Model Railroading Diversion

I'm still slowly recovering from last week's attempt at a 'routine' colonoscopy which was anything but routine and only resulted in anaphylaxis and more than a week (at this point) of recovery. Overall, I'm still sticking close to the bathroom and I'm still feeling rather lousy. Considering all of this, I'm really not getting much accomplished and what little I do attempt to accomplish is on a rather small scale. In this case, it is 1/4" scale!

I suspected I would need a long recovery from this procedure even if all went well so I had already stocked up on some supplies to accomplish a small model railroading project, little by little, as I felt up to it. So, by doing a little bit each day, I've been making a bit of headway on a long overdue model railroading project. 

What prompted this project is that I needed a few different test tracks. As I was coming up with ideas on the best way to do this while also trying to save space I decided to combine test tracks with display tracks for our mantle. This little project also provided me with a way to test some ideas for making my own track for a larger model railroad sometime in the future (one step at a time).  

I attempted this project about a year ago but ran into problems. The track wouldn't stay glued down so that plan ended up being a failure. The rails and ties just fell apart and were all over the place. I needed to come up with a new plan. 

This time, I glued some O scale narrow gauge track to a solid wood board. I beveled the edges of the board to resemble typical track roadbed. I glued the track to the board using caulking this time and it seemed to work just fine. Then, I experimented with different painting techniques. 

When you buy model railroad track, the ties are often a shiny brown plastic. It looks okay but it is still rather toy-like in appearance due to the unrealistic shine on what should be wood ties. I tried different colors and settled on a flat camouflage brown spray paint. This proved to be a tremendous improvement over the shiny ties so, for now, it will do. Eventually, I'd like to figure out the most realistic way to add some weathering to the ties too but it looks great as it is with just the flat spray paint. At some point in the future, I will experiment again with different colors of paint as well as chalks. For now, I'll stick with the flat camo brown.

The next display test track was to be in standard gauge O scale but I would make this track a dual gauge track so it can display or run standard O scale trains as well as narrow gauge O scale trains. To make this even more complicated, I wanted to be able to test both 2 rail trains and three rail trains. This meant I needed to design my own track and hand lay the track myself. 

To simplify hand laying the O scale track, I chose to purchase a good quality two rail track... remove every fourth tie then insert a real wood tie in its place. The wood ties would allow me to spike down a middle rail. This middle rail would be spaced for narrow gauge so it would be slightly off center but it would still be close enough to center to work for three rail O scale trains. 

This photo, below, shows the narrow gauge display track, at the top, already glued in place. The track at the bottom shows the standard gauge track glued in place with the every-fourth-tie wood tie glued in place too.  

In this next photo, I started spiking down the middle rail. It is a little bit tedious but it goes faster than you would think.

In the next photo, you can see the middle rail spiked on each side of the rail... plus, you can see a narrow gauge box car sitting on the narrow gauge side of the track...

Unpainted, the track still looks a bit zebra-like and strange...

The narrow gauge boxcar rolls smoothly over my handlaid track... success!

Once painted, the track starts to appear like real railroad track...

The realism of this track due to the paint job becomes more apparent when viewed from above in good light. This photo, below, really looks great! You can see a lot of detail in the track here and the only thing that is shiny is the tops of the rails!

The great thing about this is that I can even test HO scale trains on either of these tracks because HO scale has the same rail spacing as this O scale narrow gauge (On30... which is a 2 1/2 foot gauge).  So, I can test HO scale trains, O scale narrow gauge trains, two rail O scale trains, and three rail O scale trains...

The shine off the top of the rails contrasts nicely with the ties that now look like real railroad brown ties...

Next, I need to add ballast to each of these displays. I think I have decided on how to model the ballast. We'll see how that goes. Ballasted or not, these tracks can now be used as test tracks or display tracks. They will look far nicer once ballasted though.