A little bit of fun with TMR17

I downloaded my Scenic and Relaxed model railroad I made for TRS2010 initially, and modified in TS12 sometime ago.

It imported fine, minus a couple of dependencies which are an old Speed Tree library which is no longer valid and one locked payware asset so it's no longer available.

This route is two baseboards, with the image centered in the middle of the two baseboards, and is based on the Scenic and Relaxed layout from Atlas Model Railroad's Nine N-Scale Layouts. I scanned the layout originally and used a basemap to load the image into TRS2010. I removed the baseboard in the back to create the layout area and filled in the background with some backdrops.









When loaded I had a bit of a flashback to when I had this layout setup originally in my bedroom back in the early 2000s. If I remember the construction was a bit of a pain being that cookie-cutter style layout which I ended up modifying anyway.

I setup the AI drivers to "Drive" after doing some switching with the freight in the little yard. In essence this is what model railroading is at the simple level, and it's really a great break from the big route building projects. I think I might have some fun with this!

Hey John, thanks for sharing. I'm thinking that it might be a welcome respite from the full size layout I've been playing at building for the past decade. As I stated in another thread I've got several moderate sized MRs already bookmarked. One room or smaller in any case.

Bob Pearson

JCitron said:

...I had a bit of a flashback to when I had this layout setup originally in my bedroom back in the early 2000s. ...If I remember the construction was a bit of a pain being that cookie-cutter style layout which I ended up modifying anyway...

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Did you sleep under the river John ?

Maybe some more of us can dig up, from our memories, more model railway routes that maybe happened or were just pipe dreams and bring them to fruition in TMR17 (I'm working on one right now).

Regards

Chris M

Did I sleep under the river... LOL! Not quite with this being N-scale. The layout did exist in the corner and being 3 x 6 feet it's quite small. I did expand the layout and made it into an L-shaped route, which was quite interesting as I filled in a small yard and mills to add in some interest. I may try that and see how that comes out.

There were a few layouts in my life which didn't get very far. The original, built by my dad, probably lasted the longest from 1967 to 1975. This was the original Aurora Revell Postage Stamp N-scale trainset with some additional tracks to make one of the plans in little book. He built the kits because I was too young being 6 at the time, and custom built a water tower for me which I still have on the shelf. The other layouts lasted until I got busy or had to give them up for other reasons such as repurposing the area where I had the layout built.

Since I've been playing around with TMR, I've been digging through my old dream books, I mean layout books I collected over the years. I used to read these from cover to cover and dream about building these layouts. Hmm... There's going to be plenty of projects that will exist only in TMR and not in full T:ANE. With my scanner recently setup, I'll be busy and definitely this will be good respite from the bigger all-consuming projects.

I will add that building this layout from the plan proved to be rather interesting as I ran into some of the space and grade issues the original plan had when I built the layout physically.

John

Good on you, glad your having fun, that is the same reason gnprr ended up in trainz for me started but never completed, then thought about a dogbone shaped shelf shunting layot that i thought would fit in the flat 2 or 3 ft wide l shaped from i think layots you can build or small layots you can build, sold what i had before i moved to where i am now.

Keep it up

Tom

JCitron said:

...I've been digging through my old dream books, I mean layout books I collected over the years...

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Nice one John, I've had to buy copies of my old (Cyril Freezer) plans books since the originals along with many other other items went to the North Yorkshire Moors (post divorce ). Took a while to find them all via the internet, I've scanned them to the correct scale - so one of these days.

Cheers

Chris M

JCitron said:

The original, built by my dad, probably lasted the longest from 1967 to 1975. <snip> I was too young being 6 at the time <snip>

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My parents were both born in 1959 and they're still working. I've stated it before, but my Mom is a Special Education teacher, and my Dad is a delivers furniture for a regional chain of furniture stores. My Dad had a previous job with JCPenny department store for over twenty years, but I'd rather not talk about it.

itareus said:

Nice one John, I've had to buy copies of my old (Cyril Freezer) plans books since the originals along with many other other items went to the North Yorkshire Moors (post divorce ). Took a while to find them all via the internet, I've scanned them to the correct scale - so one of these days.

Cheers

Chris M

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I bought mine over the years when I would visit the Eric Fuchs hobby shop which is now sadly long gone, or the traveling Greenburg train show that I missed this year sadly. The books were pretty inexpensive back then, maybe $1.25, or $3.00 at the most so picking them up wasn't an issue especially because I was working and not on a retirees pension. There are some good internet resources for plans as well. I have to look through my favorites which I recently archived and if I come across them, I'll post them here.

jordon412 said:

My parents were both born in 1959 and they're still working. I've stated it before, but my Mom is a Special Education teacher, and my Dad is a delivers furniture for a regional chain of furniture stores. My Dad had a previous job with JCPenny department store for over twenty years, but I'd rather not talk about it.

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Your parents are a couple of years older than me, I was born in 1961. My dad was born in 1934 and mom in 1937 and both in December. Yikes! My dad worked as a graphics designer and has a degree in fine arts. He used balsa wood and build the water tower that's now residing on a shelf so it doesn't get broken. I have some pics of it somewhere and if I find them I'll post them.

As far as TM17 goes, I plan on keeping most of the content separate from my full T:ANE version as this version is going to be for lighter building and no need to create those mega-routes and branch lines.

John

your parents are one year older than me, sadly all my model railway/road plan books are gone too, Had some of the peco series, Model railroad you can build, more railroads you can build, small railroads you can build, all I have left now is how to operate your model railroad, traction for guide book model railroads, though my ex wife did give me a nice book the encyclopedia of model railways, and have brought a couple books on railway/ railroad / tram I have a intrest in.

things change then they seem to come back in a full circle back to where they started

tom

Oh good god, you chaps make me feel positively ancient, I will be 65 in December ! :wave:.

As for track plans, I don't think I would be 'in trouble' copyright wise, for sharing the odd scanned in plan (after all I've bought the books twice !) so let me know if I can help with that.

It would be very interesting to share one small track plan with a few people, set a target date to complete (not too quickly but in, maybe, 2months ?) and see what the results are. There would be a good few variations I think.

If you are interested post back and I will do my best to facilitate.

Cheers

(From an old crock)

Chris M .

Here's one of the plan sites I've come across.

http://www.scarm.info/index.php

The program its self to make plans.

and some already created layouts here:

http://www.scarm.info/layouts/track_plans.php

These might be useful. Simply copy, snip, and scale.


John

Come on, Chris, you're practically a teenager! Wait until you're 85 (rapidly approaching 86) with a son who's already retired, then look back at your post (if you can trace it in 2036 and if the forums are still going strong).

More seriously, I like your idea of a layout competition - Uk based I hope and one which would be possible in real life given a room 31 feet square and unlimited finance. It would be good to have a target. Count me in. If I might be bold enough to make a suggestion , how about Minories by CJF - always a favourite of mine and it's been used for completions in the past. And I think achievable within a reasonably short time.

John - thank you for the links. I'll add them to my list.

Ray

It's interesting how age came up in this... This actually shows the ageless aspects of model railroading and railroads overall.

But back to topic, I have other links as well which I have to dig through when I get some time.

I gave the SCARM program a quick check over last night. There are libraries for specific components and track brands such as Atlas, Peco, Lionel and others.

ray_whiley said:

...Come on, Chris, you're practically a teenager!...

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I wish I was my friend !

Minories would be good, as you say it could be finished quickly, although the size of the layout could allow it to be super detailed.

I had in mind a UK based layout but there is no reason why there could not be a US based version as well.

I did see a good Alpine type track plan recently with plenty of scope for spectacular scenery (just to keep the EU happy until Brexit ).

Lets see what interest people show in the idea and if there is enough I will start the ball rolling.

Chris M

I've just come across this layout design program:

http://www.templot.com/martweb/templot.htm

It may be of interest - I have not yet downloaded or tried it - but it's free.

Ray

ray_whiley said:

I've just come across this layout design program:

http://www.templot.com/martweb/templot.htm

It may be of interest - I have not yet downloaded or tried it - but it's free.

Ray

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Thank you, Ray. This is an interesting find. The program is quite complex, however, it appears the end results are nice from what I can tell from the videos I watched.

JCitron said:

Thank you, Ray. This is an interesting find. The program is quite complex, however, it appears the end results are nice from what I can tell from the videos I watched.

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agree very complex, nice if you were building a real model railway/road with hand made track

tdstead said:

agree very complex, nice if you were building a real model railway/road with hand made track

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That it is. The junctions are quite beautiful at that.

I've opted for something less complicated and started importing old route images. I had one tucked away on my hard drive which I scanned from a book - I have two sources for the same layout so I can't remember which one was the source.

Anyway I busied myself as I figured out I had to double the dimensions of the layout in order to be able to work on it. It's a 15 x 26, which fits on a single baseboard. The problem at that size is the roundhouse and turntable are too big. My dimensions are now 30 x 52 and scaled across 4 baseboards. This is a bit more reasonable for working.

On this particular plan, the author was kind enough to have placed some height indications on various sections. Where the measurement reads 1 inch (I think it's inches because the markings are about the size of an ant's footprints and I can barely see them), I changed that to 3 meters - essentially multiplied the heights by 3, and changing inches to feet to give some headway for the tunnels and bridges.

The rest of the process is pretty straight forward and I've started laying track. I know there's going to be some compromises as time goes on because there are some things that work in plaster and wood which do not work the same in virtual reality.

I would like to post an image of the plan, but I'm sure it would be a copyright violation and Kalmbach Publishing wouldn't take kindly to me posting the image here.

Thanks Jcitron good info, I had a same thing when I built Valley Western in TS12, Mine is 2 x 3 boards when finished, I used one of square per inch in the end, the trainz scale tells me that is 2'2" in HO for each 12 squares, but it works sitting in the loop at Queenstown is the freight described in the original layot 15 freight cars, caboose but mine is doubled headed and it fits in the loop.

Tom