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There is a great track cleaning tool but I don't know the manufacturer: it is basically two brass brushes with a set of alligator clips that connect to the track of a layout or the leads from a power pack. You touch the brushes to the locomotive with the power on, which delivers power to the...

Actually, traction equipment is generally capable of much tighter turning radii than conventional model railroad equipment. I'm not sure how tight of curves that subway car models can take, but models of the El and streetcar layouts sometimes have curves as tight as 6-8" radius in HO scale. For...

It can work either way. The "traffic between industries" model is an older idea, while the idea of off-line staging is more in fashion lately. This is partially because contemporary model railroaders seem to be more interested in modeling a smaller geographic area, and most railroad traffic is...

While some may argue the point, another aspect of "Lionel vs. Bachmann" is that Lionel produces toy trains while Bachmann (for the most part) produces model railroad equipment. Lionel three-rail stuff is deliberately toylike, rather than attempting to be a realistic model. Aside from their...

Well, some distress appears to have appeared...one secret to old wood is to put away the brown paint. Old wood isn't brown, it's gray! Start with something like spray model primer and then give it an ink wash (91% alcohol with a couple drops of India ink) to bring out the texture.

Russ Bellinis: That's basically how I spot cars on the 12" curve. Using cars to reach spotted cars in that fashion was also a common practice on electric lines where spurs were occasionally not electrified. The SN used a car ferry (called the Ramon) but generally didn't need transfer cabeese or...

Another modeling trick to keep cars in place is to stick a piece of moderately heavy-gauge fishing line near the beginning of the spur, sticking out high enough where it will engage the axles of cars passing over the tracks. When pulled by a train, the fishing line will bend over and allow the...

12" "curves" is kind of a misnomer. As you can see, there is only one curve on the entire layout, an industrial spur. I use 40 and 50 foot cars (mostly 40 foot) and motive power is a pair of 44-ton GE switchers and an S1, with occasional appearances by an SW7, a GE 70-tonner, and for those...

Unless your sight and motor coordination are already bad, you can still do HO for decades (I know plenty of HO modelers in their 60s and 70s.) Part of the conventional wisdom of O scale being for older eyes is also changing, as modern HO scale equipment (like auto racks and bi-level passenger...

I took advantage of a recent move to photograph my shelf layout. It consists of two modules, 6 feet wide. Scale is HO, minimum radius 12", turnouts are Peco "Setrack" tight-radius turnouts roughly equivalent to a #3 turnout. Yard area: Industrial area: Operation is by wheel report. The...

One thing to consider for off-line staging is the use of a cassette system: basically, a yard-long box with track on the bottom that can be attached to one end of the layout. Rather than use the ol' 0-5-0 switcher to move cars to and from the layout, they can be shuffled by rolling them from the...

Gary S: My current layout is a point-to-point shelf layout consisting of three modules: one 6 foot long 1 foot deep yard, one 6x3 foot L-shaped module with four industries and a three-track loco storage yard/freight house, and one 3x1 foot mini module with a large cannery (two sidings, one for...

First and foremost is a plan. Sounds like you already have that. My personal advice would be that if you have the shelves, start playing with some Snap-Track. Personally I prefer to build in stages, one module at a time, and you might try that in order to start operating quickly and then be able...

I try to make it to the big annual show which happens around 10 miles away, and sometimes to the smaller club show, about the same distance, although next year I may be there as a vendor rather than as a shopper. I doubt I would drive very far away just to go to a train show, but if I happened...

Sounds pretty prototypical to me. My own layout is based on a belt line that mostly handled interchange traffic between different railroads. Operations consisted of breaking down incoming trains and cars from interchange points, bringing them through town and switching various local industries...

It looks like you have an industrial area on the left and a yard in the middle. One thing you might consider is reversing their location: have the yard on the end and the industry in the middle. This will make operation easier: your spurs on the left are all facing-point spurs, which means that...

Perhaps it would help to check Walthers again, and this time look for "Baltimore & Ohio" rather than "Ohio and Baltimore."

13.25 inches sounds like plenty of room, then. In looking at it again, I didn't realize the layout was 15 feet long...lots of nice open space. My own layout is about that big, but is a lot more busy.

kitsune: yes, specifically the switch on the very far left. wayerst: I understand that British nomenclature calls that track arrangement a "loop" but a "reversing loop" (or "balloon track" to real railroaders) is a circular arrangement that allows a train to turn around--what you have there...

Running HO on Code 55 track would probably require changing the wheelsets, or at least turning down the flanges to avoid having problems with the flanges bashing into the ties. Code 70 would look suitable, although even Code 83 would look all right: Atlas Code 83 uses fairly thin ties. If you...