Quick Review: AnyRail free layout design software

Great free software for designing your layout.

Pros: very easy to use, fast learning curve; built-in template libraries for just about every track manufacturer and scale; free!

Cons: built-in templates for structures and scenery are very limited; drawing/graphics limited to polygons or compound curves filled with solid colors

Fantastic resource for printing out custom wood, masonry, and other tileable textures

Spiral Graphics is offering two free programs that generate seamless tileable textures. If you model with card or paper, or want to print your own texture sheets to cover other materials, you must have these.

The first program is the Genetica Viewer, which has a built-in library of textures, including many of interest for structures, floors, roads, etc. Though the free viewer version of Genetica does not allow you to create new textures from scratch (a rather complicated process involving defining and connecting algorithmic units together), you can alter quite a few parameters of the inbuilt textures including the density, hue, contrast, and the random seed which varies the patterns. Your customized texture can then be output to a .jpg or .bmp file, in many different pixel resolutions, for use in drawing, word processing, or illustration software. You'll want to make sure that the file's pixel resolution, once scaled, yields around 300 dots per inch. For example, if the printed texture will have tiles that are each around two inches square, your resolution should not be less than 512X512 pixels. Finally, note that many more free textures can be downloaded one by one from their user forums. If you use BitTorrent, many of these additional textures have been put together in this torrent file.

The second program is their Wood Workshop, which works similarly to the Genetica Viewer but which focuses exclusively on wood textures, with many more customizable parameters. Clapboard and board-and-batten are only the beginning.

The primary users of these programs are those designing 3D objects for computers games or art, but the possibilities for card modeling and texture sheets are truly extraordinary.

Better sound for model railroads

I like sound a lot. Sound is a big part of the railfanning experience, and it can also be an important part of model railroading, but there are problems.

Not that I’m opinionated or anything, but the sound on DCC decoders is just awful. David K. Smith wrote an eloquent piece on this a couple of years back, and I’m going to second and third his motion. There are basically two problems with onboard loco sound: the earbud-sized speakers on the boards aren’t capable of reproducing sound with any kind of fidelity, and even if they could (or even if you piped the sound output of a decoder through a separate amp and speakers), the 8-bit sound digitization on the board is akin to the sound in a plastic child’s toy.

I think it’s easy to get hung up on the idea that a loco’s sound must originate from exactly the same place as the loco, and I’d like to refute this notion. As modelers, we don’t duplicate reality exactly, but rather we design and build heightened and augmented versions of it, with certain things emphasized and other things de-emphasized. Next time you watch a movie, note how the synced sound consists mainly of dialogue and Foley (footsteps, explosions, etc), with much of the sonic environment being “wild” or unsynchronized.

So, what to do if you’re interested in a realistic, high quality, immersive sonic atmosphere for your pike? You can make (if you’re handy with digital audio software and have access to a sound library) or buy a basic environmental sound mix containing country, city, and industrial noises, have these on audio CDs or other playback hardware, and reproduce them through a decent amp, with decent speakers behind or below your layout.

But what about the loco sounds? Time to think outside the box:

1. If your layout (or one part of a large layout) is a yard or industrial switching area, augment your environmental sound mix with occasional and random slow-speed loco movements, brake, coupler, bell, and horn sounds, so that the loco you’re controlling becomes just part of a larger sphere of activity. This can be amazingly effective, even though there is no loco “sync sound.”
2. If you must have specific sync sound for the loco you’re operating, you could compile a collection of around a dozen key loco sound sequences (station halt, comin’ ‘round the bend, distant and close horn blows, etc) as audio files on a computer. Then use software to trigger these sounds; do this concurrently while you operate the loco. Combine the computer’s sound output with the basic environmental mix, and route this to two good speakers in a stereo pair under the layout, or above it. Again, the overall psychological effect of good, balanced, immersive sound far outweighs being able to have the sound come from a precise location of the layout.
3. Don’t use loco sounds, make do with the natural clickety-clack on your model rails.

Remember that, like everything visual on your layout, sound also needs to be to scale. This means using very low volume levels: imagine that as you peer down at your layout, how loud would the sounds be if this was the real world and you were floating in the sky looking down?

Finally, note that our ears are much less sensitive to bass and treble at lower volume levels. Your amp (or CD player) may have a “loudness” function, which compensates for this by boosting bass and treble. This keeps the sound fuller without making it louder. Use it if you have it.

My favorite electronics vendors

Here is a short list of electronics vendors that sell items of interest for hobbyists. If nothing else, the sites are fun to browse. Note that I am not financially affiliated with any of these vendors.

• Deal Extreme
• Hobby Engineering
• Gizmo's Zone
• All Electronics
• Futurlec
• SparkFun
  

How about a layout on an ironing board?

A discussion group to which I belong recently started talking about building a small layout on an ironing board. I think this is brilliant. A typical ironing board is a bit over four feet long, about a foot wide at the fat end, tapering at the narrow end. In N scale, that's enough space for the narrow end to be a switching headshunt, with enough width at the fat end to include both an Inglenook/small yard, and a small industrial switching district.

Other thoughts:

• Most boards are covered in fabric with felt underneath, so no need for raised roadbed, which you don't usually see anyway in small yards and switching districts.
• Built-in folding legs, easy out-of-the-way storage when not in use.
• Build the headshunt track to extend just fractionally beyond the tapered end, then later build a second ironing board layout, connect them, and you've got a two-piece modular layout over eight feet long! The second layout could contain a town, passenger station, and freight house, and maybe one more large-ish industry.
  

Ridiculously simple and good-looking roads, lots, and pavement

For roads, lots, and pavement, sandpaper is your friend. You can easily trim it to any size and shape you want, from narrow road to large lot. You can cut it to fit between the rails for street running or grade crossings.

Start by selecting a grade of sandpaper suitable to what you're modeling. Fine is good for sidewalks and parking lots, while coarse is better for streets and roads. The extra thickness and height of the coarse paper also looks good at grade crossings.

If you're simulating a dirt road, the sandpaper is probably already the proper color. Otherwise, you'll want to paint the sandpaper with two coats of cheap craft store acrylic paint. For pavement or asphalt try shades of gray to dark gray. For concrete, use your eyes when selecting the paint. I use a shade called Bamboo.

After your painted sandpaper has been installed (cut and glued down), get creative with weathering. A technique I like is drydabbing. Like drybrushing, your paint brush has been wiped almost totally dry, with just a tiny amount of paint left, but instead of stroking use quick stabs and dabs. Drydab with colors just a shade or two removed from your pavement/concrete color.

I also like to use Bragdon weathering powders to simulate the soft streaks left on roads by tires and spills.

Finally, use a fine-tipped permanent marker to add cracks and tar patches.

Perhaps these are the cheapest and easiest layout baseboards you can find

In a word (two words actually): folding tables. The pre-built kind, which you can get through Amazon and lots of other places. Adhere your pink/blue foam or other subroadbed/scenery base to the tabletop, and you've got an inexpensive and (probably, choose wisely) lightweight layout that folds up when not in use.

I've noticed there are some common sizes which seem particularly well suited for N scale, including 30" X 72", 2' X 4', and 34" square. There are even some round folding tables, but they're pricier.

A cheap wood frame for us non-carpenter types

I wrote earlier about using pre-stretched art canvas from an art supply store as a baseboard. What if you want to take a frame-and-profile, or "cookie cutter," approach to constructing your base and terrain, and if, like me, you don't like cutting and assembling wood?

How about starting with that same sturdy pre-stretched art canvas, and just unstapling and removing the canvas? Instant wood frame. To this you can hot-glue foam board or styrofoam profiles for the front, back, and sides, as well as for your track bed and any flat areas. Then just add your chicken wire or cardboard webbing, plaster cloth or glueshell, etc.

Save the canvas of course, you never know how you may be able to use it later!

Two solutions for lightweight baseboards

I recently constructed two small layouts using two different alternative baseboards, with good results.

The first was a 2' X 3' N scale layout built on a pre-stretched art canvas, obtainable in art supply stores. Overall I was happy with the results; the canvas is lightweight and sturdy, and takes paint and glue really well. Planting trees posed a problem which I overcame by gluing some styrofoam pieces to the reverse side, providing a thicker base for the tree stems. It was also pointed out to me that over time, if the layout is hung on a wall for storage (which seems kind of natural), the canvas may stretch. I populated my layout with very lightweight scenery and structures, but I suppose time will tell.

More recently I committed heresy by building a shelf switcher using the type of styrofoam you're not supposed to use, namely the expanded/beaded white styrofoam (as opposed to the blue or pink extruded kind). The entire 1' X 3' base is two inches thick; I obtained it at a craft supply store. My secret weapon was to coat the top, bottom, and side surfaces with lightweight spackle from the hardware store. After it dried I sanded it flat. This filled in the bumpy surface of the styrofoam and added extra strength. It's also a cinch to cut grooves for running wire, you just lay in the wire then cover with more spackle. This type of baseboard has the advantage of being extremely lightweight; if you're building a small layout that may need to be shipped, I think this is a great solution.