Advice on layout

Buy a "how too" book from your local hobby store.

Kalmbach publish many book for beginners, you could do worse that invest in a few.

And don't lay track directly onto plywood. I'll not advise you what to use as it's a personal choice but buy some books and make your choice. Homasote, cork, dense insulation foam, the pink or blue stuff (Not the stuff with the visible 'bubbles') and ceiling tiles are some possible choices.

It also depends on whether you are spiking down your track using rail spikes or small brads or gluing the track down. It also depends on what brand of track you are using. Flextrack, set track or track with the roadbed already cast in place.

Anyway, local hobby shop, buy books.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

Buy or borrow a book on how to build a complete layout. It will show you all the techniques and methods. Ignore scale - what works for HO will also work for N, it will just be smaller. Go to Kalmbach Books website to find out what books are available:

And Railroad Model Craftsman:

And the National Model Railroad Association:

Good Hunting!

I haven't done much with N. I just was 'given' a N modular layout a friend had made, I will be hopefully renovating it to my personal tastes shortly. I will give you with I know from HO that may be a help to you.

Some say DO NOT nail track to plywood. I did and have had good luck with the track. However, the teeny brads bend easy if your plywood is too hard. Better to use liquid nails or similar as it won't damage your track.

The use of foam or cork roadbed is the normally recomended practice. Again, you may want to forgo the nails for adhesives such as liquid nails.

In reguards to the question of Scenery or track first... If you are trying to layout like the real railroads, you have to route your track through existing scenery. NOT A GOOD IDEA for a beginner! It would cause less frustration to laydown your track/roadbed and ballast before you do the scenery. N is very small and your hands are probally very large and trying to route track through a heavily forested scene would result in lots of broken trees and tears!

Thanks for your responses! Then should I affix the road bed to the table with liquid nails and then the tracks to the road bed with liquid nails aswell?

On 2/14/2008 5:23 PM muselart spake thus:

If it's cork (I believe most roadbed is), you can just glue it to the plywood with ordinary white glue (Elmer's or equivalent), then use the construction adhesive for the track. Doesn't have to be Liquid Nails(r)(tm); can be any good sticky construction goo.

Suggestion: get lots of small heavy things to weight the track down while the glue dries. Lead weights are good if you have them.

Push Pins are easier to find, at "Staples", by the hundreds.

Use the push pins to hold the track in place while the glue dries.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

"Roger T." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@grapevine.islandnet.com:

We've used sewing pins on foam to hold the track down before. This gives you a nice long handle to pull the pin out while your other hand holds down the track.

Puckdropper

muselart wrote in news:49865c38-029f-4786-9f67- snipped-for-privacy@b74g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:

Since you're just starting out, I'd recommend laying track directly on plywood and nailing it down with track spikes (or similar.) Don't bother much with scenery yet, just worry about getting a feel for trackwork. If you decide you don't like your trackwork, all you've got to do is pull the nails up and rearrange. You don't have to play with this for long, but you'll learn more in the first week by doing something than you will by reading.

Puckdropper

God no! That's the worst advice you can give anyone. Plywood is hard to spike into and is noisy.

Go buy a book on begining a railway.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

WHOA! Roger, it was just to practice with. Yeah, the OP will quickly figure out that the plywood is a pain to work on directly. He might want to put a 4x8 of homasote on it (lot's easier to spike down). I think what Puck was suggesting was that he, the OP, practice designing simply layouts and then putting them down (a little extrapolation there). Make something simple work then try something a little harder AND the OP will get some hands on and perhaps figure out what he likes about Model Railroad'n.

My first attempts at almost everything I've gotten into has been crap. BUT I learned a lot and had fun with it.

Good advice. Some on line resources like ldsig, groups.yahoo.com/group/small-layout-design, groups.yahoo.com/group/trackplansandsketches, ...

Find a club and start hanging out. He doesn't have to join. Look, ask ...

Paul

OK. You're forgiven.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

muselart wrote: [...]

No. Use water based acrylic latex adhesive instead. Much less toxic (ie, don't drink it. ;-0))

Liquid Nails is solvent based, and the fumes are very bad -- what you breathe in can not only cause an unpleasant buzz, the stuff accumulates in the kidneys and liver, and can eventually kill you.

Rule One re adhesives, paints, and cleaners: avoid solvent based products, and if unavoidable wear certified safety equipment.

HTH

I like the T-pins used by quilters. Come in many sizes, you can use the bigger ones to hold layers of foam until the glue sets.

Puck made the suggestion.

Paul

On 2/15/2008 6:00 AM Wolf K. spake thus:

Without belaboring a minor point, this is somewhat overstated.

I use solvent-based stuff all the time with little or no discomfort or danger. I am, however, selective about what I use and how I use it.

Oil-based products (paint, varnish, sealants) are OK to use so long as one makes sure there's adequate ventilation. There are still compelling reasons to use oil-based over latex or other water-based coatings (though it's been pointed out here that there are new products available which may reduce this advantage).

I do try to avoid using the more powerful stuff--that is, lacquers and other stuff that uses acetone or similar solvents. These solvents (including the plastic cement we railroad modelers are so fond of using) really require good ventilation, and one should avoid breathing their fumes.

On 2/14/2008 8:40 PM Roger T. spake thus:

If the suggestion is that the O.P. build a temporary layout first, how about this: use screws to secure the track directly to the plywood. A little more effort, to be sure, but it would allow them to reclaim the track with absolutely no damage when they go to build their permanent layout.

(Putting in screws would involve drilling pilot holes, say with a Dremel, and putting in very small round-head screws.)

David Nebenzahl wrote in news:47b5cfb3$0$17139$ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com:

The problem with screws is if you get them too tight (which is easy to do), they'll throw the track out of gauge. (It's the same with nails, but more difficult.)

If you use short and sharp sheet metal screws, you may be able to put them in by hand and feel your way to the proper tightness. This is N scale, however, so it may be harder to find the right size screw.

Puckdropper

Thats how it is normally done.

I don't agree on Noisy. However, I do agree that its hard to drive track nails into some grades of plywood. If you can push a push pin in... without it being overforced... Track Nails are fine. If you Can't... Then track nails are going to bend like crazy! My current HO layout is OSB and the track nails went in well. I, however, am going to give cork roadbed a try.