Little Bitty Trains...

What is it with trains? I dunno, but I have, like many men, been fascinated with them since I was a little kid. Of course, playing with real trains is impractical, except for the occasional steam excursion (and I don't even get to drive those!], so I have to revert to models. There are a bunch of different divisions in model size, accuracy, etc. The best compromise for me is a size called H.O., which is about a 1:87 ratio to real size; an HO scale 40' boxcar, for instance, would be about 6 inches long. Within the hobby, there are folks who strive for stunning accuracy in appearance and operation [some even run their layouts in sessions according to printed train orders!], and some who just attach track to a sheet of plywood and get their kicks just seeing them run. I fall in the middle. I like scenery and stuff, but feel no need to go overboard; if a passenger platform on a station is 6 scale inches too high, I feel no need to get crazy about it. Hobbies, after all, are for fun!

My little railroad is the mythical Pinson & Pine Valley, a short line railroad that serves a portion of Alabama. It is set in the late 1940s, the era of transition between steam and diesel, and thus has both modes of power. The steam belongs to my little line, and the diesel passes through from other major railroads. The rolling stock, naturally, is from all over, since my little line is too small to have it's own.

Layouts come in all forms, varying in complexity and size. Size is mainly a function of scale; The largest, G scale, is so huge that most of the layouts are actually outdoors, so-called "garden railways". The O scale, with a boxcar about 10" long [the Lionel scale], requires a good deal of space. The scale that I model, HO, is half of the O scale size, and so can pack a lot of railroading in a reasonable space. This is followed by N scale, about half of HO scale size. This is a very compact size, and one apartment dweller I know has a wonderful complex N scale layout on a 4'X6' wood platform that slides under his bed when not in use. Another has a great 4'X8' layout that is suspended from his den ceiling by ropes, and simply retacts up to the ceiling when not in use. This scale, in turn, is followed by Z scale, which is about half of N size, and almost impossibly tiny. It is not very well detailed simply because of the tiny size, but can be used nearly anywhere.

Of course, all this has to rest on something,and benchwork is a major factor. Being on the limited budget that I am, I use materials wherever I can find them. Much of the benchwork and trackbed is made of wood from shipping pallets, with plywood paneling for the flat surfaces. Scenery is a whole thing unto itself. Many structures can be bought as kits, or the materials bought and "bashed" into structures. There are a huge number of different ways to build landscaping for a layout, and talking to ten modelers will probably give you at least nine ways to do it. Mine is made light to hold down weight and cost - the background landscaping [the mountains, etc.] are made of window screen covered with wet newspaper and butcher paper, and when it dries, painted with Gesso, an art product used to reinforce canvas. It makes a semi-sturdy surface, which will accept trees, etc. Wet paper can be wrinkled up and Gessoed into an amazing variety of shapes; rock walls, bluffs, rolling hills, etc, and when painted properly, and dressed with real dirt, small pebbles, and other stuff can be surprisingly realistic. Trees can be made of twisted wire trunks and branches covered with ground foam rubber or dried lichen, and all kinds of other tricks. If any heavy structures [buildings, etc] are placed on the hills, they must be planned for ahead of time, and plywood platforms must be placed for them, with the scenery worked around it.

Electric Trains have been around as toys for a long time; this is the cover for the Ives Train Catalog - for 1923!
They were mostly battery powered, but a transformer [right] was available. It's hard to see here, but on the end of the power cord, there's a screw-in base for the "light socket power". In these days, fewer than half of American homes had electricity, and those were mainly just overhead lights. The two-prong wall plug did not become common until the late 1920s.

Under Construction - More To Come