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Trains and Such...


Jon Foster

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We've been into model trains for years and years and years. I do G scale at home and did HO at the school system I worked for. Our son does N scale at home too.

If it's ok to post links, here's a couple of our projects.

Our main train site: The JJ&C Railroad

The old school layout: The School Layout Construction Blog

We also do all sorts of craft stuff and crazy projects. One of our daughters made a statue of liberty out of pink foam board for one of her teachers. He said nobody had ever done one as a project for him so she decided to make him one. At first we were going to make one the size of a person but he freaked a bit so it ended up being a little under 3 feet tall but it was still pretty cool. She even made a picture blog/booklet of the construction for him. One of these days I'll make it into a PDF to post.

Jon.

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DH is "into" N-scale and from time to time has me build some of his little buildings. I think N-scale would work quite well for a "garden railroad". I've seen Z-scale used in a 1:12 dh that looked just right. Ed_Cal builds the GL & CC 1:48 town & village kits to go with his trains.

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We went to the museum at Greenfield Village (The Henry Ford) yesterday to see the Lego display and ended up walking through the area where they had some old dollhouses. Wow, were they ever cool! One of them had a small train set in the living room on the floor. It was very cool. The next time we go down there I'll take a camera and get a few shots. Some the houses on display dated back to the mid 1800's.

Jon.

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I wish you would, especially the Legos display. Building Legos is DS#3's hobby and he gets some quite sophisticated sci-fi setups with them. One of the highlights for all of us at the USMC museum is the scale Lego display of the Iwo Jima Monument from Arlington national Cemetery.

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Havanaholly, the Lego display was very disappointing. The Lego displays at the train shows are usually killer though. Amazing stuff actually... I've never been to the Marine Corps museum but would love to go some day. I'm a Parris Island brat. :lol:

Miniwendy, we had a really nice setup at the school but due to budget cuts the train clubs were canceled. It's too bad too. We had several corporate sponsors and we even held our own train show and swap meet. Most of the kids in my program had never played with model trains or built models of any type. Heck, none of them had used a CAD program before either! After 3 years of running the club the kids could use basic CAD software, wire DC and AC systems, program and use DCC control systems, build plastic models, build resin models, paint, weather with paints, chalks and alcohol/ink, build scenery and have lots of fun in the process.

Jon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I wuz gunna add a thread about trains, couple of years ago I got some Spectrum N scale locos, got re-interested when I found out a mate at work is into N scale trains. Been re-collecting and thus far have a Bachmann 4-8-4, Spectrum Light Mountain, 2 Spectrum Daylights, a Spectrum 2-6-6-2 Artic, Farish Seagull and Flying Scotsman, Spectrum Acella, and Kato Nozomis (type 500, 700 and N700). I was thinking of using pink insulation foam for the base, glad to see it works okay, I see you seem to using E-Z track, good to know, I have a lot of that stuff, I like Unitrack, but man that stuff is so expensive.

Anyhoo, keep posting stuff from home man. All the best mah san.

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I discovered train "stuff" last year! Loved the different scales that fit in with some of my Doll houses.Have found people, cars,vans etc.esp for 1/4 scale.I think it was N scale-maybe O..but I love it!!I even found a

tiny pumpkin house,and a mushroom house from Grandt Line and was able to people it with HO scale!!

Such magic!!

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The miniature train hobby can provide a lot of stuff for us. I have used my local train shop for a lot of different supplies (electrical, building and landscaping)and got a couple of dvds to use for learning landscaping. Bill Lankford originally was into building stuff for train lay outs before he morphed into doing his houses and teaching and since he had to retire from doing classes he now is back into landscaping stuff and sells it on his web site and at a few shows. I also watch the train shows on RFDTV. Get a lot of ideas from there though most of them are on layouts. Some of them are really beautifully done and the collections can be up in the six figure range.

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  • 2 years later...

I've always wanted to get into model trains, but I have never had the space to make one, so the best I could do was plastic model kits and drawings. I have a a small model of a New York Hudson and a U.P. Big Boy. I was going to build a 2' x 2' static display of a wood trellis bridge going over a river with the train just clearing the forest, but haven't gotten to it yet.

One of the model makers who worked on the White House that goes all over the U.S. built a 1/12 replica of a NY Hudson with horses pulling turn of the century circus wagons off flatbed cars. He even put real Virginia coal in the tender. I've got photos of it from the Lakeland show I was at a number of years ago.

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Size is one of the reasons DH got into N-scale. If you ever get to Chicago run, do not wald to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the HO layout of the Union-Pacific route from Chi Town to CA.

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Oohh, I love this thread! I've been fascinated by trains since childhood, never had any - I was a "girl" when only boys could have trains! But, of course, I also love minis so steered into dollhouses. Recently I have become totally fascinated with the 1:144 scale and am delighted to find that the N-gauge people are pretty close to that scale :D . I have several full scale houses (1:12) and room is becoming a problem - so the little ones are looking more appealing all the time! I'm now eyeballing our glass-topped coffee table - a nice place for an N-gauge train layout. Hmmm :hmm:

post-4286-0-86844300-1328734576_thumb.jp

1:144 scale barn with the N-gauge train people.

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We have a double-decker glass dining table and DH set up one of his trains on the shelf. For the Christmas holiday we got to watch his train run past some of his house collection while we ate.

Oh, Holly, that sounds wonderful! :clap:

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It really is, CJ. When we finished up last year's Panhandle Trace Hike we decided to start looking at houses in this area and found the dining table and chairs in the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, calling our names. A week later it sat in our diningroom in Havana, and four months later it was in our dining area here in Seminole.

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My dearly departed Uncle had a train set that was pretty massive. I think it was "O"or "O27" scale. He actually had an addition built on to his trailer house to set it up. My dad helped him build a train table that went around the entire room with a drop down bridge for you to enter into the center of the table. It was all set up with 40's- 60's nostalgia. When I was a kid I took it for granted and he would often want to have help and I thought it was boring. Now... I would spend everyday over there.

Things are being sold very very slowly (there isn't much of a market for it in my area) and it is kind of sad to see the deconstruction of his baby. But I guess it is better to let someone use it who will enjoy it than to just let it sit and get dusty.

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Sorry, CJ; I'm waiting for DH to decide to hang the pictures before taking the "after" pictures of what we've done to the house, and DH wants to change out the shelf (one of the charms of this table is changing out the shelf decor from time to time; before the train it was a "harvest" table runner with the mini scarecrows I received from our first Community Swap:

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gallery_4_5_20687.jpggallery_6_5_50936.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Chris' parents got a G gauge (garden size) Thomas the Tank Engine train to go around their Christmas tree this year. Natasha was fascinated! She'll be getting a train layout in a few years time - Chris' dad has a OO layout he takes to exhibitions sometimes and builds/paints engines and wagons regularly, and Chris has already designed a layout to build for Natasha.

Love the sound of the table Holly!

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DH now has my 1:24 gas pumps, his 1:24 cars & trucks, and our smurf farmers and Marvin the Martian figures under there. I can't wait until we get our workshop and back porch built and can get the power tools and bistro furniture out of the garage; we already have the table to put his trains on out there!

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