Heinz Trucking

Okay - so before I can automate (and I have plenty of ideas for that) I need to finish the deck-work. The design for the 2009 layout looked something like this:

Although the actual layout was somewhat different.

Currently, this is all on a 2x4' sheet of plywood with 1/4" rubber feet. To make room for the electronics and wiring underneath, I need to lift it up onto a base - but it also needs to be able to come off the base again for storage. (And "storage" means "in a protected spot where neither cats nor children nor spouses nor self will smash the landscaping".) The best idea I've been able to come up with is this:

There are a number of advantages to this design: it will hide the Arduino and the wiring, the feet will be easy to remove and store, the inset front means it will fit on the bricks in front of my fireplace, the cut out in the back will fit around the projecting knobs on the fireplace, and, most importantly, I have a bunch of 1'x4' and 2'x4' strips of plywood left over from cutting the original layout.

The downside is that I don't like the way it looks very much. Since this is going to be displayed in the living room I'd like it to look as nice as possible. Anyone have any better ideas?

So, by the end of 2009, the train layout was fundamentally complete but also fundamentally boring. So I decided to set two goals: (1) completely computerize the train layout while (2) spending as little money as possible.

Because I want to do this cheaply I decided to do in stages, one stage per year. Here are the goals for the 2010 stage:

Finish the scenery.

This means adding a few more buildings and an ice skating pond. I already have the kits for the buildings and a box of goop that promises to look just like water when it's done.

Add realistic lighting to all the houses

In other words, I don't want the layout to glow like a UFO was landing, and I don't want the lights to blink on and off in sequence, I want the light in each house to turn on and off independently of the others.

Add some simple sound effects.

Whenever the trolley stops in front of the train station, play "Jingle Bells". Not when it passes, mind you - it has to stop for at least two full seconds.

Bonus Goal

Add stop lights to the layout that turn red whenever the train or the trolley cross the road.

So, how do I get there, and as cheaply as possible, when I haven't tried to build anything electronic since 1979? I'm gonna use one of these.

Next post will discuss how the layout will have to change to make this possible.

When we were putting away the Christmas stuff from 2008, Mary found the remnants of my old N-gauge train set - the buildings, mostly, which hadn't really been set up in 20 years. She suggested that we build a "Christmas village" for the next year.

Well, Mary lost interest after a bit and I did too, until just before Christmas, when my work was closed for the week and I had nothing to do.

At that point, I decided to get busy and, with help from Mike, I pulled together a four foot long layout - just big enough to sit on the bricks in front of our fireplace. The buildings were all from my 20 year old layout, except for the "Cricket Shirt Factory" and one of the row homes. (Actually, all the row homes are 20 years old, I just never assembled one of them.)

For 3 days work with a soldering iron, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I knew from my old layout that the tracks would have to be soldered and filed or else the trains wouldn't stay on the tracks. I worried about that a bit because I'm terrible with a soldering iron, but I managed to get it all done without to many burns in the foam-rubber "rail bed". The layout has two independent ovals - the inner "commuter" track and an outer "freight" track and switches that allow trains to move from one track to the other.

I'm also really happy with how easy the "snow" was to apply.

The next step is to seriously upgrade the whole "Christmas" aspect of the layout.