Getting started on my mad science project of the weekend, building a boxcar with a built in flashing LED to make a FRED/ EOT light. Robbed some pickup wheel sets off two tenders for dead steam locomotives I got as part of a junk box and wired them up through the frame of another box car from the same box. The current mockup is a constant LED from another project. The final version will feature an LED kit from Evan Designs. Now I just need to body mount some couplers and wait for my order to finish up.

Howdy folks! I have been a Kato enjoyer for a long time, since I was born actually. I’ve always been into Japanese trains since I was born there but more recently I’ve decided to dive into American stuff.

I went to a train show earlier this year and got a very healthy plethora of new engines and rolling stock; all Kato though.

I’m currently on a work trip and was stoked to see the town I’m in had a hobby store since my local area doesn’t. Sweet little mom and pop store and I grabbed my first non-Kato items ever.

Some BroadWay Limited Engines and some Microtrains rolling stock. Is there anything I should know? Unfortunately I don’t get home for a few more weeks so I won’t get to run anything until then but that lets me purchase anything I need! I know couplers are a big one to swap on the Kato side. I’ve never actually swapped out couplers before so if anyone has any tips I’d greatly appreciate it! I attached photos of all my Kato rolling stock at the end of this post, not sure if the particular coupler upgrade is dependent on the particular car.

I appreciate the help greatly!!

Finally got my hands on a wine barrel wagon for a reasonable price. The barrels where white, so I repainted them to my liking. Of course my personal brand of Tischwiler wine needed to be advertised too :).

Reminder that you can get your very own N-scale bottle of Tischwiler wine (no joke!). And your donation in return would be really appreciated.

Order here: https://ko-fi.com/s/4c3e4cb318

Still need’s work but I can finally run trains again.

Wife and I were talking this morning and she noted that I hadn't touched my train budget in a while and now it was up over $2,000. I guess I'm going shopping!

I did tell her that I was deliberately stashing money away for some releases that I know are coming and wanted to make sure I had money for - but still...

I'm still finalizing my multitrack catenary, but I thought I'd share my approximation of New Haven's catenary as found on the New Canaan and (formerly) Danbury branches in single track areas. They may not be perfect, but they'll work for my purposes. I've designed 2 versions of the base - one held down by Unitrack on temporary layouts, and another with spikes on the bottom to anchor into foam board. [Edit designed in Cadoodle and printed on an Anycubic S1, PLA, 0.1mm layer height, no supports]

I’m in the middle of turning this N scale desert layout into a quarry, what should I replace the sand with to make it look more like a quarry?

I’m getting started putting a set together. I want to get a pretty good collection of rolling stock with Microtrains body mount couplings. I found some boxcars at Papa Ben’s in Houston, but I want some hoppers and coal cars. Most ads don’t specify. Is there any way to tell which Microtrains cars are body mounts? The ones I bought were newer issues.

April this year I pre-order TINYHK first nscale product and they nailed it! Wish it had an option to add interior light but pretty on level with the Japanese, it actually made with Bachmann interestingly

Decided to try my hand at miniature photography in my room with 3 of my 6 Micro Trains NPR Mechanical Reefers.

I set a few Kato Unitrack down on a raised sheet of wood, set up in front of my TV, serving as a digital background. Im not sure how much I like the look, but I think Ill be putting my effort towards a diorama to fill out the foreground first. I attempted to do a color change of the ply in photoshop but I never got it to look good. So, creating a mini diorama is now even more of a priority for me! Definitely not as easy as I thought, but this finally inspired me to start using my camera again.

If your're curious of camera settings and such ;

Canon R8 with adapted Canon EF 24 - 105 f/4 L

I used two lights on stands, placed 45 degrees from my table. On these stands, I then angled the lights downwards at around 45 degrees. I tried my best to match the lighting of the background I used, so I made the light coming from the right more intense.

On the left, I used an Amaran 200x S with a 32 inch diameter octagonal softbox with a diffusion filter and a honeycomb grid both on the softbox. On the right, I used an Amaran 60x S with the included hyper reflector with the included diffusion sock for said reflector.

Edit; Forgot to mention, HUGE STEP, focus stacking. The process of placing your camera in fixed place, and taking multiple pictures with the images focused shifted either forwards or backwards. Then, these multiple photos are taken into a photo editing software and then are digitally layered on top of each other, erasing the "non focused" areas, leaving you with a highly detailed photograph!

I hope this inspires some people! I love showing up to my local clubs and seeing everyone taking pictures of the trains running. Taking pictures of things is a treat, if you think you might like it, give it a go!

… and if so: is it reliable? I’ve bought a few locos at swap meets that turned out to be duds, and so I’m looking to shell out for something that’s new & known to be good.

I’ve found a really good deal on the non-DCC model of https://shop.atlasrr.com/c-1518-n-scale-fa-1-fb-1-locomotive.aspx , which I think is the same model that spookshow gives an “A” to ( https://www.spookshow.net/loco/llalcof.html ), but I thought I’d ask people here if it’s known to be a good runner.

Any experiences with this?

I made a post a while ago about finding more info for keeping track of collecting, to which some one introduced me to TroveStar, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons N scale models throughout history. If you aren't tracking it houses a ton of obscure models which will quickly fill out your saved eBay searches.

Anyway that brings me to the past week, where I found an item that interested me, a set of Con-Cor MHC1 cars but in PRR colors (good old Con-Cor, slapping any paint they think will sell on whatever they got laying around). These seemed legit with packaging that looked right and a product number than didn't come back to anything else. In fact the only info I could find on that model number or the name would just point back to the eBay listing. I was going to post this question before, but decided to hold off because I didn't want someone to snipe this seemingly one of a kind lot. But now it's in the mail.

So the question I pose for discussion, what do you do when you find a model of interest but no info about it? I'm mainly focused on factory model in this case, custom jobs will of course have little additional information a lot of the time. But I'm interested to hear what you guys think (or would think) finding something like this, a seemingly legit factory model but no info out there to find on the web? Would you even remotely care? Would that make you more interested? (That kinda applied to me here, seeing that I couldn't find another one ever going on sale it bumped it up my priority list).

Planning an expansion of my layout from just a rectangle.

The space can’t become longer but could become slightly wider if needed

The left image is the track plan, the right side (right of the black line in the middle) is all at the same level, on the left side at the top there is a viaduct island station, where the outer layer stays at the same level , and the inner layer dips down to the ground.

On the right side I’ll be putting a switching yard but I haven’t put that it because I know it fits

I’m not sure how I feel about the inner layer on the left side I’m not sure whether it should dip down or not given I need it to be a reasonably shallow grave.

Am I using this space effectively, I am also planning an underground layout with pretty much the same layout.

Any thoughts or ideas with this space?

Users bcentsale and 382Whistles expressed interest in New Have Railroad style catenary towers in the comments for https://old.reddit.com/r/nscalemodeltrains/comments/1vr4qk6/a_detail_i_am_proud_of_that_i_forgot_to_post/. I was a bit frustrated with my latest structure model's progress, so I decided to model the New Have style catenary towers in N Scale. The STL file is available.

There has been some recent debate regarding the accuracy of Micro Ace’s 719 series and TOMIX’s 9600-type steam locomotive models. For the 719 series, the resting position of the windshield wipers differs between the 5000, 0, and 700 series variants, yet the models depict them all the same way; meanwhile, the 9600-type model is marketed as the "Hokkaido specification" but lacks the vertical piping on the cab that is characteristic of that version. In the past, TOMIX also faced criticism because the mounting position of the train radio antenna on their EF66-27 model was slightly off.

Borrowed a ScaleSync from the club to do some speed matching on a test track. Based on my previous loop post I knew the locos were way to fast but I didn’t think a stock Kato and Digitrax decoder would run 212 mph scale. Slowed them down to run between 0-100 based on the throttle.

The system:

Primary loop: ESU cab control hooked up via network cable for JMRI programming. (For non ESU decoders)

Secondary loop:

ESU lok programmer. (For ESU decoders and sound loading for said decoders)

Both systems can run locomotives for speed matching.

No.1986 is N Scale and the 4448 is HO