Thought I'd actually post some pics of my TrakMat layout, you may have already seen it on most of the other forums, but thought it would be nice to share it here as well.
I will start with why I have done this, so it becomes a little clearer for some of choices.
Sometime ago, reading one of the forums I came across this:
"Just got back from the WHOLE day at the show, we were reasonably pleased with the layouts present although, many of them seemed a long way off what I remember exhibition standards used to be, but it is around 7-8 years since I last attended a Model show, I enjoyed the trade presence and found lots of little goodies but no major purchases.
One last thing, my 11 year old son has just summed his day up with " Really enjoyed it Dad, but not sure I will go again, totally "fed up" (not the words he really used ) of being pushed out of the way by Ignorant Smelly Old Men".
Now that got me thinking and It really did hit home how inconsiderate some people can be.
So I thought about making a layout just for the kids, as most exhibitions I've been to if they don't supply a box for them to stand on they can't even see the layout!
So the seeds were set, it also had to meet certain criteria that I had set myself:-
1. I wanted it to be amusing for the kids so I thought Thomas the tank engine and friends always onto a winner!
2. I not only wanted them to see it but also have a go a playing trains, the easiest way for me to do this was to make it DCC operated.
3. I have loads of Scalscenes kits so all buildings had to be made from the kits I had or scratch built.
4. As I already have a 'train-room' It had to be fairly small so I also went for N-gauge.
5. I wanted the layout to be fairly easy and straight forward so that if any parents saw it they could think, yeh I could do that. As I'm pretty sure that after they have strolled around an exhibition the quality of the layouts is enough to put anybody off!
Thinking I'm never going to get anything to lool like that!
So that little lot was my target!
1. First the layout, fairly obvious really to me......the Hornby TrakMat, lets be right mum and dad go out at Christmas buy little Johnny his first Hornby trainset and it will be the TrakMat, it just so Happens Hornby do a Thomas TrakMat as well!!
This is the OO Thomas TrakMat, the only difference between this and the other TrakMat that comes with the other sets, is the locos that are run on it!
I thought this would be perfect, kids can have Thomas running about when they want to play, then dad can get his grown up locos out when he wants ago!
Click on the images for a bigger picture.
So there was the plan, a full TrakMat including all accessory packs A-F, with aq bit of working out copied this layout but using all set-track in N-gauge.
Which gave me my N-gauge TrakMat Layout:-
I started laying the track, but fitted the point motors to the points while building, made sense to do it now so if I wanted to I could power them up later.
I built the baseboards in the usual way, but made the height very low, perfect for my nephew to sit at and play trains!
All of the buildings are Scalescenes, I adapted the terrace houses, to try and give a cottage type feel to them.
The goods shed was scratchbuilt copied from the Hornby one, roughly guessed the sizes but it's not turned out too bad.
The waiting room and shelter came free in the Hornby Magazine but in OO, so with a bit of playing about managed to create a N-gauge version!
Thomas taking James's coaches around the small waiting halt to check for clearance.
Front and rear main waiting room and shelter:-
After reading another forum, saw they had made a transport box! I thought that was an excellent idea so I did the same thing for this.
The front flap I fixed with hinges so this could swing down and hold the controllers, worked much better than I thought it would!!
In the end I went for electric control of points, as it's the EZ-command I used switches and indicator panel, which I actually prefer having used accessory decoders in DCC
I also made them easy to disconnect by fitting 15 way plugs to the back of the control box, the switches are just spring loaded toggles.
The layout nearly complete just the final finishing touches to add, cars and people etc, the main EZ-command will be at the back(top) lefthand corner, surrounded by trees to hide it. It also means if required I can take back control.
To make it really easy I made up ID plates to match the loco numbers as shown below, as Thomas is number one his pic is number 1, to control him just press the button next to number 1 and away you go!
A few snaps of Thomas and friends, these have all been chipped with TCS M1 decoders apart from Percy as he's so small he had to have a CT Elektronic.
My dad sent a loco to Digitrains to have a decoder fitted. It was near his birthday so I called them and asked for a sound decoder to be fitted instead!
He only paid for a standard fit, Chris at Digitrains played blinder and gave him a story, so he didn't know. His face was a picture when he turned the sound on!
Well he bought it over a few weeks ago so I could test it using the EZ-command, as I didn't know what would or wouldn't work, turn the sound up!
This one is Thomas running around the layout!
Hope you enjoy it!
Cheers
Ian
: