Ive Laid The Benchwork For My Train Now What

Believe it or not many people get stuck on what to do after they've made the benchwork for their train layout.  Some want to just start putting their track right on the wood..... STOP! DON'T DO IT!

First plan out if you have any hard to reach places on your layout. Unless you have a long arms reach, you may want to plan to put mountains, or a town, or something that doesn't require your constant attention. Ask yourself, if I have to clean the track in that area or get my derailed train, how easy will it be?

Next cover all the top surface with a layer of styrofoam. It can be the regular white sheets, but the blue or pink used for insulation is the best and doesn't leave little round bits when you cut it.

You can use the foam to carve rivers and gullies, build up pieces for easy mountains, and as for trees? Just stick them right in the foam! By using the foam you're going to have an easier time with many aspects of the layout.

Now, this is when you plan your track out, don't glue anything down yet though as you need to plan out buildings and scenery too.

For this stage in planning, paper is your best friend! Cut squares out for approximate building base sizes, circles where you may want a forest, strips for roads and rivers, etc.  Yes, this seems like work, just keep in mind that this will help you have a successful and running layout that you will enjoy. How crappy would it be if you were just laying things down and your track dead ended at a building or you have no place for that really neat roundhouse?  Make sure to design your track plan too.

One of our guys, Tyler has a fantastic layout and he did three posts for you to check out and get guidance and ideas from. Check them out:

1. An HO Layout In Progress
2. Thompson River Canyon Blog Edition 2
3. Thompson River Canyon Blog Edition 3
4. Thompson River Route Blog 4 (this is labeled as 5, but is part 4)

Now it's your turn!  What questions can we help answer?  Do you have photos to share with us? We love to see/share layout photos.  Let us know how we can help you get further in your hobby.

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Thank for reading our blog and Happy Hobbying!

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Not a lot to show for and now N scale

This Fall has been quite busy for me and the modeling and the layout has come to a standstill.  This past week I was on the run it seems everyday after work.  I squeezed a few minutes of decaling out this week and that's about it.  That decaling would be on my Ex-KCS SD50.  I put VMID reporting marks on it and patched the red KCS on the long hood.  I wanted to cover up the entire KCS in red but it hard to do with white trim film.  So I'm going with a faded KCS maybe with a stripe across it. This is common for short line units that I have seen. Here's a prototype: BB GP40-3  An example would be this model I did for the Buckingham Branch Railroad:

This was a loco I did for a customer back in 2011.  Based on the prototype still running in this scheme.

I went to a train show last weekend and my sons talked me into a n scale layout.  My oldest had been all over this for about a year now.  I was not sure that he was ready, but I took the plunge and bought a huge lot of Kato Uni-track and loco and a couple of cars.  This past Sunday, we build a "L" shaped layout in their room.

Simple construction and doesn't  take up much space.

Definitely got the Detroit Tiger theme going on in here!

Here the GP38-2 the boys picked out.  Good runner and right now we are sticking to DC.  It can be converted to DCC if needed.

Here are the 2 cars the boys picked out.  Nicely detailed and they run well.

The overall scene.  Got to get some fascia for the background and a few more turnouts.  Not bad for a few hours of work on Sunday afternoon.

Hear is the Ex-KCS SD50 that will be working on the Midland.  The 6 axle power is a new trend on the VMID.  A tsunami was installed in in and being a Proto 2000 loco, it runs and well and is very heavy.

Here's another 6 axle power loco.  It's a Kato mid-production run.  Picked it up at the RPM meet for a great price.  It too will be patched for the VMID.  

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