Noah's T-Trak Module

[tossedman]

Hi cteno I don't know my ISP as I only use the Internet on breaks at work, but i've tried Chrome, IE and Firefox and the image didn't work on any.

 

Could it be you have a firewall at work that blocks these images?

[tossedman]

The response headers for the url http://www.tossedman.com/images/BTrainShorty/ttrak6.jpg are the following:

 

Btw. these simplified ttrak frames look nice and the street scene is great! I would keep it as a permanent module. (you can convert between the two spacings by adding the conversion tracks between two ttrak modules and these short pieces could be held up by the two modules with the unijoiners only)

 

KVP, I think we will make this permanent. Add a few more modules to extend to city scene. Already have the conversion tracks as well. Hadn't thought of just adding the conversion tracks between modules. I was thinking about making two conversion track modules. Have to see how lazy I am.

 

Thanks for the idea,

 

Todd

[tossedman]

I had an hour to kill this afternoon so I ran out to the local lumber store and bought 12 feet of poplar 1 X 3. Took it to school and cut enough pieces to make 3 and a half more T-Trak modules.

My school has a wood shop so I had access to this chop saw.

 

 

Here's the final result.

 

 

Since I did this on a whim I didn't have any plywood for the tops. It's at home, I'll take it in next week and cut it on this.

Lot's of other power tools available as well. I'm moving schools next year. Luckily my new school also has a wood shop. This one has a CNC router so if it still works I'm keen to see how I can use it in these projects as well.

 

 

More to come...

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

Edited February 23, 2020 by tossedman

[tossedman]

I also had a few minutes this morning and took Jeff's advice and whipped up a quick set of road lines in Illustrator and printed them off on a laser printer. I forgot the crosswalk though. Here's the result.

 

 

Somewhere on that mess of a bench in the background is the rest of the canopy for that tram stop. Somewhere... I think it's beside the catenary. 

 

 

And another view. I'm liking this module. Zero work to put it together.

 

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd 

Edited February 23, 2020 by tossedman
Uploaded images

[cteno4]

Todd,

 

Great you have that shop access! Chop saws are so nice for that, set the stop and whack away!

 

Hey how is the sawstop contractors saw? I was looking a the big grizzly cabinet hybrid to replace my aging table saw (bearings are going and almost impossible to replace after 20+ years) but love the concept of the sawstop! I've worked with two very careful folks in professional shops that later whacked off a couple of fingers on table saws eventually! Never come close myself, but all it takes is one second of inattention! I learned in a radial arm saw as a kid so I guess I got double the attention as those were called finger saws in shops!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

Great roads! Fun to try out different ideas very quickly!

 

You can do all sorts of other marking, man hole covers, drains, road patches, etc. even use the airbrush tool and make road center stains. Once you have all the basic objects meds it's easy to just cut and paste to try all sorts of ideas! Also paste in the Japanese characters for the road markings and you can auto trace the character info a vector object to place. Also fun as you can also change the color and texture slightly on the side roads that may have been repaved at different times or even built with a different material.

 

Also inkjet printing on rougher drawing paper can give interesting textures. Have to get the stuff that is not too porous or you get fuzzy printing, I found some on sale at our craft store that gave a nice texture feel. Problem with laser printer for final stuff is that the toner turns into a very flat feeling layer and wipes out any texture in the paper with the fusing process. Problem is it does eat up a lot of expensive ink printing streets on the inkjet!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[tossedman]

Todd,

 

Great you have that shop access! Chop saws are so nice for that, set the stop and whack away!

 

Hey how is the sawstop contractors saw? I was looking a the big grizzly cabinet hybrid to replace my aging table saw (bearings are going and almost impossible to replace after 20+ years) but love the concept of the sawstop! I've worked with two very careful folks in professional shops that later whacked off a couple of fingers on table saws eventually! Never come close myself, but all it takes is one second of inattention! I learned in a radial arm saw as a kid so I guess I got double the attention as those were called finger saws in shops!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

 

Great roads! Fun to try out different ideas very quickly!

 

You can do all sorts of other marking, man hole covers, drains, road patches, etc. even use the airbrush tool and make road center stains. Once you have all the basic objects meds it's easy to just cut and paste to try all sorts of ideas! Also paste in the Japanese characters for the road markings and you can auto trace the character info a vector object to place. Also fun as you can also change the color and texture slightly on the side roads that may have been repaved at different times or even built with a different material.

 

Also inkjet printing on rougher drawing paper can give interesting textures. Have to get the stuff that is not too porous or you get fuzzy printing, I found some on sale at our craft store that gave a nice texture feel. Problem with laser printer for final stuff is that the toner turns into a very flat feeling layer and wipes out any texture in the paper with the fusing process. Problem is it does eat up a lot of expensive ink printing streets on the inkjet!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

Jeff that's the SawStop Cabinet saw and it's excellent. Haven't had it save any digits yet, which is a good thing. You need to replace the blade and brake if it comes into contact with a finger or hand. Better than losing parts. Makes me think of a friend's father and his 6 brothers. They used to own and operate the sawmill in Salmo, British Columbia in the 1950s. Met them all at her wedding. Not one of them has 10 fingers!

 

I purchased the roads and pavement scenes from Scalescenes and will mess about and try to see how I can use their textures.

[cteno4]

Ahh whoops did not look close enough! I may splurge on the cabinet version, I'm tired of a contractor saw (mine is a very beefy old one with big vega and incra fences but still not rock solid as a cabinetry), but frankly it would probably do fine, the cabinet version is expensive! Good to hear the kids have not tripped it! The cost of a $100 blade and $100 stop is high but the price of a digit... Well that's priceless...

 

The shop forman I worked with years ago was the safest woodworker I ever worked with. He lost thumb and index finger while working on his house on a table saw outside. Wind lifted his piece of thin plywood and his knee jerk reaction was to push it down and did so on top of the blade hidden below the plywood and the blade when right thru ply and fingers in a split second... Taught me to just let anything go with a jam or jump and just turn the saw off. But again our reactions are always not concious ones!

 

The paper texture can give a nice extra touch to the road feel. But like I said it was a lot of ink and then our inkjet printer died and was replaced with another laser printer...

 

There are also some nice tiling texture patterns out on the web as well. I played with making a big piece and then reducing some to give the whole thing a good feel at n scale. Lots to play with! Even the Japanese painted manhole covers out there, but at n scale they come out 4mm in dia, so no picture!

 

Jeff

[tossedman]

OK, so I've messed around a bit with Photoshop and Illustrator and drew up some more detailed roads for this T-Trak module. Here it is. The grey rectangles are where the buildings and track will sit. Ignore that Stroke panel, this is just a screen shot. It's nothing prototypical. Just need to find some Kanji road marking to write on the road. The road textures are from Scalescenes. I'll try printing it tomorrow and see how it looks on the module.

 

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

Edited February 23, 2020 by tossedman
Uploaded image

[cteno4]

Looks great todd!

 

jeff

[tossedman]

I need a bigger module or smaller buildings. There's absolutely no sidewalk here.

[Mudkip Orange]

I need a bigger module or smaller buildings. There's absolutely no sidewalk here.

 

Just say you're modeling Houston.

[railsquid]

Or, errm, Japan, the country where pavements are optional.

 

 

I also had a few minutes this morning and took Jeff's advice and whipped up a quick set of road lines in Illustrator and printed them off on a laser printer. I forgot the crosswalk though. Here's the result.

 

Somewhere on that mess of a bench in the background is the rest of the canopy for that tram stop. Somewhere... I think it's beside the catenary. 

 

And another view. I'm liking this module. Zero work to put it together.

 

If you make the white lines about half as thick, and move them away from the building side of the roads a bit more, it'd look pretty protoypical.

[tossedman]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try. That's about a thirty second fix.

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

[cteno4]

Yeah it's hard as most road markings are less than 1mm at scale.

 

Jeff

[tossedman]

That's one of the things about using Illustrator, once the line is drawn it's easy to change the width. Here's a slightly revised version.

 

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

Edited February 23, 2020 by tossedman
Uploaded image

[cteno4]

Gotta love it!

 

Jeff

[tossedman]

Rats! Out of yellow and photo magenta ink. Should be here tomorrow with any luck.

[JR 500系]

Oh wow Todd! The illustrator program looks mighty interesting! Now you can create your own roads and pavements!

[cteno4]

Todd is using the big guns of software to do these (he owns it and is good at it). But you can do them pretty easily with simple freeware drawing programs as well! does not take a lot to lay the stuff out! I actually found that when i was prototyping i used a very simple drawing program as it was super fast and easy, Illustrator can do wonderful things but its like a huge swiss army knife and you have to remember lots to sometime do something simple!

 

give it a whack, its a great way to just even prototype out your roads for your layout and try different ideas before you start laying down real roads! also can do final roads this way and lots easier than trying to do ruboffs, pin tape or paint in the middle of your layout! 

 

folks take scale cars with rolling wheels and will run them in some weathering powder and run them down the roads to make the tire mark area or you can use your finger or brush to dot he opposite and do the center oil line. fun and easy to weather digitally or with the real finger digits! and if you screw up, just print out another and try again! seams are the toughest between sheets but they exist in roads so just try to place them where they usually fall. helps to sometimes change the tint of the roads between two sheets like this to make it look like it was paved at a different time.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[tossedman]

InkScape is a free alternative to Illustrator. Lots of tutorials out there if you want to spend the time to learn it. You can draw almost anything with these vector graphics programs. Best thing is, as it draws with lines and not pixels you are able to scale things to any size without pixellation.

 

Gimp is a free alternative to PhotoShop if you need a raster program (i.e. you need to edit pixels and not lines). Again there are lots of online tutorials.

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd 

[Madsing]

I found out that the road signs sold by Kobaru (www.kobaru.com) are actually available for download as a PDF:

 

http://www.kobaru.com/download.html

 

They are extremely realistic. I have not yet been able to figure out how to extract and use the individual signs, though. Maybe it is possible using Illustrator.

 

----------------

 

ps mod note, had to change this to their download page (you can find the link on that page for the pdf) as they specifically ask folks not to link directly to the pdf file as they want folks to see their restrictions on the file's use

 

Available for download all of the material for free. 

However, copyright is owned by Ohara Corporation.
Available we will limit it to the non-profit purpose.
Redistribution, reproduction is prohibited.
Act of direct link to the file is prohibited.
Above, agree to the notes, please use on consent. 
Display the data, at the time of the download, you consent to the notes.

Edited June 16, 2016 by cteno4

[Mudkip Orange]

I have not yet been able to figure out how to extract and use the individual signs, though. Maybe it is possible using Illustrator.

 

These are all pavement markings. The assumption is you'll print them out on your own clear decal paper and then apply to the roadway that way.

[tossedman]

Those are cool. Gotta look into how to use them. You're right Madsing, there's probably a way to edit them. Time for some messing around this evening me thinks.

 

Todd

[cteno4]

Mudkip,

 

usually easiest to just print your whole street like todd is doing! trying to apply a large detail over a rougher surface would be tough, lots of air bubbles and rough spots. decals dont like to be over big areas either, gets exponentially harder as they get bigger to apply them and look good.

 

jeff