I have now reached the staging yard, one of the critical part of my layout, after months of weekend construction. This yard is important, although it would be hidden, as it would consist of 6 tracks – 3 per direction – and hold low priority trains. The initial plan was 7 tracks but I decided to forego this track for cost consideration. Just like a real railroad, any track extension involves cost and whether it is economically viable to do so. Furthermore, the tight radius at first track resulted in me pushing the positions of all 6 tracks further up … Continue reading Build #10: Staging Yard

For the last 2 weeks, I had not been seriously working on my layout, for the fact that I had other personal commitments to attend to. During their period, I allowed my layout to “take a rest” and “absorb some sun and humidity”. I think it is important to allow the wood to so-call “breath and adjust to the new environment”. As my friend and fellow N-scale modeller from UK said “that once you have cut your wood I wouldn’t leave it unsupported or leaning on anything. Try and keep it on as flat a surface as you can. Wood has … Continue reading Build #08: Heading Towards the First Milestone

I read in many forums as well as from various modular standards such as FREMO, Ntrak, etc., it was uncommon to have multi-levels. In fact, gradients were typically kept to minimal (please correct me if I erred). Ntrak did specify a “mountain division” track . On the other hand, segmented layout is actually a layout broken up into many equal or unequal sections without common end-profiles that allow for interchangeability. In essence, this is what my layout germaN160 is. I have in total 8 modules – 6 standard modules and 2 end modules. Each module supports 2 levels. My challenge … Continue reading Improving Gradients