How do you blow up a decoder? Fail to isolate the motor, creating a dead short. Various older locomotives used the chassis as part of the power pathway to one of the motor brushes, making the chassis is electrically live. This can be easily fixed with insulating tape placed under the motor and plastic or […]
Track buses for Digital Command Control: Layouts wired for direct-current block control have several isolated track sections called blocks. Each block has an electrical switch that controls which DC throttle powers that track section. In theory, a Digital Command Control (DCC) layout could be wired as one large block with two wires feeding the power […]
Winter is my favorite season, especially for watching trains. The snow gives everything in the background and foreground a pure, white canvas. Snow in the air gives photographs depth. Iced-over bodies of water give an awesome effect. It seems like snow scenes are quite rare when it comes to HO and N scale layouts, and […]
What is Amtrak’s “rainbow” fleet? Amtrak began operations on May 1, 1971, and at the time had only one piece of equipment sporting Amtrak’s first logo, E8 No. 4316. This engine is currently offered by Rapido. All of the passenger equipment came from the railroads that joined to form Amtrak, including over 400 from the […]
Working with wire cutters – Trains.com director David Popp demonstrates the application of wire cutters, crimpers and strippers in model railroading. A pair of wire cutters are an invaluable tool in wiring your model railroad, and David demonstrates the different usages for each tool as they relate to model railroading. You can read more about […]
Heat-shrink tubing is something you need to have in your wiring toolkit. This material makes neat, insulated soldered joints simple and fast. What is heat-shrink tubing? As the name implies, the material shrinks when it’s heated. It comes in multiple sizes, some of which are somewhat specialized and are most likely to be found in […]
From simple elevated loops to railroading empires through a floral oasis, consider these permanent large-scale displays and garden railroads you can visit: Both across the United States and around the world. Please note that the status of any location can change, which is why it’s recommended to contact prior to a planned visit. If you […]
How to disassemble a locomotive without damaging it and then reassembling it is one of the more advanced tasks of a model railroader. Some people just want to see the inside of the locomotive, while more often, there’s a circuit board that needs repair or replacement, gears that need lubricating, or a faulty wire or […]
Virginian & Ohio photo tribute. W. Allen McClelland, builder of the freelanced HO scale Virginian & Ohio, passed away on October 28, 2022. You can read his obituary here. In this photo gallery, we’ll take a look at images from both versions of the V&O. The photos are from Andy Sperandeo’s article “Allen McClelland’s trendsetting […]
Car routing with JMRI OperationsPro | The crew continues to prepare the State Line Route N scale model railroad for a prototypical operating session, and the next step is car routing. Instead of the widely used car-card-and-waybill freight-car routing system, David Popp and Trains.com host Gerry Leone use a computer program called JMRI OperationsPro to […]
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