#t-trak

[eltristan]

[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…

[tsugi-no-eki-wa-desu]

I've come up with some different T-Trak corner module designs using the original 210mm module depth. Which do you prefer the look of? I'm currently debating between the left and middle modules, as they allow more background scenery than the right-hand one.

[trainsinanime]

I built a new model railroad module over the christmas break. It’s in N scale, and follows the T-Trak standard. The landscape and tunnel are vaguely inspired by what I saw in a (fairly boring) TV series about the Alaska Railroads a few years back. For the pictures, I’m using a Canadian Pacific SD90MAC (by Kato), because my Alaska Railroads SD70M isn’t here at the moment. Yes, I did forget to put the number plates in. You can also see the Athearn (or was it Atlas?) articulated triple-deck auto carrier, which I use to evaluate tunnel clearance.

Here’s some overviews over the entire thing:

Ignore the trees in autumn colours, they belong to other modules (not all of which are finished yet), and the section of track I put at the end is just so I have more freedom positioning things for the photos.

Overall, I’m really happy with how this turned out. I’ll write some more about how I built this in detail, but that requires more images, so I’ll do that as a reblog.

[eltristan]