DIY railroad rails. How to make a model of a railway with your own hands

Table

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You will need space for the layout. Ideally, this should be a separate table, but you can get by with a small table, or just a fenced-off area on any suitable surface. It all depends on your desire and scope. I recommend starting with a small place - for example, a part of the table, and then, if inspired, make a large layout. It is better to start small than to take on a large amount of work right away and leave it half way.

Starter kit

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Without which it will not be possible to make a model of the railway - this is the railway itself. Or rather -, and for him, or just ready-made models of railways.

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Sketch

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To know where you are heading, you need to have a goal in front of your eyes. Make a rough sketch on paper - where what should be, and what the general appearance of your layout will be. Browse the internet, look at the many railroad layouts and take notes on what you like -,. You can make a layout of a half-station in the Wild West, or you can make a station in the center of a modern city. But be sure to decide before you get to work. And make markings on the table so as not to suddenly find that the track goes beyond the boundaries of the table, or that it will cling to a passing train.

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The mountains

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Through which the train will pass will be the decoration of the layout. To create a small mountain, you will need polyurethane foam, plywood, a knife, alabaster and sandpaper.

First, think over and, if possible, draw a sketch of the future mountain. Then knock a small box of plywood or other suitable material over the rails. Make sure that the size of the box will allow your train to pass freely through the tunnel. Then start applying the foam around the box, with pauses of one and a half to two hours, to allow the layers to dry and not sag under their own weight. After applying the required amount of foam, leave it to dry for at least a day.

In a day, pick up a knife (more convenient - a clerical one), and start picking the mountain - cut off the extra pieces, giving it the shape you have planned. Cut out depressions, crevices, try to make it as natural as possible.

Then you will need alabaster. Dilute it with water, and cover the entire mountain with a thin layer of up to 3 mm. It dries quickly, so dilute it in small batches. Then wait a few hours again until everything hardens - it is better not to use a hairdryer.

Now we need to paint over the mountain with gray. To do this, buy a primer cylinder in any car dealer, the color of gray stone, and you can paint your mountain. Just test the paint on something else first to make sure the color is right for you.

Then use sandpaper and rub in some places on the mountain to remove the layers of primer here and there. This will make the mountain more naturalistic, so that it is not a uniform color, but a shade from light to dark gray. You can repeat painting and sanding several times until you get what works for you. You can also paint individual pieces of the mountain white or black for more believability.

Finally, take a green paint and tint the pieces of the mountain in the color of greenery - so it will be even more naturalistic. Only the paint should be a believable, mossy color.

Your mountain (or slide) is ready. Congratulations, you have already done a fair amount of work. The next step is the rest of the relief details.

Here everything depends on your imagination, the size of the free space and the suitable details that you have. Fill an unoccupied table surface with, for example, a dummy that is sold in stores.

Toy railways are inherently associated with childhood. Many of us at a young age used to have a plastic or iron railroad prefab. And those who could boast of a foreign-made model were considered lucky.

In modern times, the toy railroad hobby has grown into a major modeling industry. Moreover, this business is already more focused on an adult audience than on children.

Trees, houses, roads, cars, relief surroundings were added to the main attributes - a track and a locomotive with trailers. And a table with a full-fledged model of a railway, with many details and trifles, is already a real art.

Abroad, such products cost from 2 thousand dollars, but in this article I will tell you how to make a full-fledged model of a toy railway with your own hands.

Table

You will need space for the layout. Ideally, this should be a separate table, but you can get by with a small table, or just a fenced-off area on any suitable surface. It all depends on your desire and scope. I recommend starting with a small place - for example, a part of a table, and then, if inspired, make a large layout. It is better to start small than to take on a large amount of work right away and leave it half way.

Starter kit

Without which it will not be possible to make a model of the railway - this is the railway itself. Or rather, a set of rails, a train and a power supply system for it. Here, alas, there are no alternatives - all this needs to be bought. It's good that nowadays the market has a lot to choose from.

Sketch

To know where you are heading, you need to have a goal in front of your eyes. Make a rough sketch on paper - where what should be, and what the general appearance of your layout will be. Browse the Internet, look at the numerous models of railways and take note of what you like - bridges, crossings, houses, stations. You can make a layout of a half-station in the Wild West, or you can make a station in the center of a modern city. But be sure to decide before you get to work. And make markings on the table so as not to suddenly discover that the track goes beyond the boundaries of the table, or that the barrier will cling to a passing train.

The mountains

The presence of a mountain, with a tunnel through which the train will pass, will be the decoration of the layout. To create a small mountain, you will need polyurethane foam, plywood, a knife, alabaster and sandpaper.

First, think over and, if possible, draw a sketch of the future mountain. Then knock a small box of plywood or other suitable material over the rails. Make sure that the size of the box will allow your train to pass freely through the tunnel. Then start applying the foam around the box, with pauses of one and a half to two hours, to allow the layers to dry and not sag under their own weight. After applying the required amount of foam, leave it to dry for at least a day.

In a day, pick up a knife (more convenient - a clerical one), and start picking the mountain - cut off the extra pieces, giving it the shape you have planned. Cut out depressions, crevices, try to make it as natural as possible.

Then you will need alabaster. Dilute it with water, and cover the entire mountain with a thin layer of up to 3 mm. It dries quickly, so dilute it in small batches. Then wait a few hours again until everything hardens - it is better not to use a hairdryer.

Now we need to paint over the mountain with gray. To do this, buy a primer cylinder in any car dealer, the color of gray stone, and you can paint your mountain. Just test the paint on something else first to make sure the color is right for you.

Then use sandpaper and rub in some places on the mountain to remove the layers of primer here and there. This will make the mountain more naturalistic, so that it is not a uniform color, but a shade from light to dark gray. You can repeat painting and sanding several times until you get what works for you. You can also paint individual pieces of the mountain white or black for more believability.

Finally, take green paint and tint the pieces of the mountain in the color of greenery - so it will be even more naturalistic. Only the paint should be a believable, mossy color.

Your mountain (or slide) is ready. Congratulations, you have already done a fair amount of work. The next step is the rest of the relief details.

Here everything depends on your imagination, the size of the free space and the suitable details that you have. Fill an unoccupied table surface with, for example, a dummy turf that is available in stores. Toy houses, figures of people, transport, railway crossing, train station with station, bridge, trees - these are all those details that will decorate your model. Many of them can be found in Lego blocks, or simply individually in toy stores. Railroad modeling firms also sell great kits, but be prepared to spend a lot if this is the case.

You can make a model on a large table, with lots of details, relief terrain, electric drive and a real town in miniature. But you can also make a small model - a battery-powered train, with a small area of ​​the landscape and a few decorative elements.

Whichever option you choose, the model you have made will adorn any home and be interesting to any company - both children and adults.

Many articles have been written on this topic, but I decided to write my own and below I will explain why ...

I will say right away that until recently I had no experience in building a model of a railway. Searching for the necessary information on the Internet gave little. Some articles "bypassed the basics" and immediately "jumped on difficulties" such as: "and now we will make mountains" ... or the proposed layouts were super complicated: they were immediately offered to master the Autocad program. In other articles, the emphasis was on some trifles like: “ You will need a hammer ...“, That's all the valuable information. All found articles did not correspond to our goals and objectives. I had everything myself in person ask and pry in stores and, of course, amateurs.

Family tradition

Let's go back 12 years. In the photo below, in a communal apartment in St. Petersburg, I play with my son Alyosha on the railroad, which my father gave me many, many years ago, when I was still in elementary school!

Yes, you can’t say anything, the quality and reliability of PIKO has been tested by time. After all, almost every weekend my son and I assembled, disassembled, designed ... And when our family moved again, each time the box with my father's gift was the first on the list of things for the move. Only we had to leave it ... and again with my father in the village, it is intact to this day!

Goals and objectives of our future layout

The main goal: psychomotor development of the child.

That's why copy number , the beauty (yes, such that you cannot touch it with your hands) and unnecessary complexity fade into the background. But this does not mean that we have to make a "simple circle" and "stupidly drive" the train around this circle ... In other words, we need to make the layout as functional and interesting as possible for the child.

Our tasks:

• development of fine motor skills: coupling and uncoupling of wagons, loading and unloading, construction of various objects on the layout itself and many other small operations;
• development of thinking and problem solving: this is something like a puzzle, for example, you need to remove a car from the middle of the train (not just by hand, of course, but by maneuvers) and leave it on the side tracks (so as not to interfere) or for loading and unloading. It seems elementary, but believe me, such a task can sometimes "strain" an adult too;
• interaction of the child with other players: for example, a child controls a train, stops the train, and asks another player to switch the switch. Or a child adjusts the train exactly to the place of loading, waits for another player to load the carriage and then transports this cargo;
• the acquisition of knowledge: to give an idea of ​​the different modes of transport and their interaction. Transportation of various goods (for people we will use a passenger carriage, for bulky goods - a platform, etc.). "Combined" transportation, for example, we will load something into a container (directly inside this container), then transport the container itself and then unload it at the place of arrival.

This list can of course be continued endlessly ...

The foundation

Let's talk very briefly about the base: rails, a locomotive, wagons and a power unit.

The most common and convenient scale is H0 or 1:87 (~ 90-95% of all railway models). Note that it can be written as the letter "H" and zero (more correctly), but also as the letter "H" and the letter "O". The track width is 16.5 mm. Remember scale "H0"[" Ash zero "or" heych zero "] - search, ask, buy only this scale!

There is one more detail. As you know, there are straight rails, and there are curved rails. So, this "degree of curvature" is measured by the radius. Those. if we assemble a circle from curved rails, then we can measure the radius. If you only plan to use a small two-axle locomotive, then there is no problem. But if you use large six-axle (two bogies on three axles), then it will not be able to drive with a small radius... It is like a truck with a long trailer cannot drive on a road with sharp turns. I will not bother you with this, tk. different manufacturers may have different “curvature” markings. You just have to remember this.

It is good if you have purchased a ready-made set, and from it you can assemble not just " circle" or " ov al ", and it contains arrows, dead ends ... But what if you need to assemble yourself from scratch? First you need to decide what size the layout will be (see below). Then you need to make a sketch of it on paper. And then the drawing can be made in full size. And if you already have rails, collect them directly on the drawing and outline. With this huge "picture", you can already walk around and select the missing rails, simply by attaching them to the drawing! By the way, now there are flexible rails on sale, bend as you want, i.e. you can put one of these instead of 4-6 ordinary ones, and the most important thing is that this long rail can be, at your request, either straight or curved, exactly repeating all your fantasies on the drawing!

The simplest and cheapest is analog model of the railway. Everything is simple here: we let current on the rails (minus on one rail, plus on the other) and the locomotive goes, because it has an electric motor. They stopped the supply of current - the locomotive stopped, changed the polarity - the locomotive went in the other direction. Recently appeared digital control... In this case, the rails are energized all the time, but the peculiarity is that a command is sent to the locomotive (along the same rails), so that, for example, the engine turns on, or the light, etc. Each locomotive is assigned its own unique code. If there are two locomotives (even nearby), then you can control one of them, the other will not respond to these commands. In other words, different formulations can be controlled independently. Such a system is much more complicated and its cost is much higher.
For our purposes and tasks simple, old and reliable analog control with an inexpensive power supply, more than enough.

Where can I buy

On many sites describing the construction of a model, they offer to buy a starter kit right away. If your “chickens don’t peck money” and you are too lazy to do something with your own hands, then this is not a problem (they will do everything instead of you, and by the way ... what have you forgotten here?). It must be borne in mind that the child can break something during the game. In other words, the layout should not be "cheap", but it should not be overly expensive for a child to just look at. In addition, we do not need only identical cars, we need a variety: a platform, a car in which the door opens (for loading), a passenger car, some kind of tank, etc. Therefore, for a start, I would advise you to look for used sets, and already supplement them, if necessary, with both new objects and used ones. Actually such sets are "lying around" in many... In Montreal, where we live, they can be bought at Marché aux puces. There I bought a starter kit for only $ 20 at the regular price of 100 CAD! I've seen a lot of good suggestions here as well: kijiji.ca. But be careful, prices are often unjustified! Very good prices at the Udisco store. You can also buy online, such as ebay.com, but this is mostly for add-ons. By the way, when we lived in St. Petersburg, I saw a lot of things in the Juno market.

Diy railroad model

You can play on the floor, but the assembly of the railway itself will take from 30 to 40 minutes, after which you will no longer have the energy to play with your child. Then the rails will always be disconnected somewhere, while the cars will leave them .. It will be necessary to endlessly put everything back! Also, contact will often be lost, you will need to look for where it does not contact. The child will walk, step on the rails, sweep the objects built by him or even step on the train ... But All this time you will be crawling on all fours(as I am in the photo above). I have already gone through this and it "finished" me ...

Layout size

The requirements for the parameters of the layout were as follows:

• so I can easily rush through the door,
• so that you can put it against the wall (when we are not playing),
• so that during the game you can walk around the layout,
• to make the layout as large as possible,
• so that the child can play calmly "like on the table",
• so that we, adults, do not crawl on all fours and that we do not have to make an appointment with a masseur after such games.

So, we measured a couple of rooms where it was planned to play the railway, figured it out and came to the conclusion that a size of approximately 1.5x2 meters would do. In order not to complicate the design of the layout, we decided to just put it on four stools during the game.

Let's start construction

I bought 8mm plywood. Checking again, I collected all the rails on it and sawed off to the desired size.


On the picture at the bottom You see how the future railway is assembled. In the same way, I assembled rails on plywood before as give it the right size. The railway should be made as rich and interesting as possible (if possible), and not just a "circle" or "oval". Plan different branches, sidings. Of course, you want “the railroad to be bigger,” but you need to leave some distance at the edges so that the locomotive or carriages do not fall to the floor when they derail. In addition, it is easier for a child to design and play on the edge of the model, he can build different objects there, there may be a road, etc.


Such a large plywood will deform both due to its gravity and due to the fact that the child will lean on it during the game. And when the plywood is deformed, the rails will deform. In this regard, on the reverse side, you need to make reinforcement. By the way, this reinforcement will also help protect the wires if you want to put any additional electrical objects (like traffic lights, lights or make arrows so that they can be switched remotely).


I thought for a long time how to cover this whole layout. At first I just wanted to paint it with paint, but it would not look very beautiful. The professionals themselves, who build complex layouts of the railway, cover everything with PVA glue, and sprinkle a special "grass" on top. But I settled on a special vinyl mat (Woodland scenics) that I saw in the store. I do not think that this is ideal, perhaps even some kind of fabric is better suited, BUT keep in mind that this the fabric must not build up static electricity!


I was assured that this mat adheres well and was advised to use a specific adhesive. Seeing an elderly seller in front of me, with a seriously professional expression on his face, I certainly believed him. "Cool" scientific glue turned out to be simple PVA in our understanding! And as it turned out later, the plastic did not stick normally. So be careful, double-check the advice, even if it is given with a serious air 🙂

I additionally nailed the edge of the mat to the slats with staples. In addition, the mat will be held by the rails, because we lay the rails on the mat and nail them through it to the plywood.

Now we will consider how we will lay the rails, for some reason everyone ignores this important point... You can immediately nail the rails onto the model, but the vibration from the train may increase, especially since we have plywood, which will not effectively extinguish it and light cars can go off the rails. Therefore, a kind of bedding is placed under the rails in the form of an embankment. This The "rail pad" is called ballast. By the way, at first I thought it was purely for beauty, until they explained it to me. Ballast is often made from cork, in my case the ballast consisted of two halves, which made the task easier. First, we assemble all the rails on the breadboard, as expected, connecting them with contact terminals. We try to make the joints as invisible as possible. And then we plant them with special studs through special holes in the sleepers (see photo below).

Then we raise the rails like in the photo below ...

And we put the ballast under the rails. Next, we apply PVA on the layout (but not on the rails) where the ballast will be and carefully lay it down step by step, repeating the configuration of the canvas. And we pin it with pins. Be careful with the glue, I got it on the arrow, I had to switch it for a very long time so as not to stick it! 🙂

Further, there is also an important point. Having laid any area, we press down neatly (!!!) rails and hammer in a carnation. VERY IMPORTANT:the head of the stud should not be pressed tightly against the sleeper! There should be a very small distance between the head of the stud and the tie, approximately the thickness of whatman paper or thick paper.

In the next article we will show you this in-game layout and tell you about our future plans.

1. PIKO is a German company that produces everything for railway modeling, was organized back in the GDR and is still one of the leading in the world.
2. "Copies" is a term ... Many people make models of railways very similar to their prototype, ie. copy. At the same time, trains are assembled so that the locomotive and the cars fit each other in terms of time of use, place of use ...
3. Remember that children can play with each other (or with adults), starting from about four years old, meaning interaction, for example, one child “drove up” in a car, waited while another loaded it and “drove” on. Before that, they play "in parallel", you can put it this way: "in the same sandbox, but not with each other."

Here is the basic layout of the HO.
We have made a new layout. Continuation of the topic .

Soon the New Year, and it is better to prepare for it in advance - including on the model :) Therefore, I made a New Year diorama for myself in my favorite scale - TT.

The diorama turned out to be 20 * 20 cm in size. The diorama is made on a homemade "box" made of plastic.

The tree is made of a brass tube with soldered wire branches. The needles are the usual NOH-ovsky tinted flock.

The height of the tree without a star is 13 cm. Christmas decorations - different beads. The rain is a real rain, slightly clipped. The star is cut from a piece of plastic and sprinkled with shiny powder. On the tree there are four luminous garlands of SMD LEDs in case 0603, 11 in each. Garlands can blink (a primitive circuit on a transistor and a capacitor), there are two modes: normal - simple glow, and blinking.

Snow is made from regular baking soda mixed with diluted PVA glue. The paving stones in the square are from Auchagen.

Ice luminous cubes - molded from plasticine and copied from transparent resin CrystalLine 940. Blue and white LEDs are "molded" into resin.
Figures - Preiser, self-painted. Figures are not enough - in TT "winter" in general, few are produced. I think I'll remake more of the "summer" figures ...

Decorative gifts under the tree - cut out of cardboard and pasted over with paper from candy wrappers.

Machine - "Moskvich" from Herpa. The snowman is made of foam balls.

In general, the process of creating the square took a month - mainly in the evenings and weekends. If only I didn't have to go to work ... :)

The houses in the photo are not part of the diorama - they are just set for the background.

Day area

Christmas tree on four sides:

And here is Ippolit Georgievich :)

Square at night

Photos taken with different exposure

Photo of the process

Christmas tree frame. After soldering, I painted the frame green.

Christmas tree with flock. The flock has not yet been painted in the desired color.

Most of the modellers who are keen on copying railway equipment have to deal with sets from the company "Pico" (GDR). They are all good, but the total length of paths that can be collected from one set can satisfy only at the very first stages. But what if you got a taste and decided to take railway modeling seriously? Purchase new and new sets to take only pieces of canvas from them? Not the most rational way.

It will be much better if you approach the problem as a true modeller and get down to business yourself. We recommend using the original method of making tracks, proposed and successfully tested by A. Kerget from Kaliningrad.

For the manufacture of rails, a ready-made copper bus with a cross section of 2X3 mm is best suited. This "wire" is widely used for stator windings of electric motors and for power transformers. Cut off the tire to the required length, remove the insulation from it. For this, the conductor is placed on the anvil and gently tapped from all sides with gentle blows of a light hammer. It is now enough to scrape the corners with a sharp knife so that the workpiece is cleaned.

The next step, leveling, is done with a heavier hammer on the same anvil. The main thing here is not to flatten the wire. The final alignment is done manually.

Sleepers - strips of 4X30 mm made of foil-clad fiberglass. It is enough just to remove the burrs from the workpieces and clean the edges.

Now it's the turn to assemble the canvas. If the railway is intended to be non-stationary, then it is better to use sections with a length of 500 or 1000 mm. For a half-meter track, 60 fiberglass strips will be needed (the pitch of the sleepers is 8.0 mm). To accurately reproduce the track dimensions, you will have to saw an auxiliary gauge block out of hardwood or metal. Having fastened the blanks of the rails to the bar (the distance between the individual windings is equal to the step between the rails), we successively press the blanks of the sleepers with the foil up, moisten the seams with flux and solder them. It is best to use a 65 W soldering iron, radio-technical solder and a flux made up of 1 part rosin and 3 parts industrial alcohol. Soldering must be carried out quickly so that the thin foil does not peel off from the textolite base. It remains to wash off the remnants of the flux - the section of the path will be ready. Check the straightness of the rails again. It is completely pointless to edit them in assembly, and in case of failure it is easier to rebuild the assembly. To insulate the current-carrying bus wires, the foil on the sleepers is cut in the middle along the canvas.

Contact joints of joints. The spike part is formed by filing the rails, and before making the contact socket, you will first have to unsolder the two outer sleepers. Having measured 8 mm from the nearest of the remaining sleepers, the rail is cut off, the remaining section is sawn off to a section of 1.0X2.5 mm. We bend a groove from tinned tin from cans (on a mandrel of two compressed hacksaw blades). The outer dimensions of the groove bent from a workpiece 8X18 mm must exactly repeat the section of the main rail. Then we mount it on a shortened conductor and solder it together with one removed tie. The second can be soldered only after the free section of the groove is pressed from below in accordance with the mating spike part of the contact connection.