Coloma Rails - N Scale Model Railroading

First off, Merry Christmas to everyone... When I first wanted to get (back) into Model Railroading, the one locomotive that I knew I really wanted was a Chicago Metra locomotive.  Growing up on the West Line and riding the Metra into the city, I always loved this locomotive. So last night on Christmas Eve, my youngest child, wife and I opened presents.  To my behold, my wife got me a KATO EMD F40PH in the Chicago Matra liverly along with it being the “City of Elmhurst”, Elmhurst is the suburb I grew up right next to on the West Line. Since I knew I wanted one for my collection, I already had a TSC DCC K5D7 decoder ready for it, so this morning I followed the directions and got the decoder soldered into the locomotive and then programmed on my layout. It really is a Merry Christmas!

I am a little late on this post, but a few weeks ago I was able to add another diesel freight locomotive to my roster with the KATO Chicago & North Western #6847 EMD SD40-2. “As a prototype, the SD40-2 was the most popular second-generation diesel with sales of over 3000 in the U.S. and more than 700 in Canada.  There were many variations of this popular diesel because of the long production run.  “Early” units featured an 81” nose, chicken wire grills and a ratchet brake vs a brake wheel that would be found on later units.  C&NW #6847 and #6858 would carry the “as delivered” paint scheme that adorns them through their entire operational life, with the #6847 remaining operational to this day at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, IL.”

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.

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 Galle...

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 addr...

While I am in a holding pattern for new track pieces to arrive and some extension wiring I thought it was a good time to start on a shelf for my command station. As I mentioned in my previous post, the plan is to run DCC with the ability to also run DC.  I am keeping the KATO electrical turnouts on the KATO Turnout Control Switch’s and they need to be powered by the KATO Power Pack (or DC Converter) and then for my DCC I will be running a NCE Power Cab.  My plan is just to be able to unplug one command station and plug in the other when I want to switch from DCC to DC.  This way when we get a new DC engine and we do not have the DCC chip yet, we can still give it a test run. I had some 1x4 left over from making the wood blocks for the legs and another piece of 1x8 left over from another project, so I screwed the two together and got my command station shelf. Once I get all the wiring completed and run through the bar, I will be painting the command station shelf for Part ...

After staring at the track layout for 2 days and then discussing it with the wife to get her opinion, I decided to already do an expansion to the existing “Manning Oaks” layout.  I was not very fond of the idea of a ‘dead end’ track, and seeing that I had 2 loops and half of a 3rd loop, I thought why not have the ability to have 3 loops.  Once all the wiring is completed I will be running DCC on this track (with also the ability to run DC) and one of the benefits of running DCC is to be able to control multiple trains at different speeds.  Also one of the reasons for building this layout is just to be able to watch the trains run.  So by adding a 3rd loop I can have the enjoyment of watching 3 trains go around the track without having to work any of the turnouts. I put my existing “Manning Oaks” track layout into a program called SCARM, and then I was able to remove the pieces that I no longer was going to use and add the pieces I needed to complete the 3rd loop, I c...

This morning it was time to start laying out the track and hoping that everything fits together.  It was great to be able to follow the “Manning Oaks” layout that I got from the KATO USA website, having the product number of all the track pieces made it a breeze. Track pieces all organized.. Track pieces all organized . It took me about an hour to lay all the track pieces on the board, and then maybe about another 30 minutes to hook up the temporary wiring.  For now I just wanted to get the track quickly wired up so we can do a test run. Once it was wired up, it was time for the test.

Welcome to “Coloma Rails”, the plan for this blog will be to document my process of building a N Scale model railroad using KATO Unitrack. All my life I have always wanted a model railroad layout, and have tried on numerous occasions.  Majority of my issues have been space, or we ended up moving to a new location and I never finished a layout. As a child, I could not have a permanent layout in my parents house, so when I became an adult it was time to finally get a layout. I first started when I was 21 with N scale and like now, with KATO Unitrack.  I chose N scale at the time since my plan was to build the layout on a shelf system.  The shelves were built and the track was laid and then I moved. My second time at the hobby was a couple years later and I thought I may have a spare bedroom.  This time I was going to build in HO scale.  I purchased all the lumber to work on the benchwork and completed most of the assembly to find out my wife was pregnant w...