This is my model railroad layout.
It’s built in O scale, but it features narrow gauge trains running on HO scale tracks, so
actually, this is truly an On30 scale layout.
I’ve had model trains since I was a kid, but switched to different scales and different
layouts throughout the years, and this layout is my most recent.
So to understand how I got to this point we must travel back to the first layout I ever
built.
In 2015 I set out to build the Cratre Valley N Scale Railroad, yes the misspelling of the
word “crater” was intentional.
I started with a table base I put together measuring 3 by 5 feet and started adding insulation
foam on top of that.
The foam is meant to make it easier for me to carve landscapes and add foliage.
Unfortunately the only foam I could get my hands on had this aluminum backing on it,
and when you remove the aluminum, the foam wants to curl up, so the board had to be fastened
down in several areas.
I started puting together the shape of the landscape, leaving the track layout as an
afterthought and believe me, I never made that mistake again.
I wanted to really test the limits of what my N scale trains could do, so made sure to
put plenty of varying grade elevations and tight curves.
The result was a twisting birds nest of poorly laid out track that resulted in several derails
and inadequate power connection, not to mention the trains had difficulty getting up the steep
hills.
As a kid I always owned HO scale trains, but the smaller N scale size allowed for putting
a bigger landscape within a smaller footprint of space.
So I heavily invested in N scale.
But there is one huge problem with N scale.
It works great for most types of railroading, except if you want to work with steam locomotives
from the 1870s and 1880s, their small size in N scale made for very poor electrical pickup,
and a very weak pulling power.
Although you wouldn’t think that’s the case I mean look how well these 4-4-0 engines
are doing, but this was just clever editing, I switched off the camera every time the engine
lost power or got stuck.
Still I thought this problem was due to my poor construction method, and that was part
of the truth.
So I continued with the landscaping of the layout, but in the back of my mind, I was
already designing a much better one, one that didn’t push the engines to their limits
and one that offered more realism.
At this time, I had a N scale model of Disneyland’s C.K.
Holliday locomotive, this was the most reliable engine on my whole layout, and was my favorite
to run.
I wanted my train layout to mimic certain aspects of the Disneyland Railroad, without
directly copying it, which is what explains the reason for my narragansett style excursion
train.
The old Cratre Valley Railroad was beginning to bother me, the frequent operation issues
I had with it was frustrating, and I got tired of looking at it, I wanted something that
looked less like a fire hazard, and would impress everyone who saw it.
So I began designing the next layout and when I was ready, I gave this one away.
I have no regrets, even now I cringe at the sight of my first monstrosity.
In early 2017 I began constructing the Hillcreek Hollow Railroad, at a size of 3 feet by 6
feet, it would be slightly larger, and the materials I used for building it would make
it incredibly light-weight yet strong.
Once again, foam would go on top, from there I drew out the landscape and cut it.
In order to make the trackwork neat and tidy, I knew I wanted to have a rail yard where
my trains could be neatly stored out of view.
And it would have a capacity for all 5 of my trains.
I thought the S curves on the layout looked incredible, but once again, it would lead
to future issues.
Pay no attention to the pink heart on the wall, that bedroom once belonged to my sister
back in high school, and I never painted over the heart after she moved out.
I actually came very close to completing this layout.
As you can see it was much more realistic than the last and it was more pleasing to
the eye.
The mountains in the background helped hide the rail yard, and the varying terrain was
designed to make it look as if the train was weaving through the landscape, but this time,
there were no hills for the trains to climb.
I even created a locomotive museum for all the engines that no longer worked properly,
some of them were new right of the box and they didn’t function as I expected.
By creating a better electrical system, I was able to supply the power to the rails
more efficiently and therefore the locomotives stalled fewer times along the track.
I thought I was clever, I thought that by eliminating upward grades, the trains wouldn’t
have traction issues, but remember that S curve I mentioned?
Well it provided enough resistance to the train that sometimes the locomotives would
stall just as they emerged from the other side of the tunnel.
I wanted to run a steam layout that would behave more realistically.
Real locomotives don’t rely on rubber tires for traction the way the N scale ones did.
They used their tonnage to do the heavy hauling.
So I started to wonder about On30.\ I found a good deal for some On30 scale train
equipment and purchased a small porter engine, I wanted to see if it got good electric pickup
despite its small size, and if it was strong, despite not using rubber tires.
I also got a passenger car and a caboose.
They all had a good size and weight, and had a quality design.
My hope was that the larger scale would perform better, and allow me to keep my dream of having
a model steam railroad without the petty frustration of just getting the darn stuff to work.
My Disneyland engine wore out its rubber tires and could no longer even pull its own weight.
My N scale layout was useless and gathering dust.
I set up a test track on the floor to see how the little engine behaved and I was immediately
blown away.
It had a great electrical pickup which meant I could run it at slower speeds, and it was
strong.
I immediately bought a second engine, it was a forney style engine, twice the size and
weight of the Porter.
It took some re-wiring to get it to function, but when it did, it completely changed my
grim outlook on model railroading.
From then on, I knew I was switching to On30.
I needed to test the engine’s pulling power to ensure it could haul the amount of cars
I wanted it to.
Then I needed to test it under tight curves to find its minimum turn radius.
The results were very positive.
I drew up a larger version of the Hillcreek Hollow layout since I thought it was a good
design.
With the trains always going clockwise, the four right turns would wear out one side of
the train, so having a left turn in there somewhere would help wear the train more evenly.
But there’s that pesky S curve again, it would prove to be an issue later on.
At first I was inspired by the Thunder Mesa mining layout for the scenery but decided
to do my own thing.
Meanwhile I bought more passenger cars.
They’re designed to light up, but they only had one little incandescent light and it wasn’t
bright enough to even notice when it was on, so I bought new LED’s and installed them
myself, this time putting two lights per car for a more even light distribution.
I was really pleased with the results.
The lights would turn on even if there wasn’t enough power to move the locomotive.
My friend Steve built me a new train layout table measuring 4 feet by 8 feet, in exchange
for giving him my old N scale layout, so I immediately set up a temporary track on what
I would later call the Tumblerock Canyon Railroad. [7:38]
It would be the largest layout I’ve ever built, and designed to last the rest of my
life.
I started with a 3 inch layer of foam, then drew out a grid.
From there, I cut out the river gorge and began laying flex track in the designed formation.
The trains can’t operate without the bridges so I began designing the bridge bents for
the trestle, drawing them out in life size and then cutting the wood pieces I needed.
Each piece was cut to dimension then dyed using a mix of india ink and water to make
the lumber look aged.
The appearance was realistic for lumber that would suffer wood rot from sitting out in
the elements for a while, from there I glued them to form the bridge bents.
Although I decided to remake them because I didn’t think the first version was realistic
enough.
The bents were placed around a curve and the rest of the lumber would be glued to them
to form the trestle.
This made me very anxious because up until this point, I’ve never relied on my own
engineering skills to support such a large piece of track, holding up rather heavy model
trains.
I then completed a Pony Truss bridge using the same design techniques, I must say I think
I did pretty good on this one!
The third and final span was a simple timber bridge, this allowed me to show my skills
at building three types of bridge architecture, from simple to complex.
I finished linking and soldering the rest of the track, wiring it up for electrical
connection by using bus wires underneath the table.
The two short track pieces that end at the river’s edge is going to be the engine house
for storing the locomotives.
Because this system is entirely analog and not digital, you can’t normally operate
two locomotives independently.
So the engine house tracks are isolated on their own circuits which allows me to operate
one locomotive independently from the other.
I began installing the bridges, but I couldn’t permanently glue them down because I wasn’t
finished sculpting and shaping the river, so they are only temporarily assembled.
Now we can see all the track fully installed, and we can have a bit of fun running the trains
for the first time on their trail run around.
By flipping on the left switch I can connect the left engine house track to the main power.
When I increase the throttle control, the little porter engine begins rolling out of
the engine house.
Yes I had just gotten everything up and running and was so happy to begin working on the landscape…but
then…COVID happened and it changed everything in my life.
I had to pack up and move out of the apartment I spent 11 years in.
I ended up moving a 1,000 miles up north to Portland, Oregon, this meant stuffing everything
I had into a moving truck and driving for two days through the coastal wilderness.
I don’t live in the heart of the city, but actually along the outskirts of the greater
Portland area in a nice place surrounded by small forests and rivers.
After nearly two years of living with family, I was able to get my own studio apartment
just a few months ago, and I finally had the space to setup the train layout which had
been in storage since I first moved up north.
My friends had to help me roll the layout down the driveway of the apartment complex.
As a result of moving it around twice and rolling it a couple hundred feet of uneven
pavement, the bridges became heavily damaged, rendering them unusable untill they could
be repaired.
The timber bridge lost one of its support piers and the trestle had several lumber pieces
break away and fall off.
The whole thing was quite loose and even the track had separated from the bridge itself.
So I went to work repairing everything and gluing the track back down, heavy cans of
garbanzo beans and tomato sauce work quite well as weights to insure an even adhesion.
Now that the track was done, I needed to assess the damage to the rolling stock.
The couplers on the passenger cars were damaged sometime during the move, they must have been
pressed against the sides of the box, and so they needed to be replaced or else they
couldn’t link together to form a train.
Thankfully, O scale is nice and big compared to N scale, so replacing couplers is a really
a simple and easy task and doesn’t require a magnifying glass.
Now the passenger cars are repaired and are ready to roll!
I flip on the right switch to connect the ride side track of the engine house to the
main power, and I can begin rolling the forney locomotive out.
As the Forney crosses over the mainline switch it will come to a stop after it, and once
the switch is thrown the other way, the engine can reverse up to the passenger cars and link
with the couplers.
As you can probably tell by now, there are no sound effects, these are older model trains
that were manufactured before the digital craze took over the model railroad hobby.
As a result, I was able to buy all this stuff for a slightly cheaper price.
Sure I could convert the whole layout to digital, but it would be expensive and not really necessary
since its such a small layout, there’s really no reason to run two trains at the same time
considering there also isnt enough room to run two simultaneously.
It wouldn’t make sense to me to go through all that trouble and expense just to hear
some sound effects.
The forney makes its way along the riverbanks, passing a spur track to it’s left.
That slight left turn helps add a little wear to the opposite side of the train since it
will basically always be making right turns around the layout.
And now the passenger train emerges from the future site of a short tunnel between the
rockwork, and starts making its turn over the large trestle bridge.
It’s a 24 foot drop to the bottom of Tumblerock Canyon and this old bridge has seen better
days, so nobody make any sudden moves!
The Tumblerock Canyon railroad will be fictional to a certain degree, while I am going for
some accuracy, I am kind of making up my own world here.
The idea is that the railroad is a short-line heritage narrow gauge railroad passing through
a small wilderness ghost town in the Pacific Northwest.
The namesake of the railroad is the large canyon carved out by a waterfall which the
old trestle-bridge surrounds.
In the old days the railroad was used to transport freight and passengers, using the town as
a short whistle stop along the journey, now it serves much the same purpose, taking tourists
on a sight-seeing journey through time.
This model railroad will take a long time to develop and construct, but it will never
be complete.
Any model railroader who builds layouts knows, you’re never quite finished.
But I look forward to bringing you all on the journey in future updates to come.
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