The guy with the train in his basement

Well model railways in the basement is pretty common but this guy has built an actual replica railway carriage  in his basement. This is amazing, though i think i'll stick to HOe scale.

Gearing up for phase 2

Phase 1 of Project Eskalon may be coming to an end, i now have evaluated running my train on its test track and have decided on which couplings to use as well as useful information on clearances when i built my final permanent layout.

That will be phase 2 and can start soon, first step will be to build the baseboard of course. I am not blessed with the best carpentry skills but my planned board should be within even my range. It will have a simple frame as well as a retaining wall along 3 sides. This will be for the use of scenic wallpapers later on but will also allow me to lay a cover over the layout to protect it when not in use. Time to get some wood soon...

Soldering on

Why build a model railway? I'm sure many have asked modellers this over the years, of course one reason is that it allows you to explore many different skills including wood working, painting, planning and basic electrics. The latter can involve use of the soldering iron which is something i used a fair bit in the past when i did the odd bit of electronics but not for the last 20 years or so.

Until now, the power clips i was using were just a total fail so i decided to solder the wires onto a piece of track. Not the easiest task in the world trying to hold a soldering iron (and not a tiny one at that), solder, a wire and a piece of track with just 2 hands available! We got there in the end though, i managed to only melt a couple of sleepers! It was all worth it as the train runs great.

Time to switch

I bought a few more pieces of track today from a model shop, enough track (including a point or a switch if you prefer) to add a siding to my experimental layout. One complication of HOe gauge is while you can use N gauge track the geometry is different because the rolling stock is much larger. Thus a siding which would be perfect on an N gauge layout would not have enough space for clearance with HO size stock. However an extra bit of straight track does the trick.

Introducing our new locomotive

Our first new locomotive is Zillertalbahn D16. A diesel-hydraulic locomotive which apparently carries an advert for a bird of prey attraction. D16, which is a Liliput model, looks absolutely superb and runs great on the phase 1 loop and will get plenty of running in as i plan the permanent layout phase 2.

Already this experimental phase has proved useful, my loop is built with PECO Setrack, the curves being radius 2. The train runs around them OK but it is a bit marginal for the HO size stock (the edges of carriages rub against each other for example) so i will likely go for radius 3 on the permanent layout.

We're up and running!

Phase one of Project Eskalon is officially up and running with the arrival of my first batch of stock and track!

More old photos

The drawback about the pre-digital camera and cameraphone past is that often many things were not recorded and so now you have to rely on fading memories. Of course being able to record everything now is not always a good thing! Here are a few more photos of my old OO gauge layouts anyway. The first two are of the final phase in the garage when the board had been extended and i had my first go at end-to-end layouts.

The strange shape of the photo is because half the photo is black due to a fault with the camera flash, not because of any censoring! Here we can see two of my old locos a class 47 and a class 86 in the shed.

Looking in the other direction we see the goods shed and a class 08 in War Department colours!

Photos of my later layouts in my bedroom are even rarer (and no photos exist of my brief N gauge experiment). Here we can see my class 25, 73 and an American loco. I still have all of this stuff though whether they all work after being in boxes for nearly 20 years is another question.