Test Track II (N scale)

Before starting a project as big like the coffee table model railroad, I want to make sure certain things will work. Therefore I am now making a little test lay-out that allows me to test all the things that could potentially block creating the coffee table track.

It's also my introduction to digital railroading so it is also good to try it out like this first in that respect.

Before anything can be tested, three phases have to be completed:

1. Construction of the lay-out
   
2. Wiring the lay-out
   
3. Writing software to operate the lay-out
   

This blog post describes phase one: Constructing the lay-out.

First the plans. It will be a two level lay-out. This is the bottom part:

A simple reverse loop which is entered after driving down the spiral through the inside track.

This is the top part:

When arriving at the top level the train can run through the loop and go down again or it can enter the station where the loco can be driven to the front of the train again if necessary.

I used the spiral parts that I created before. For tips on how to create one, look at this blog post.

NOTE: The reverse loops must be isolated from the rest of the track otherwise you will get an electric short cut!

I got a 100 x 54 cm piece of wood. Well, MDF. Mark the holes for the threaded rods for the spiral.

After the holes are drilled we can start.

Laying out track is not very hard. Here I'm up to the first level in the spiral. I put a little piece of double sided tape underneath the track in some places so the track lies nice and sturdy.

Here the spiral is finished.

I cut another piece of MDF. This one had a size of 54 x 50 cm. I attached it with threaded rods as well.

Then bridge the gap between the spiral and the top level and lay out the rest of the track.

Spiral view.

Top view. Ready for wiring.

New track lay-out

To be able to use the spirals the trains need to drive upwards with the smallest slope possible. This is the outside track. This meant the spirals had to be on the other side which is changed in this lay-out.

Test spiral

Mainly to see how this is really done but also to test what some "authorities" in model railroad building are saying, I build a small test spiral this weekend. Before anything else I must say that this spiral will only be used by trains consisting of max. 5 cars including a locomotive.

It's N-scale. The curves are R1 and R2 and there are 5 cm's between levels. The outer track has an incline of 3.8% and the inner track has an incline of about 4.5% (which is why we drive up along the outside as that has the smallest incline).
The spiral was made from 3 mm thick MDF panels. This is really thin but surprisingly stiff when fixed properly!

During this build, a few things went wrong which is good so I won't do it again when building the real thing later.

Start with cutting the biggest pieces of wood. I was going to try several kinds of wood but the 3 mm MDF worked so well that I didn't bother trying the others. The white panel is 18 mm thick melamine crap wood.

I made a giant compass to draw all the circles required to build the spiral on the white panel. After you draw the circles, mark the points where a rod is going to be.

To fix the different levels, get some threaded steel rod. Make sure it's nice and smooth and clean thread. I had to go back to buy new ones. After I cut the first ones up I noticed how crap they were and that you couldn't put a nut on it without using heavy machinery...

Mount all the cut rods firmly.

Because the edge of a panel is in the middle of a circle you can't position the compass properly. I made a little helper out of scrap wood.

Place one panel tight against the helper and draw your circles on the panel. As the spiral goes up, the diameter of the circles should be a little bit bigger than what you drew on the white panel. The formula for this is the Pythagoras formula: A^2 = B^2 + C^2. So if the diameter of the outside of the spiral track is 50 and it goes up 2.5 cm (!!! HALF of the spiral distance of 5 cm in my case !!!) you should use a diameter of sqr(2500 + 6.25) = 50.1. This may look too little to bother with but it works a lot nicer when things fall in place well instead of forced.

If all goes well you end up with a lot of circles. Inside and outside of the spiral and circles for rod positions.

When that's done, cut out the half tracks.

Now the best part can begin: Building the actual spiral. Fix the spiral track on the rods between 2 nuts. I had to fix the bottom with a nail because it wouldn't go down. Possibly due to a miscalculation (I used the whole 5 cm instead of 2.5 cm when calculating new diameters...)

Build the spiral further.

spiral tracks may have to be fixed to each other to make them even.

Do bit by bit, including the track because you can't really reach well.

And when it's finished, test it by running a train up and down. Here's my little NS 1100 pulling a few cars without any trouble.

Here my NS 1200 pulls 3 cars up the spiral without much effort.

I have to say though, my little glasskasten has a lot more trouble going up the hill.

First table design

I'm looking for a place where I can see and enjoy my model trains but I don't want it to take up part of or a whole room. I want it to be a static display but also dynamic. It has to be technically challenging in lots of different ways. It should be fun and functional and also it should look good because my girlfriend is not into model trains so it may not be in her way ;-)

So I'm going to make a coffee table model railroad.

I tried this before but it was a shonky quick and dirty job so now we're going to prepare better starting with designing the track layout and now the table itself.

This is the first attempt in designing the table. It will also get a glass top. The cylinders will hold the rail coil on the outside and the inside will not be covered by glass, leaving an opening for i.e. a plant. It has yet to be decided what kind of "feet" the table will get...

The design tool used by the way, is Sketchup from Google.

A new and improved track lay-out

I spent a few weeks now thinking of how to improve my track lay-out. I wasn't quite happy with it, especially not with the overpass above the corner stations. As you may know, it will have to fit inside a (big) coffee table of 155x80cm. This is the result of a LOT of hard thinking:


The coils go up 3.5 levels so including the bottom level it spans 4.5 levels. At level 0 I'll put the 2 corner stations "A" and "B". They will deal with passenger trains only.

On level 2 there will be 2 stations, "E" and "C". Station E only deals with cargo. Station C deals with both cargo and passengers but the passenger trains will be 2 old ones ("glaskasten" on C5 and BR 144.5 on C6). Only small trains can be used but that's OK.

At the top level there is a big station just for passengers.

This looks rather challenging, doesn't it? ;-)

N-scale test track

In preparation of making my coffee table model railroad I needed a small test track so that I could test and repair loco's and see how certain things like coupling/decoupling works in practice.

I made a little trackplan first.

Put on the tracks



To fix the tracks onto the wood you need tiny little nails. Be carefull when hammering them in. To get them in all the way I used a big screwdriver, positioned it on the (flat) head of a nail and gave it a few whacks.