#train scale models

[sharknoseshenanigans1951]

STEAM POWER RAHHHH

I LOVE NEW YORK CENTRAL 4-6-4 HUDSON STEAM LOCOMOTIVES

HERES A COOL VIDEO

AND GIFS

[trainsinanime]

ASF!

That's not a short key smash, but my newest model railroad locomotive. Well, sort of.

ASF stands for "Akkuschleppfahrzeug", "Battery tractor vehicle". More than 500 of these little guys were built in the GDR as shunting tools between 1966 and 1990, both for the railroads there and industry, plus quite a few got sold to other eastern bloc countries (in particular Poland) as well. Nowadays they've spread around more, with some even appearing in Italy and Sweden.

The ASF is designed to push and pull single rail cars or sometimes entire locomotives within workshops and industrial sites, a job that it has been doing well for decades now. The diminutive size (about 3 meters long, wide and tall) means it'll fit anywhere, and in places where daily journeys are often measured in hundreds of meters at most, its 6 kilometres per hour top speed (4 mph) is not really an issue.

Technically, it's not a locomotive but a "device", which means it's subject to far less strict requirements for maintenance and for operator training. With all of that, it should be no surprise that it will never be seen on the mainline; even shunting in stations is an extreme rarity. The job is more to pull something into or out of a workshop. Modern devices for that are typically all remote controlled, but plenty of places also just use an old ASF.

And now it's also available in N scale. And it's just incomprehensibly tiny.

This is produced by Arnold, a brand name of Hornby's, and it actually came with DCC preinstalled. It's adorable and I love it.

But how does it run? Actually way better than you'd think.

The loop of track is a "JokeTrack", hand-made from Japan, that I want to use for something eventually one of these days. As you can see, minimum radius is not really a concern for this locomotive.

Two axles really close together and almost no weight means that electricity pickup isn't great; it'll basically only run on freshly cleaned tracks. But it's way better than it has any right to be, since the decoder comes with two relatively beefy buffer capacitors that are stored in the top of the cab. Still, it's really great at finding whatever particles you have on your tracks and stopping for them.

The top with factory decoder settings is really, really low. Probably exactly the 6 km/h walking pace translated to 1:160 scale. I may bump that up, because realism is one thing, but it takes forever to get anywhere.

The weird hooks are the end are what Arnold has given it instead of normal N scale couplings. They look horrible against a white background, but visually disappear entirely once you're on the actual layout.

If you don't like them, purely decorative replacements that look like the original weird coupler thingies are included in the tiny box. I suppose you could install one of them on one end, and have the other end to haul a car if you want. For me that's too much planning.

Speaking of, it can haul more cars than you'd think in a straight line, but once you get to a curve, it quickly drops down to just one, if at all (also heavily dependent on the car). Sadly the tiny coreless motor in it can and will stall at times, which can damage it if you keep it going for too long, so it's better to keep an eye on it while in motion.

There is no sound, the only function is the marker light. Historically locomotives engaged in shunting were supposed to only turn on the right headlight in every direction as a marker. Nowadays mainline locomotives will turn on all three lights on both ends while shunting, but the ASF was built before that, and since all it can do is shunt, it just received the marker light. F0 turns it on in the direction travel, F1 turns on the opposite end.

Anyway, a really great fun little toy that makes me happy whenever I see it, because it just looks so goofy, and it runs way better than it has any right to.

[inspiredwriterstory]

Recently received the Bachmann Talyllyn.

I have never been more satisfied with a purchase before.

@unpopularvivian Bro you gotta grab one of these.

[maximinimaximus]

When travelling, it is very important you only pack the essentials.

As you can see, I brought just the bare necessities.

[whirligig-girl]

[ironirma103]

Nonbinary hopper car

[49436]

Working on a new, huge piece of terrain for mini games - 4 train cars in the middle of a heist. And obviously no train is complete without a shitton of graffiti, so...

The tender car is almost done, the engine about 30%. Wife and i have been playing nobody saves the world, hence nobody and the rat getting place of pride 😁

[eltristan]

(everytrain should have this snowplow‡ on the front)

[pyro-hairedguy]

My club got this mini layout in a donation and we've been upgrading it for show use. It's actually starting to come together nicely and already good for some photogenic shots.

[chibahideaway]

One of my models running around the club layout~

[weirdotranny]

Hornby James review

I recently acquired a Hornby James from eBay so here is a review /overview of it

The Hornby James has been a holy Grail of sorts for me for a while ever since trainboy uploaded his video on the model a couple years ago and as such I've wanted it badly and so, now that I have it for and for an actually decent price I thought I'd post here, These things should not cost as much as they do but luckily I got it in a mostly passed over bid for only 80$ which is steal a lot for a tooling from the 80s though, it is an admittedly great runner despite being tender powered.

The model is, on top of it being an excellent performer a great looker, though it is based upon the triang Johnson 3F it captures what James is perfectly that being; a medium sized tender engine one could realistically see pulling an express train such as the wild nor western. This model's face is also a perfectly cromulent recreation of the early model series face. With over all nice paint a perfectly acceptable likeness and being a perfectly good runner the hornby James is an over all good model for anyone who may want it (if you can get it for a good price) I'd give it a 9/10

[sharknoseshenanigans1951]

I got a 671 turbine

Absolutely love it

[trainsinanime]

This is the newest section for my model railroad. Yes, it seems chaotic, but that's the point.

My model railroad consists of small sections that I build whenever I feel like it, and arrange on a suitable table. Since my apartment isn't that large, I have exactly one model railroad table, which also serves as a general hobby and random stuff table. That makes it difficult to actually run trains - there's always random stuff in the places where I want to put model railroad sections. This here is the solution. Hopefully.

It's a model railroad module that also serves as a holder and organiser for random stuff. The idea is that it remains in place at all times, and I can connect other modules to it as I want and need. And I get to have model trains running through my pencils, cutters, dead battery boxes and so on.

Just to be clear, by definition, anything that is in the fields of that module is stored away properly and organised. This means I will not take any criticism about the way things are arranged there (and it's bound to change anyway).

Some technical details:

This module (mostly) follows the T-Trak standard for small table-top modules in N scale. As part of that, the tracks at the ends are Unitrack. The main semicircle is Tomix track, which offers a few more options, in particular these nice curved turnouts that mean the module works as a crossover as well. As of right now the turnouts are hand-controlled, I plan to add a DCC decoder at a later date (potentially much later).

The basic construction is probably mostly what you expect: A plywood box with strips as dividers.

Main box, floor and track section are 7 mm pine, the inserts are 4mm poplar. Some inserts end up mostly or fully covered, those have access from the bottom to put cables in. The whole thing has power connections, which is not required by T-Trak standards, but I put it in every module anyway.

The edges of the road bed are covered with a 1mm thick strip of wood from an architecture supply shop, which makes the edge look smooth (it's not, I cut it out with a jigsaw) and holds back the ballast.

Because this wouldn't hold any pens or similar, I designed some special inserts with higher interlocking parts.

Those were a bit annoying to build. Finally the whole thing was painted in varnish, giving the look you see now. I'm really happy with how things turned out there, and I think this'll be a useful addition to my model railroad table for the years to come.

Now I just need to find a different space for my 3D printer, and build some curves to run the trains around the WiFi router and…

[flagstops]

Ran some trains ^v^

[maximinimaximus]

I mostly run British N Gauge, but tonight I decided to break out the Kato Morning Daylight set. The Southern Pacific GS-4 is probably my favourite US steam locomotive.

Hopefully the headlights and taillights are visible. (My phone was not bought for the camera quality.)

[mellonproot]

It's a travesty that I can't get n scale containers for less than 10 bucks

I want these things behind my tiny lil trains

This train yearns to be a container train