SILVER RAILS

I'm not sure just how much of the younger generation is interested in model railroading, but for those of us of a certain age, it was all part of growing up. For many in the US, it was a large scale Lionel train running in circles under a tree during Christmas. In Europe it was more likely to be HO. For others, it was something that was passed down from their fathers. In my case, it was something given to me by my father during the holidays. He had bought a Märklin HO set in Germany at the end of WWII and in the mid-1950s, that is what he bought for me.

As with many things, there were differences between my set and my father's that made them incompatible. For one thing, my set has a set of small spikes sticking up through the center of each section of track. This was part of the power system and a long, flat shoe on the underside of the locomotive would pick up the electricity from that point. My father's had an actual third rail and his locomotive had small pickups facing forward and aft to draw power. These would catch on my track, so while I could use his cars and track, I could not use his locomotive. Other differences were that mine was a modern electric locomotive while his was a steam version. As you can imagine, that set got a huge workout and a few buildings were purchased over the years. Eventually it was used to near destruction though the sets still reside in a box in the attic.

When girls and cars started making a major impression, trains were all but forgotten until the mid 1980s and, for whatever reason, I decided to get back into the hobby. This time, N-Scale drew my attention and since the equipment was pretty inexpensive, in no time I had quite a nice layout that would be set up and run for a while before being broken down and set up again a bit later. This sort of thing went on for several years and while I never got to a permanent layout, I still kept adding track, locos and rolling stock in preparation for the big layout. I even bought a hollow core door when home on leave one time and when I'd return (mostly during Christmas), I designed and started building a layout on it. It never progressed beyone the very early stages and for the next few decades, nothing was done except to sell off much of the rolling stock when I discovered e-bay in the late 1990s. Of course, that was back when the place was just starting and was seller friendly, unlike now. It also helped that postage rates were low and I could send a small parcel by priority for around $3 anywhere in the US.

Move the hands of time forward to late last year. I was surfing the internet and saw something called the 'Moving Bus System' by Tomix. No one seems to have heard of it so I bought one from a place in Japan to see what it was like. I was hooked again. This led to another set and several additional sections of road. To go along with it, I invested in a small oval for a tram and a tram to run on it. All of this fit on a 2x4 foot section of plywood. It also encouraged me to buy some buildings for it, and slowly things grew.

Then I thought 'why not get trains to go along with it'. I had decided to stick with Japanese passenger trains as there were a lot of different ones available. I bought a large elevated oval and elevated station. While waiting for that, I pulled the old door out of the attic and stripped off the foam sheet insulation I'd glued to it. It was a mess but I got it all off. I then installed some legs from a local DIY store and while not rock solid, it is firm enough. Fiddling with what I had on the door, I eagerly awaited the station and the elevated oval. In order to have something to run on it, I ordered a Ginza Line six car set from a place that had it on sale.

In the meantime, the station set and oval arrived. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be too wide for my 30x80 inch door, so I put a sheet of 4x8 foot plywood over it. It fit, but not by all that much! I then had enough room to use all of my plastic road and even enough to make it two lanes. The tram also had room to sprawl and over the months I added more and more buildings to the layout. I was also fed up with looking at wood so went to a local train shop and bought a 4x8 foot section of 'grass' padding. This is a felt material so, unlike earlier 'grass' mat, there were not bits of fake grass to flake off. Of course, this required everything to be removed, but once that was done and the mat put down, things were placed back on, though this time a bit differently from the first. The nice thing about sectional track is the ability to change things as one wishes.

So this is what it looked like at that time. While placing the mat, a bit more plastic road arrived and I was able to expand that area a bit more. In that shipment were also a couple of more buildings. One thing about ordering from Japan is not only is it generally less expensive that what I'd pay in the US, even with shipping added, but often there is a considerable wait time unless one wants to order things via express mail. For high ticket items, such as trains and things too large for SAL (like the station kit and the elevated oval kit), one must go Express. This gets the package to me in a week or less rather than 3-5 weeks like SAL.

In the meantime, I had be buying trains and had enough to put on three tracks. So I purchased another smaller oval that was not elevated. This set was with track that was on concrete ties and included 317mm diameter curves with a few 541 mm curve sections that provided an indented area in the oval in which one could put a small station platform. Well, I already had a station so set up the smaller oval. This caused me to do more moving of bits and pieces. Basically, I set up the tram section to run inside the oval and this caused me to reduce the size of the tram layout so it would fit. The same thing happened to the bus route as its current footprint was too wide. The downside of dreaming up layouts is that you are often forced to re-evaluate what goes where and this often means unused sections of track. I had over-purchased various radii of curved sections of tram track but it did mean that I had lots to choose from when setting things up.

Fortunately, I had sufficient power supplies to run all this stuff as I needed one for each of the three train lines and one for the tram. In the mean time, things kept growing. I got in a couple of extra sections of elevated track section so I could stretch out the elevated oval to closer to the edge of the train board. I also started building trees. For this I used Woodland Scenics plastic tree armatures and their fiber material for the 'foliage'. The nice thing about using fiber is that it doesn't have to be glued in place, sticking well to the spikes of the armatures. It also means that one can build up a lot of trees in a pretty short time with no mess from any glue. Downside is that the trees look a bit 'soft', though in this scale, it doesn't really jump out at you.

During this time, I also got in more standard track as I wanted the alternate line to run around the outside of the elevated sections. Unfortunately, my inability to read Japanese meant that I got track with wood ties instead of concrete and while it looks a bit odd, once things are finalized (if that ever really happens), there won't be the mish-mash of intermixed track types. One of the reasons for this was also that I miscalculated how many pieces of the 541mm curved sections I would need, only getting half as many. Fortunately, I was able to do two of the corners in  541mm and the other two in 317mm . You can see the longer curves on the lower right and the shorter ones in the lower left.

Well, this left a rather large open area and I decided to change things around again, even if it would only be temporary while waiting for the additional track. The nice thing about having all the spare track is the ability to make changes without any worries about needing to order more. So, sections were uprooted and a new design was made to incorporate much of the open space. I also decided to lay the extra standard track that I had to see how it might be able to be worked into the existing layout. Of course, aside from the elevated sections, and the large outer oval, nothing else is really carved in stone. I'd like to extend the bus lines a bit, but that might entail moving the inner rail line and tram line.

It has been a lot of fun re-entering a long forgotten hobby. It has not diminished my other hobbies either as I still am able to keep the web site going and the slot cars are still being exercised properly. We will just have to see how things go.

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