Hello everyone. Some may remember me from earlier this year with plans to build an On30 Halloween layout. Time nor budget in general cooperated, not to mention lots of work on the house this year. I still have been picking up bits and pieces and working on ideas, and still plan to build this project eventually.
Halloween went well by the way (104 trick or treaters). Just no train display.
Meanwhile I add to my list of elements for the layout and solutions for any problems that may arise. One thing I decided would really help is an electronic thing-a-ma-jig that would stop the train at at least one point for a short delay, then continue on by itself. Since the train would be running continuously I thought it would be a nice effect for it to stop at a station of some sort automatically, ideally I'd like it to also stop in the back tunnel once as well.
I don't know what it was called but saw just such a device in a Walthers catalog. Unfortunately it was around $75 as I recall which is out of the question. Does anyone know any way to make a train stop automatically at certain points for around 10 seconds then continue on?
For those who don't remember or didn't see my old posts, the train will be running at very slow speeds (pulled by an 0-4-0 Porter on a layout with lots of tight curves in places. There will be no one at the helm so to speak so it has to operate itself once it's going.
AND one other question: Since this is a backwoods look railroad, I'm going to be using several cars eventually with that heavy ribbed wood siding (at least on the caboose). I've seen pictures of these (made from kits) that have lettering on the sides that cross over or maybe even also fit into the low sections of the ribs without distorting the width of the lettering. Now I've done a lot of plastic scale modelling in the past and used plenty of decal solvents to get them to do some weird stuff but never anything quite like this. Yet I've seen photos where it has been done. Question is, how? Or maybe something besides decals are used?
I can get a link to some photos if anyone isn't quite sure what I'm talking about.
Thanks ahead of time.
~FlyingDragon64