsquid]

Yes, artist-style (not sure what the term is, come in toothpaste-tube sized tubes) acrylic paints are fine, you wouldn't want to ingest them but no solvents or thinners involved, can be diluted with water, apply to various forms of styrene and foam board very well.

[locidm]

Looks like I'll need to give up using my enamel paint and buy new acrylic ones! 

 

I already have some foam boards around. I'll mess with them to see if it'll do what I want it to do. 

 

Next up, eBay trees! I'm eyeing these, any experience with these?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/40-Multi-Scale-Model-Trees-Train-Road-Railway-Architecture-Scenery-HO-N-Z-Layout-/321855849568?hash=item4af01a8460:g:YrQAAOSwyQtV6rC7

[cteno4]

Not used that seller, but there are a scad if Chinese tree sellers at very inexpensive prices. These look to be plastic admixtures. Many also use wire armatures that are taped and painted so you can easily form them into more unique shapes as well as prune them (you can prune the plastic ones just harder to then get shaped).

 

Sunbeam just got some

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/11973-new-japanese-n-gauge-exhibition-layout/?p=143395

 

I've gotten the wire trees from several seller. Not fantastic bit decent, especially for the price! I tried a couple of nicer individual trees in the past from Chinese sellers and they were crap and came mangled to boot.

 

You can make nice trees yourself, just takes a little time. They are easy to do, I've found using stripped lamp wire and untwisting and retwisting at various points to make smaller and smaller branches pretty simple and makes very realistic branches. The paint with thick craft paint to form bark texture. Various techniques then to do the leafing depending on the tree and how fancy you want to get. Loads and loads of videos on YouTube to do these. Also some natural plant materials you can use for your trunks and branches as well. Something fun to play with and it's mainly time investment. But if you want em now these inexpensive Chinese trees are fast ways to do it.

 

Also Mrc sells ho/o scale branches that have like 4-6 branches flocked and tied into a main branch. These can work well for smaller n trees and are cheap at the hobby shop to hack up fast.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[locidm]

I did see that thread from sunbeam but for some reason not able to find items being sold by the mentioned everestmodel. Would have bought from them if I did. :P thank you.

[locidm]

I just purchase Kato's Power Pack Hyper DX from Japan. Does anyone know if I'll need any power transformer for use with USA outlet?

 

Specifications for the external power supply that comes with the unit says "Input AC100-240V 47-63Hz (For use with Japanese AC100V wall outlets only)". Reading the numbers from the specs it seems USA's 120V 60Hz outlets would be fine, but the second part of the specs about for use with Japanese outlet only has me concerned a little bit. 

[cteno4]

is the Input AC100-240V 47-63Hz on the wall wart you plug into the wall? if so then it should be fine. it sounds like they are just covering their butt with the other bit about ac100v.

 

jeff

[locidm]

Thanks for confirming!

 

Is styrene the same as styrofoam? I can't find styrene in my local Michaels but was able to find styrofoam blocks. They use it for floral arrangements.

[locidm]

Found some good summary info that answered my question.

 

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=228336

 

I still need to find a place nearby that sells styrene or the pink/blue studd

[cteno4]

The hard stryene sheet is like model plastic. You can find it at hobby shops in packs at like 8"x10" in thicknesses like 0.02" and 0.04" which are nice and thin to make little scenery bases. If you got to a larger plastics supplier or sign stock you can get a full 4'x8' sheet of 0.02" styrene sheet for less than $10, about 1/10 the cost of small sheets from the hobby shop.

 

The extruded stryene foam sheets are great to make scenery bits that need some bulk. Carves great with a serrated knife or a hot knife, rasp, corse grit sand paper, etc. it's a bit messy but works great. Keep the vacuum handy! Avoid the beaded foam board, it does not shape well and is even more of a mess than the extruded foam! Some areas have building codes that don't use the extruded stryene foam insulation boards so the big box stores may not stock it, but the next county may! Also around here when the big box stores didn't stock it the builders/contractor stores did.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[locidm]

Thank you Jeff for your response. Great info. Sorry for the most basic questions! I'm still trying to figure out what i don't know!

 

I did print out the background today. Brings more life to my layout but the building sizes are too big and I didn't do a good job gluing onto foam board. Lessons learned!

 

Also installed the hyper d Kato controller today. Finally I am able to run trains on my layout as it was designed to do. It is much more intuitive now plus I can finally run two trains at the same time! Couldn't do that before because my old setup had a regular controller controlling sections from both the inside and the outside loop.

[cteno4]

Locidm,

 

No worries, questions of any sort are good! We try to be a friendly place and no question is s dumb one! Everyone has to start somewhere!

 

Also look on YouTube there are a lot of videos on carving up the extruded polystyrene foam in many ways when you want to go 3d. You can cut up construction paper for streets, or even make them up with road markings in a simple drawing program on the computer and print them out and tape them down. It's a great way to experiment with road ideas w/ little investment of time and money and easy to experiment. If you want to think about a hillside or rise, just crumple up some newspaper and tape it down in place to get an idea of what it would look like and how you might want to shape it. Even buildings you can mock up with some cardboard or printed out PDF paper building (lots of the free out there, contact me if you want some) to see what you might want in a cityscape, etc.

 

The layout is looking great! This is a superb way to get started and just start trying ideas simply at first and then get more and more complex as you learn. It's fun as you can play all the way and if you do goof or get into a corner it's not much lost getting back on track. Really lets you learn what you like the most about doing a layout and what you don't so you can focus your big efforts with maximum payoff.

 

Keep on playing! Looking forward to where your layout goes!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[locidm]

Had to take down my temporary layout but I'm home a lot these days and for the first time ever I installed interior lighting on my train set!

 

Hopefully I will install lighting to stations next. :)

 

[locidm]

Got the guest room back and will be setting up my temp layout again soon! I've got a new track plan to accommodate the longer trains that I've now got.

 

I rearranged the room yesterday to make room for the layout. This morning I put the green cloth on the layout table and put together the yard.

 

Waiting on double track viaduct to arrive. I've got new buildings and train stations too. Will need to order more platforms.

 

Not sure if the space I have available can really fit the double track viaducts, will need to either cut down some of the support at a few pillars or at a minimum place the support pillars away from where one would normally put them at the track joints. Is it too ambitious to place two double loop and a yard in a 6x3 feet (2000 x 1000mm) area?

[nah00]

Fitting two double loops in that space may be really tight. A double and a single *should* fit in there with space for a yard but you'll have to do some work on the geometry of the yard to get sidings of useful length. Of course this also depends on the length of train you intend to use the yard for. 

[locidm]

It will be very tight but I still wanna see if it'll work. Lol. By "longer trains", I just mean 6-8 cars compared to the 4-5 that I had previously. 

 

Waiting for viaduct tracks in the mail. Meanwhile, the lower level tracks are mostly completed. The layout is modified from plan 25 of the recent Tomix/Kato layout plan book:

 

Edited March 2, 2017 by locidm

[cogenix]

Do you have stations? If so you might need to make some space for the increased number of cars. Maybe a longer viaduct also?

[locidm]

Yes I will have three stations if all things work out. One viaduct station, and two overhead stations. One of the overhead station will be at the yard, and the other will be where the siding is. I haven't decided whether to put the platform between the two main line or between the outer mainline and the siding. It will hinge on how the viaducts will be placed and how much room I will have at the current siding.

 

I do need to buy at least one more set of platform though. Unfortunately the viaduct station will be shorter than I had it before, but I have to sacrifice something to make it work.

Edited March 6, 2017 by locidm

[locidm]

While I'm waiting for tracks, finally got in some train running time.

 

 

[velotrain]

Running?  I'm seeing trains staged at bumpers.

[locidm]

Lol they ran alright. But meanwhile only the yard/station is suitable for photos.