Seneca Ridge MS Afters School Train and RC Club


B

burakol

Member
HI -

I am teacher and I am new to the hobby. Due to persistent demand from my students, I agreed to sponsor an after school train and r/c club. So far, we have not started the train part since we are still enjoying being outdoors running some of the few r/c's we have. Now that it is starting to get cold again, we will soon be starting on our train build. We are in the process of coming up with a foldable train table and we will initially start with a 4x8 size layout. We are hopeful that once our admin appreciate the work of the students, they may eventually spare us a "train" room in one of our unused outside cottages.

I will post some pictures documenting our progress, as well as the materials we currently have. Pretty much most of the stuff we have were acquired by yours truly, and a few have been donated by our very own Logandsawman. Just yesterday a former hobbyist sold me a vintage Athearn F7 Santa Fe that came with a dummy, passenger car and and observation car for an unbelievable price.

Unfortunately, our school is not funding any of our expenses and our PTO has not pledged any support. Nevertheless, we are optimistic that we can do a great job with what we have. My wife has been very supportive but I know I have to be cautious not to go overboard in spending our own funds.

Watch out for more...
 
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Very happy to hear that this is getting off the ground! Be sure to keep all of us up to date on your progress!!
 
Certainly will... And please, any comments and/or suggestion on how to make the club more successful is always appreciated!
 
Hi... here are some of the few things we have accumulated since we officially started the club... The Varney set is my own, then the rest are things I've bought from craigslist... The SantaFe and train carts in the cubby box are care of our very own Logandsawman... we will meet later after school and we will try to account for the tracks we have and start planning on the track layout... most of the curve track we have are 18r and I am not sure if we should also look into investing into some 22r...
 

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Here are some more... we finally got our train table to fit in my room... We ended up just keeping it in one piece since it is very heavy and will be difficult/risky for our kids if there's any moving parts in it... the table size is approximately 4x8... bracing is 2x4 all around... it is actually resting on two shelves acting as the legs... we rummage through the tracks and we have the following:

- good number of 9" straight tracks
- good number of 18r curve tracks
- 5 rh switch with motor
- 2lh switch, one w/motor, one w/o
- handful of wyes
- 2 90deg crossing
- some smaller section tracks, end stops, used flex tracks
- couple of re-railers

Given that we only have mostly 18r curve, is it still possible for us to create three main line layout? Thanks!
 

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Been tinkering with the layout.. started with the inner line and the slot car crossing... so far so good... we just need to do some major cleaning for the tracks... we will add another main line on the outer loop then sidings... we are trying to figure out how we will elevate either track so we can put lay more tracks and run more trains...
 
Thank you. Here are some more pictures of what we accomplished today... a few of my students came by to eat lunch in my room and we were able to come up with this layout...

We are thinking of doing some western/rocky mountain scene then having a valley in the middle where the village and slot cars will be... so pretty much the surrounding area will be rocks and mountains... then in the middle will be the buildings and the slot cars...
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Any suggestions?
 
WOW I am impressed at what the kids came up with. There may be an issue at the red circle. I guess you can't lengthen at the green lines because that would throw off the crossing and the race track.

school project.jpg

Building up the rocks and stuff may take some time but that is what we have. Great work, lasm
 
Fortunately, there's at least three students who are so into model trains and are good with hands on things... if not for them, this can be a daunting task. We will try to extend the green section... the red section is an end and it clears the other track... we are figuring out how to device our own risers... the woodland scenic ones are quite pricey... we do have some piers but it may not mix well with the scenery...
 
burakol said:
we are figuring out how to device our own risers... the woodland scenic ones are quite pricey... we do have some piers but it may not mix well with the scenery...
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There are several different ways to do this. To incorporate into your scenery, you can use foam, the sturdy kind that is 1 or 2" thick and comes in 4 x 8' sheets; There are often a lot of scraps around house building sites, risers can be made (cut) from the foam and shaped, I calculate you want about 1/4" per foot to get the recommended 2% grade.

I used thin plywood for the roadbed and 1x4 wood blocks on mine. I made a video showing this and it is my #2 layout construction video. There are also a bunch on youtube with different methods.

There are lots of ways to make the hills and mountain type features, too. Foam, card board and paper, screen door screen and sheet rock mud, also a commercial Woodlands scenics product which is pricey but easy, fast, and nice looking.

I think the hardest part is sometimes with deciding the method you want to use. For me, it has always been what materials do I have available. lasm
 
Dave, thank you. Here are some more pics of the progress... we were able to find some piers from the track pile we have so we thought to use them... btw, should we still lay down a trackbed if the rails are on the pier? we may also put another loop next to the outer loop but with a raised effect and will be isolated in intself...

Oh and to cut some cost, i thought we can do away without laying a styrofoam...?
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we hot glued the tracks today... we did notice that the steamers we have would not run without any issues of derailment... i think the curves are toot tight? as far as the diesels go, our f3 and f7 runs better but we have to fix some spots... should the tracks on the joiner section be close together, or a small gap is ok? we may need to rework the tracks since there are some sections that has gaps between them...
 
Track is the one place where you need to go slowly and make sure that everything fits. A little bit of gap is ok to allow for metal expansion and contraction, but you don't need much and not at every joint. You may also need some new rail joiners to make sure electrical contact is maintained.

Brass track needs more cleaning than nickel silver does. I'd suggest cleaning the track on a regular schedule if you and the kids can do it.
 
Thank you for the suggestion about the cleaning part... We took the piers down and decided to keep the tracks flat for now to minimize the issues... hopefully once we get all the engines to run smoothly then we can start getting fancy...
 
Here's a quick video we took... the last sec was an epic derail but for the most part, the trains seem to run fine needing only minor tweakings... we may rework the 2nd and 3rd inner line for a more smooth transition on the curve...

We ditched the slot car crossing due to space consideration and layout design, but we will still include the slot cars in the layout...

Working layout 1: http://youtu.be/-Itab6mJM2g
 
What we are finding is that the passenger cars that derailed was too light to begin with... plus the fact that the inner most track is not glued down may affected the derailment... certainly a work in progress. We are just pleased that the two outer loop was working...

It also seems impossible to run some steamers on the layout we have due to the tight curves...
 
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