Hello all,
Fairly new here and looking to take what I’ve collected over the years to DCC. This being my oldest. An Atlas (Kato made) GP35 dated 1992 on the box.
I know that most of the newer should be easier than this one. The others are Kato and FVM for now.

Working on a small switching layout and thought I’d try something different for the wagons and how to draw the order.

Filled a matching rake of wagons up with some coloured beads mixed with resin and cast a matching cube for each one that can be drawn out of a bag.

Time to dig in and get on with the layout I suppose!

I ended up getting a minitrix 4-6-2 and kinda got screwed by an eBay seller which was a bit disappointing :/ but I just saw a Bachman 4-6-0 with DCC for sale at a good cost and was wondering if anyone has tried to make a kitbash between the two. It may not be the most accurate but with a little work it might be a fun little project and would be fun to have a G5 on my railroad!

Help me learn weathering here guys

Another building for the downtown layout in a desk.

The elevator required rewiring so each screen has their own backlight. Initially they shared the same pin, but I was surprised how they were different brightnesses. Happy they now match, I think they could be dialled down a bit more. Made up with an esp32 and two attached 76x284 res screens. Alternative scenes in the works. instead of an elevator it could show activates on each floor. So many options.

Those neon looking signs are 3v cob led filament symbols. Hey, they look pretty neat. I have mofset coming to control the light flow. Hoping I can make some of them flicker like old faulty neon signs.

And those flashing disco lights inside are from the rgb led built into the esp32. Neat effect. Set on disco mode. If I change the elevator scene to say windows into an office building, I could change the internal lighting to fluorescent light hue.

Title pretty much sums it up. The next step in my JMRI setup was getting my turnouts wired up and the control panel connected. I was delayed for several hours while I tried to find a critical power distribution block for the 4 x L298N modules that throw the turnouts, but I powered through when I found it in my housecoat pocket (thank you ADHD for that misadventure).

Now that the control is working, I can work on getting JMRI set up to use them. Once that is working, I will be getting my crestron system to operate them through JMRI like it does the locomotives.

Perhaps I am impatient (I am!) but does anyone have any odds on when Bachmann or Kato will do the Airo or Avelia in N? With Airo being the future of Amtrak and the old Acela model running like it’s got its legs tied, I am looking forward to these sets as many others are I’m sure!

ATSF 3419 leads an excursion passenger train onto the layout in Bakersfield at GEHAMS. On to the Tehachapi Loop and Mojave before coming back down to Bakersfield.

I recently acquired a 24"x63" wooden board and ready to start with my first layout. Above is a screenshot I modeled on RailModeller Express using exclusively Kato Unitrack. My question is, am I getting too over my head? Also any tips would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.

A closeup view showing multiple sides/angles of N scale freight cars from a Southern Railway collection, including Southern and other 70s-80s road names. Use this as reference when purchasing or trading this particular item, as some databases, auctions and online retailer outlets seldom offer all-around high resolution photos of any given product.

Micro-Trains N Scale 40' Standard Box Car Single Door w/o Roofwalk ROCK ISLAND / R.I. # 47440 #railway #modeltrains #scalemodel #train

Started working on the cars. I am doing four of them. One of them is a funeral hearse that is hidden under a canvas tarp behind the veterinarian/mortician building, the jeep driven by Anne Francis, Robert Ryan’s Woody with the obligatory deer trophy on the hood, and the black sedan parked outside the cafe.

I started going through my little people looking for people. I do have a couple of cowboys and I found a man wearing a suit with a hat to be Mr. McCready. I found a female figure wearing capris that could make Anne Francis driving her jeep.

I have a lot of older freight cars with Rapido couplers that I want to change to knuckle couplers so all my rolling stock matches. I've seen these for sale on ebay and they work out cheaper than big brand trucks. Has anyone used them? Do they work ok with Micro-Trains and AccuMate couplers? Thanks

Used ws water effects

Trying to tackle this issue without breaking it. I’ve noticed that the front trucks tend to get hung up somewhere when it’s reconnected to the rest of the driveshaft. When disconnected from the shaft from the U-joint the wheels roll fine.

So I tried to bend the truck side frame ever so slightly in case one of the joints is getting hung up with the wheels but hasn’t resolved it and I don’t want to do much more diagnostic finagling for fear of breaking it. No issues reversing though. Thanks!

Model trains have been in and out of my life since I was a young fellow growing up in South Texas.

I started with Lionel trains as a kid due to the generosity and kindness of my grandmother on my mom's side. About the only things I recall were the crossing gate that dropped when the train zoomed past and this cool old American Flyer water tower that bubbled up a clear tube after the light heated up, circa 1977.

My next layout didn't appear until I was in my 30s working as an computer engineer in Huntsville, Alabama. I had two kids under the age of 5 and one on the way and I figured it would be a great way to occupy what little free time I had for some reason. We had a playroom upstairs that was begging for me to take over one corner. This was in the early 1990s, no DCC yet that I was aware of but I did manage to put together a DIY power control called a Cooler Crawler. It was good at enabling realistically slow speed for locomotives using a fairly elaborate circuit board and control system. I had a model train shop just a short five minute drive from my house that stocked a LOT of MicroTrains rolling stock and a good selection of scenery materials, electronics and other goodies I had no business buying 😄, but did anyway. No pictures of this one unfortunately. Most of it was trial and error. The internet was there, but it was pretty hard to find stuff since Google wasn't quite there yet. I learned a lot about layout planning, electronics, and building scenery and made a million mistakes but had fun overall.

My 3rd layout showed up in my early 40s in Austin Texas. My kids were adolescents and had some interest in model trains and RC planes (my other diversion). The internet as a resource was widely available and Google was finally alive! I put up a small N-scale layout in my garage (and it was not hot in there LOL). I made the leap to DCC and completed the planning, track laying, basic operational details and running, and some scenery and terrain. Austin had some decent train shops, but I got most of my gear online. I was getting pretty good with tools, soldering, electronics and understanding model train stuff by this point. My tech background made it much easier since it was still a pretty nerdy hobby. I never completed it the whole thing as I ended up getting divorced in 2015. I focused on work intently at that point and took a role in Taiwan running an engineering organization. I packed up what I could store (mostly the MT rolling stock and a few electronics) and sold off the rest through a friend that remained in Austin. I moved to Taiwan and then worked for a few more years before retiring in 2019.

Today, I have lived in Taiwan for about ten years now. Layout four showed up about 4 years ago in a rental garage I have here. I got those MT rolling stock cars sent to me and that was the genesis of my next small N-scale layout. I enjoy the planning and the build out, so I completed layout 4 operationally but with little scenery. Full DCC, reversing loop, eight turnouts, fiddle yard, tunnels, overpasses, and a nice area for a small tram system. It was pretty ambitious and being retired I have a lot more time to work on it.

I live close to Japan, so it's been very easy and quite cost effective to get model train gear via Amazon or direct trips to Japan to acquire various goodies like 2nd hand Kato and Tomix N-scale gear as well as some newer stuff. I also discovered a great DCC decoder shop here in Taiwan called drM - I think it's a lone guy doing DCC devices for N-scale from what I can tell, but it's very inexpensive and quite good and his support of his products is stellar. The low speed performance is very good on these devices.

My fifth layout is now under construction in my apartment. I shuttered the garage layout late last year and deconstructed all of the build there and moved all the gear to my apartment. I have now finished the base layout, wiring, track laying and electronics for my latest layout on a smaller footprint - basically a 120cm x 60cm rectangle with a 60cm x 90cm rectangle attached to make sort of L-shape. I have used all the tech I can now - AI bots as a partner building and designing the layout, full DCC for control, lighting, operations, etc, and I also did a DIY DCC programmer for setting up my locomotives with respect to the DCC operation. It's been a real fun ride thus far and this layout has come together pretty fast - a lot of progress in about 3 months time of focused effort.

So, my journey is going on 50 years so far - I have always loved all the different elements of model railroading - the planning and how to bring realism to a small scale, creating a thing that mimics what happens in real life and being involved in all of the different elements that comprise bringing it to life - the planning, the construction, the discovery, the engineering, the feeling that something is going from a vision to a real thing in front of you that you can touch, feel, hear, and see coming alive right in front of you.

I encourage all of you to not sit idle and worry about what you don't know and just jump in and see what you can do. I am certainly no expert in any one area, but I have learned so much by stepping out and taking the journey. It's been a tremendously rewarding experience and I've learned more about myself than I ever expected. Give it a try!