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I came up with what I think is a pretty neat idea for creating lighting under an awning. As I'm sure all of you know, LED's are pretty directional. (really bright circle of focus where ever the light is pointed). I didn't think that would be very good for under the awning on the drive in...

So? I'm putting my downtown together and I found these cute little three globe street lights for main street. I installed them and by the time 30 minutes went by the globes were melting off of the lights. I thought I ordered LED's but obviously I did not. After un-doing all that I did to install...

I decided I'd make a new video of the layout. Admittedly I have the train running a little hot. I did that to shorten the video. My layout is 5 X 11. It will be broken downtown in 5 sections. From the wall out it's "up north at the lake" then the hobo village (hard to see but it's between...

Hey Gang, I've got some LED street lights that are rated a 1.3v. I'm going to power them with 12-13v and therefore need to put a resistor in series with the light. Question is do I put the resistor on the anode lead or the cathode lead? Mike

Figured I'd go ahead and start Octobers Photo Fun Thread. After a couple of years staring at the area I was going to put my downtown in, I finally just said "to heck with it" and just plowed ahead. I still have to light the insides of the buildings and get some trees in there but for the most...

I'm doing a small town layout era mid to late 40's to 1960 something. Did they still have police and fire call boxes in the little towns? Or were they pretty much a big city item? Thanks in advance for your response. Mike

Well? Seeing that I missed all of the caboose postings a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd continue the caboose theme this week with a couple of mine. These too were just old crappy blah cabooses so I thought I'd get out some decals and some paint and see what would happen.

This weekend's fun and games revolved around my lake "up north". (I hope nobody points out that there are no mountains like mine in northern Minnesota). Actually this has been a 2 weekend project beginning last weekend with getting the houses level and doing a little paint washing on the rocks...

Hey Gang! I bought a bottle of mixed lychen from the hobby store yesterday to create bushes and ground cover for my layout. Once installed is it necessary to seal the bushes to prevent decomposition? I made trees out of Autumn Joy Sedum bush ends and I did clear coat them. Just wondering if any...

Well? Seeing that every train layout ought to have a hobo village, I made the area for it over the weekend. Most of the trees that you see are actual ends off of this bush I have in front of my house. The trees without any foliage are the same ends only with the buds taken off. I mounted them on...

I have a question about rail protocol. I have noticed that all, if not most all, of the tanker trains that I see have a box car between the engines and the tanker cars. Is this a recent thing or has it been rail protocol for a long time? Just doing some "supposing" I'm guessing this...

I took a couple of old cabooses that I had laying around and am painting and converting them to Great Northern cabooses. I finished one that kinda looked like X-32 but instead of two windows it had 4. I called it X-35 and it came out pretty nice for my railroad. Here's the tough one, I've got a...

Hey Gang, After 3 years of playing with trains I finally got around to building an HO scale Polar Express for under the tree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJkVMmCObs After taking a movie of it (sorry how dark it is) I thought seats, people and lights would be cool for next year. As to...

Well? I've really done it this time. I think I screwed up my double crossover for the last time. I can't get the engines to go over it without derailing. Anyway, I've been looking to replace it. I've noticed that some of the listings on eBay say DCC friendly, or not. What's the difference? I...

When I started screwing around with trains a couple years ago, the plan was to recreate some kind of replica of the Polar Express. Well? 12 engines and 60 cars of rolling stock later I'm finally getting around to it. For those who are wondering the color scheme I found out on the "interweb" that...

Here's one I thought about the other day. I am installing my tortoise switch machines in my layout. Things are going pretty good and for a rookie I'm pretty pleased with the results and the switch motor operation (in other words no hanging up or binding). Well? The flipper on the machine or the...

OK, I'm about to order up my tortoise switch motors for my layout. I got to looking at the 3-way Peco turnout and am trying to figure out how to put the motors to work the three tracks that come off the Y. There are two levers on the turnout. If you push the one closest to the Y of the turnout...

I'm going to get tortoise switch motors for my layout. I watched the instructional video on installation.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deYtCW5gnlg&feature=BFa&list=PL4E74FDB45DFADFBE&lf=BFa . My question is, even with the larger and longer piano wire, how many layers can a tortoise switch motor...

Well? So far.....kinda good. I've got the basic layout up and pretty much operational. As you can see by the video, the layout is about as big as my room would allow. I did need to go buy more scenic woodlands road bed however. My original 75 feet came up about 10 feet short. I didn't use a plan...

Speaking of "order of cars", on most passenger train setups (in real life now) what is the order of cars on say a 8 car passenger train?What I have is a Great Northern 8 car Empire Builder passenger set. Looks to me that I have a baggage car, a mail car, a combo car, a sleeper car, two...