Coloma Rails - N Scale Model Railroading

This past Sunday I started work on the scenery for where my Model Power ‘Freight Depot’ will be residing.  I was hoping to originally start my scenery work with the area around North Western Terminal (the parking lot and surrounding areas), but my order for my sidewalks did not arrive on Saturday like it was originally scheduled for.  So instead I elected to start on another part of the layout.  I already had the ‘Freight Depot’ in hand and knew where I wanted it to go and it would be a good location to test out my scenery skills (it has been a few years since I played around with any of the Woodland Scenics materials). First I applied some Brown craft paint as a base coat for the scenery. Second, I laid out some Brown Fine Ballast to be used as my dirt roads.  I plan on using this Brown Fine Ballast for all my dirt roads in the Industrial section of my layout. Third I sprinkled on some Fine Turf in Earth color (trying to avoid the road as much as possible), although a hand held vacuum

After watching plenty of videos on YouTube on ballasting N scale and specifically KATO Unitrack, it was now time to get it done on my C&NW layout. Growing up and attempting previous model railroads, ballasting was always an issue for me, but with the help of the internet, I think I finally got it right. There are plenty of YouTube videos on it now and I elected to go with the following approach. Items needed: Ballast White Glue Isopropyl Alcohol Scenic Cement Baby Spoon Craft Paint Brushs Eye Droppers Steps: I applied Elmer’s Glue-All full strength (white glue) on the edges of the Unitrack and a little on the trackboard. With a craft flat paint brush, I spread the glue evenly. I used a baby spoon to distribute the ballast over the edges of the track.  The baby spon allowed a bit more control to apply the ballast. With a fine paint brush, I cleaned up any ballast that was built up on the ties. With a wider flat paint brush, I brushed up at an angle any ballast on the track board clo

First off, Happy Thanksgiving! It was another good day for me yesterday with USPS.  A lot more packages started to come in from Ebay and Facebook purchases.  A bunch of the N scale buildings I will be using for the city started coming in.  I am still waiting on a few more, but from the looks of it, I may run out of room in the city.  My plan for the city may have to slide more into my suburban area.

Well the last couple of days I have really been giving our USPS lady a workout, packages and packages arriving for my layout.  I added another diesel freight locomotive to the roster with a KATO Chicago & North Western #928 SD40.  This model I had purchased used through a Facebook Group and already equipped with DCC. The following is borrowed from  Don’s Depot . 928 was built in September 1966, #32099, FN 7912-8, as CGW 408. It became C&NW 928 in 1968. It was retired on September 25, 1987 and sold to Washington Corporation in November 1989.  It was rebuilt for Corporate Leasing Inc as 3001. It then became MRL 3001 and was later renumbered 220. It was later transferred to I&M Rail Link as 220 in 1997 and sold as Iowa Chicago & Eastern 220 in July 2002.  It was retired in February 2007 and scrapped by Jabco Industrial in March 2007.

I received my first diesel freight locomotive in the mail yesterday and it is an Atlas Master Line Chicago & North Western #8010.  The #8010 was built in August 1986 and then renumbered to Union Pacific #5974 on April 23rd 1997.  It was retired from Union Pacific on January 4th 2002 and I am curretnly unsure where it ended up after that. I purchased my model from a hobby shop I remember as a kid growing up.  Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, IL has a pretty decent webstore and I was abe to find it cheaper than any other place.  I am glad to save a few dollars, plus help out an old hobby store.  Since it already has a DCC decoder already built in, it is all ready to go for the track.

Now that I am ready to start to add some buildings and terrain to my layout I decided to hit up a swap meet in Michigan City, IN today to see if I can get lucky.  My goal was to mainly shop for N scale buildings first, then anything that I could find that was C&NW related. Majority of the vedors that were on hand were selling HO scale and Lionel.  I knew that getting into N scale I would have a harder time finding items, but I really do like the look of N scale over HO, I am probably in the minority but I feel N scale actually has more detail than HO scale. I did an initial pass of all the vendor tables and did find two C&NW boxcars along with a N scale Freight Depot building all for $20, so I was pretty happy so far.  I decided to go and double back now and search more throughly to see if I could find anything else.  I cam across a C&NW gondola car, another N scale Soda Shoppe building, then buried under a lot of boxes, I found a KATO Chicago METRA Gallery Bi-Level Commute

Now that the basement has started to become my train room, I thought it would be festive to also have a small Christmas tree and break out my Lionel North Pole Central Christmas Train.  This Lionel train set is all that survived between all our moves in the last 10 years.  Usually I try and set this train up around our big Christmas tree, but wih a new dog and two additional cats added to the family this year, I am not sure the train would survive upstairs, so let’s decorate the basement. Lionel North Pole Central I ordered a 4’ tree this past week that arrived yesterday, picked up some garland last night and today I dug the train out from storage with all of the other Christmas decorations. Tabletop location for tree and train Lionel North Pole Central Tree is assembled and extension cords are run Tree skirt and Lionel track assembled The lighting of the tree. I do plan on placing ornaments on the tree still.  This is one of the things my wife loves to do for Christmas, so I will prob

The past few days I have been contemplating on an era for my N scale layout.  Originally I was planning on just doing a make shift layout so I could run any engine/cars that I wanted too, but the more and more I thought about it, I realized choosing an era I think would be more fun to build and collect. As I mentioned in an  ealier post , I grew up right next to the old Chicago & Northwestern (C&NW) West Line heading out of Chicago and have very fond memories of seeing the trains bearing the C&NW logos on them while playing ball in the streets and picking up my father from the train station.  So I thought to myself that is what I want to model, the C&NW pre-1987.  Why pre-1987 you might ask, 1987 is when they opened the new Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago that the C&NW/Metra Commuter trains termiinated at.  The previous station that was torn down was known as Northwestern Terminal. Original Northwestern Terminal Now back in 1987 being only 13 years

In Part 1 of “ Building A Shelf For the Command Station”  we left the shelf in a bare state and now it was time to get some paint on it and finish up all the wiring.  Late afternoon yesterday I did my best to use wood filler and cover up my screw holes and once that was dry I sanded down the filler.  While the wife was cooking dinner I decided to go and ahead and start painting the shelf, this way later in the evening I can go ahead and complete the wiring.  Mission accomplished, by time I was ready for bed I was able to have the command station shelf all completed and wired for operation. Coat of paint all dry for the shelf. NCE PCP Panel mounted. KATO Power Pack and Switch Controls mounted.  I like using the manual feel of the switches and the Power Pack will also be used when running DC only trains. Switch Controls all wired. Wiring diagram mounted for the Switch Controls. Completed Command Station shelf.

After I got the track all wired last night, I had to do a test with DCC.  When I first laid down the track I had done a test with DC, but this was going to be the first with DCC and my new decoder in the engine. When I made my initial track purchase, I added the KATO 2016 Operation North Pole Christmas Train to my order, along with a DCC decoder from TCS (model K5D7).  I grew up right next to the old C&NW West Line which then became the Metra West Line, so seeing and riding the Bi-Level passenger cars on an every day basis, I knew I had to have these for my layout. . KATO 2016 Operation North Pole Christmas Train TCS K5D7 A few days ago I installed the DCC decoder and now it was time for the inital test with DCC power.  I took a glance at the manual for my NCE Power Cab in advance, so I knew what I had to do in order to program the decoder to a 4 digit address.  It is recommended to leave the 3 digit address at “3” and program the 4 digit address to match the en

I was hoping for my expansion track pieces to arrive on Saturday so I could finish the layout on Sunday, but due to Veteran’s Day Holiday, the USPS was delayed at least a day this weekend.  So yesterday my package from  Model Train Stuff  finally arrived and it was like an early Christmas present for me. Once work was finished for the day I had to open the box and dig out the track pieces needed to finally complete my layout.  Once I connected all the track pieces, I marked a quick outline of those new pieces and proceeded to drill some more holes under the track for the wiring of the new turnouts and an additional power feed.  Once that was done I was able to secure the track to my trackboard. Track pieces all secured. Track pieces all secured. Now it was time to take the board down (with the help of my wife) and set it on it’s side so I could complete the wiring underneath.  25 years ago I used to work in the car stereo business installing radios and speakers, and during that time I

Trainfest 2017 is currently going on in Milwaukee, WI (Nov 11-12) and yesterday my son and I took the drive around the lake towards Milwaukee.  I have not attended Trainfest since probably I was a teenager so it happened to be perfect timing that it was coming up just as I was getting back into model railroading. As we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed they were directing us towards the ‘Milwaukee Mile’ (Indy Car race track) and they had us pull onto track and drive through one of the turns and had us park on pit row.  Being a fan of Indy and NASCAR, I thought that this was really cool. My youngest son on the Start/Finish Line There was a short line to get into the venue and luckily I had purchased my tickets online and got to skip most of the line.  We then proceeded into the exhibition area.  Coming into Trainfest, I knew what to expect, plenty of model railroad layouts, and manfacturers showcasing their products.  What I was hoping for was a little bit more for vendors.  I know