Eaglemoss Electric Train collection, Issues #2 & #3

The first package of my Electric Train collection subscription has arrived. Just two weeks after I ordered it. It contains quite a lot of stuff. Here's what I got:

Two issues of the magazine are included. They're pretty similar to issue #1. Each is 16 pages long and follows the same pattern when it comes to content:

• layout building instructions
• a selected locomotive description with a poster
• a train themed article

Issue #2 helps the newbies build a layout base. It's a very basic stuff but it's nicely described.

Issue #3 explains making buildings from plastic parts. Again - useful only for those who never created any model...

The set includes a free magazine holder. How cool is that? Well, not really that cool...

What else? Here comes the interesting part...

Four large pieces of colorful paper are included and these are the "base" for the world. I knew such pieces were coming but I somehow assumed they would only help in positioning the actual terrain, which in turn would be built from scratch. But now it's clear - we're supposed to glue the paper onto the wood. And the paper layer is the actual surface of the layout.

This is a major disappointment. It means the landscape will be very limited. There will be no track ballasting and no roads painting. And most of the look will be based on a paper printout, which is not really a lasting material.

And now the core of the package: a plastic house, a turnout and a lantern.

Let's start with the track piece. It's of a similar quality as the element in issue #1. Meaning: it's not really good but with a little luck it might be good enough. The mechanism in the switch works pretty well, but I really do not like the kind of metal the rails are made of. It reminds me of my childhood layout, which required occasional usage of sandpaper to make the trains run at all...

The lamp is difficult to describe. It looks OKisch. It definitely works and seems to be a 16V light-bulb based model.

Let's take a look at the house. The back of the container reveals a surprise. The company that manufactured the model has a name. And its address is in China.

That's weird. Why are all the parts in one color? Well, it's because it's not a full model. It's only the first batch of elements for this building. The rest is coming later...

I have to say I feel disappointed. It seems I got so much but I can actually do very little. I could start building the base but I'd rather go with a smaller step first. Making a house model would be cool, but I don't have all the needed parts...

Was it worth the money? I'm not convinced. I've paid around $10 for this content and it's really not much at all. But I only got a fraction of what I needed to achieve any sort of a milestone. The building is the best example here: only a chunk of parts is included and I have no idea when the rest is coming. Moreover - I do know that a half of a different building will be included in the next issue. This means I will soon own two buildings, but none of those will be complete...

I guess that's the goal of the series: don't deliver complete elements too early and keep the subscriber attached. I can't say I like it. I'd rather have small successes early which would keep me going forward... Maybe I should rethink the subscription?

Eaglemoss Electric Train collection, Issue #1

Here I am, sitting with my family in a restaurant having lunch on our winter holiday. The food is pretty good, the kids are not being very loud, and the wife seems happy. You could say the only thing missing there is my hobby...

Suddenly a TV-set playing in the background shows the following ad:

What was that? I need to learn more!

I spend the evening going through the webpage: elektrycznakolejka.pl. And I finally understand. A company called Eaglemoss is releasing a series of magazines that will come with elements allowing you to build your own 1:87 scale train layout. 100 issues will be published over a period of two years. And the first issue is available now.

Next morning I'm at a magazine stand and it's there. For 4.90 PLN (~1.15 Eur) I can buy the first Electric Train magazine in the series. And it comes with a piece of a track and an H0 scale passenger car. Obviously I bought it immediately!

And since issue #1 was so cheap, I bought 3 pieces instead of 1. No matter how bad it was going to be, it had to be worth 1 Eur!

Let's take a look at the content...

The back side of the package shows the predicted outcome of the build. I understand this is what I'll be able to create using the parts from all the magazine issues combined together. There's clearly some inconsistency here, since the picture shows two locomotives, and I'm pretty sure I can get only one.

The layout looks simple but it's nice and colorful. It measures 105 x 174 cm.

Here's the H0 scale passenger car included in the set and the straight piece of a track. The coach looks very generic - I guess they design and manufacture just one model and release it across all the countries.

One thing that we can definitely say about the track piece is that it was made in China. It  doesn't look great but it's not completely crappy either. The pieces connect well enough, although you have to pay attention to what you're doing, since the rails are neither 100% straight nor flat.

We can say even less about the car, since it has no markings at all. The wheels are made of plastic, and I think we can safely assume it was made in China, too.

The couplers work well and the cars can be connected and disconnected easily. They roll pretty well, too, considering they were 1 Eur each.

They're also compatible with cars from other manufacturers. No issues spotted here.

In general the car is not as bad as I thought it would be. It's nowhere near German models quality and it's made of a much cheaper plastic. But the overall feeling is pretty good (considering the price!).

Here's what the coach is made of:

About the magazine itself. I have to say this is the biggest disappointment, since issue #1 has almost no content at all!

It mainly focuses around advertising how great the entire collection is going to be...

...what we'll find in the next issue...

...why we should subscribe to receive each issue by mail...

...why we should subscribe to the premium option...

...and what we can do instead, if we don't subscribe.

The real content is a description of a V40 locomotive...

...and a poster featuring that engine.

There's also a historical article about trains in Poland. The nice thing is it features a photo of the main train station in my hometown.

No modelling tips? No good advices? No basic landscaping techniques? I really hoped (and still hope) for more!

Let's try to analyze whether collecting all the issues makes sense at all. Cost wise we're looking at:

• Issue #1: 4.90 PLN
• Issue #2: 14.99 PLN
• Remaining 98 issues: 29.99 PLN each

Total: 2958.91 PLN which is around 680 Euro. That's for a layout of a rather small-medium size but featuring all the landscape elements and a train. Of course not everything is included - the base and some of the tools still need to be provided by the modeller.

Is it worth it? I'd say that depends...

If you're serious about building a layout, you should really spend more and go for well-recognized brands. The collection started with cheap Chinese parts and will most probably continue with those. And I'm really worried what the locomotive will be like...

But if you're not so serious, and you just want to enjoy it together with your kids without fully committing to the hobby, it might be just for you. The Chinese elements included in the first set are good enough for that, and unless the collection takes a wrong turn, the final layout might actually work pretty well.

I have subscribed. I'm curious what it will be like. H0 is not even my scale, so I'm not treating it that seriously. But I really hope to learn something new on the way, and if the collection does not deliver this sort of experience, I can always quit...

DCC Concepts DCM-RRA6: Multi-gauge rolling road

I have previously purchased, reviewed and used a rolling road for my G-Scale models. It's a very useful product, especially for someone who tries to run a train models blog. But of course my webpage is not just about G-Scale and I needed a similar item for my other love - the very small N-scale.

This time I've decided to go for a well-recognized brand. Unfortunately the bigger the name, the higher the price is. My compromise is a product made by a company called DCC Concepts. And the rolling road I decided to buy is an item marked as DCM-RRA6. The Hattons store had it in stock for around £60 which was acceptable considering British Pound's low rate caused by Brexit.

The most advertised feature of this set is its multi-gauge capability. That's why the box contains a collection of elements allowing the modelers to build any rolling road they need. It's even supposed to support the 3-rail Marklin system.

And since we're already mentioning the 3-rail system...The product comes with a small plastic bag which looks like it was added there in the very last moment. The bag contains a piece of metal, three screws and a short wire. I'm not sure yet how to use it (no manual is included) but I bet it has something to do with the Marklin system.

The function of the remaining parts is clear and they allow us to create rolling roads for the following gauges:

• 9 mm (N)
• 12 mm (H0n3-1/2)
• 16.5 mm (HO/OO)
• 18.6 mm (EM/P4)

The set contains enough elements to build 6 rolling road pieces and that's the limit of what we can have at any time. Any combination is however possible, so one could decide to have - for example - 3 N-scale and 3 H0-scale pieces.

The assembly/disassembly is easy. Each piece consists of a plastic spacer and two double rollers attached using a screw. Once the screw is removed, the roller can be installed on another spacer.

The system is simple and permits quick reconfiguration BUT I've noticed it has a disadvantage, too. It's based on metal screws going into plastic parts. Such solution will sooner or later damage the threads inside the spacers and will render the parts unusable. I've actually seen small particles of plastic coming out when unscrewing the elements for the very first time. In other words - I would not recommend changing the configuration very often.

But as long as it works, we can create pieces of any gauge we want...

Let's go back to the mysterious plastic bag for a moment. It is indeed meant for the 3-rail system. And I suspect the solution proposed by the manufacturer is something like this (but still can't be sure, since the manual is nowhere to be found).

My focus however is the N-scale and the Kato Unitrack. For this case the DCC Concepts product works perfectly without the need for any extra tricks.

So how does it perform? I've tried the system with most of my N-scale stock and it worked with every single piece. Not every locomotive is however 100% compatible. For example - any engine featuring small details around its wheels has a chance of not fitting perfectly. It does not break the functionality of the rolling road, since it still works, but I would be careful and always check how the items position themselves together.

One of my locomotives had some contact issues BUT it was the one which always required a very, very clean track. I would not blame the DCC Concepts set here, since every other engine worked perfectly.

I've also discovered something new. When making a video for this post, I wanted to shoot a cool scene with my longest steam engine running on the rolling road. To my surprise, the locomotive turned out to be driven by only two axles and the final movie shot is really not what I wanted. But it only proves how useful this item is for anyone who wants to learn more about their collection.

Anyway, the movie is here. Enjoy!

Difficult installation of a vinyl grass mat [update]

Unfortunately only two weeks after I have installed the vinyl grass mat (described here), I've decided to tear it down. I was too unhappy with the results of my work...

I've found several problem with my installation:

• As already noted in the original post, the glue did not hold throughout the entire surface. There were bubbles of air here or there. Two weeks later there were even more such places. And when the rail track was placed on top of it, it was not flat at all...
• Any attempts to fix the 'air bubbles problem' failed. I also damaged the mat even more in the process. In the end it looked much worse than right after installation...
• I had to drill some holes through the layout and... this revealed how weakly the mat has attached itself to the wood. Drilling caused even more air bubbles to appear and made the surface very "wavy"...

So I decided to tear it down. This brought another surprise, since the removal of the mat did not require any force at all. The mat was barely glued to the wood at all...

I still don't know what I did wrong. The vinyl grass mat does appear to be a nice product. Seems however, that I completely failed to install it properly... :(

Difficult installation of a vinyl grass mat

A few months back I wrote an article about my second N-scale layout which I use as a base for my DCC experiments. This layout by definition was supposed to be just a test track, and therefore I was not planning to do any landscaping work there. However, with time I got tired of the rough look and that's when I created my very first backdrop. Unfortunately this improvement did nothing to the fact that the base of the layout was still just a piece of wood that did not look nice at all.

This is what it looked it like. An OSB-3 base with just some elevated road bed. What it needed next was at least some nice grass-looking surface.

I did use several different techniques to create grass before. And the one that had definitely the best effect/effort ratio involved gluing a pre-fabricated grass mat to the layout surface. That's what I decided to do now, too.

The mats I used before were all paper based with grass flocks of different lengths. They were great for permanent layouts where the track was attached to the surface, and the green elements were placed only between the tracks.

But here I had a test track on a non-permanent layout. And I did not want the rail track to be attached, I wanted to have it freely lying on the grass surface. A mat with flocks was not very good for that purpose. I needed something more flat.

That's when I found out about vinyl mats. Those are not very popular where I live and it was actually pretty difficult to buy one. But once it arrived, I immediately realized that it was exactly what I needed.

The mat I'm describing is a product from Woodland Scenics which is a very popular manufacturer in the US but not so much in Europe.

Since I knew nothing about vinyl mats, I had to gather some knowledge about how to apply it. I've learnt that a spray adhesive would be a proper solution in this case. Here's the one I was able to buy at a local store.

I wanted to get as flat surface as possible. But my layout already had some elevated elements and was simply not flat at all. I had two choices to go about it.

• I could have either glued the mat step by step working around the elevated parts and cutting holes as I proceeded
• Or I could have removed the elevated elements and applied the mat in one step

I've concluded that the latter was too much effort. That it would be very difficult to clean the base and make it really flat again. So I decided to go for the former idea. That might have been a huge mistake...

I've started working from one corner. I've assumed that both my layout and the mat were perfect rectangles and I just glued it at one end. Once it dried a little I started cutting the holes for the elevated areas.

This has been surprisingly easy and I was not noticing any real issues. That was the case right up until the end, when I realized that not everything I did in the process was perfect.

Problem #1 - as I was shaping the mat to accommodate the existing road bed, I was also changing its shape. The vinyl base is similar to rubber and what started as a perfect rectangle in the beginning was not one in the end. This made my final gluing step very difficult.

Problem #2 - I've noticed that in some areas the mat did not attach itself very well. There were clearly bubbles of air under it. If the mat was one continuous piece, I could just pick it up, add glue and fix it. But it wasn't and I could not risk tearing it by pulling it up. More on this issue later.

In the end I've managed to glue the entire mat and it looks pretty good from a distance.

And it looks even better with the backdrop mentioned before.

And for the most part it looks fantastic even up close.

But not everywhere. Here's one of the parts where the glue was either not applied properly or simply did not act very well.

That part is very difficult to fix. The gap is not only at the very edge but reaches far into the field. This means there's an empty space under the area where the rail track will go.

I had to do something about it. The only option I could see was cutting the mat and spraying some glue under it. This did not go well on the first try resulting in the following problem.

I've managed to fix it and it's better now. But unfortunately my actions revealed another issue which I did not predict.

A vinyl grass mat seems very sturdy but it's only an impression. It can get damaged easily either by:

• bending it
• pressing it a lot
• pressing it a little when your hand is dirty with glue

In all those cases the result is the same. The grass layer comes off and reveals the vinyl base.

The paper mats with grass flocks also get damaged when working with them but the negative effects are not that much visible. It would seem that one should be very careful with vinyl mats, even though they feel indestructible at first touch.

Summary

I can't say I'm happy with the results of my work. I'll keep it for now because it's not THAT bad but I expected the entire operation to be much simpler.

And all this does not really mean that I feel the product from Woodland Scenics is a bad one. On the contrary - I do believe it's a very good product. It's just that it should be applied on flat surfaces. And I complicated the entire process by attempting to install it with minimum effort in a rather difficult setting.

***

An extra note about the glue. I thought I could use a spray adhesive safely inside my apartment. That was a wrong assumption. This kind of glue:

• requires good ventilation, as it does not "smell" very healthy
• and - most importantly - it diffuses in all directions, meaning it will not only land on the target surface but also everywhere around it

Other than that, the so called "spray adhesive" seems to be a good solution for attaching vinyl to wood.

[Update] Please be sure to read my final notes here.

My own interior lighting for coaches - electrical aspect

I remember very well that the moment I bought my first N-scale coach, I immediately thought: I have to have some light inside it. I've been trying to get that since then, applying several different solutions. Surprisingly I got to a satisfactory result just recently.

My first attempt was of course to buy and use a ready-to-install lighting kits from my coaches' manufacturers. I tried that for two coaches and was not really impressed with the outcome:

• the kits did not provide a nice lighting effect - they were just a light bulb with a light diffuser so the brightness was not constant throughout the entire car's length
• the cars from different manufacturers could not be used together, since the colour of the light and its brightness were completely different in each of the kits
• the kits were flickering a lot, unless the track was completely clean
• the price...

And then I started working on my own solution. There were several goals I wanted to achieve. My own lighting kit had to:

• be DC and DCC compatible
• be safe for the cars (no heat)
• be safe for the power supply (low power usage)
• work regardless of the tracks polarity
• be flicker-free
• use as little electrical components as possible (so that it could fit into the N-scale coaches)

The scary thing is that I'm an electronic engineer by profession and it still took me several tries to create a kit I was happy with. The very first attempts were promising as can be seen in this video:

but it was still a long way before I was happy with the outcome. Let's skip however all the failed attempts here and just show the final (for now) electrical circuit:

My lighting solution works on LEDs. This way:

• it produces no heat
• it uses very little power
• I have the freedom to space the LEDs the way I want and have the brightness I need (both in terms of intensity and distribution)
• I have the freedom to choose the colour of the light, since LEDs are available as both "warm" and "cold"

Other than the LEDs, there are just four electrical components:

• Bridge - ensures correct polarity on the LEDs and makes the solution compatible with any DC or DCC layout
• C1 - keeps a little bit of electrical charge to allow flicker-free operation. The bigger the better. I'm getting good results starting at 100uF.
• R1 - lowers the electrical current during start-up when the capacitor is completely discharged. I had no problem running my coaches without R1 but better safe than sorry. Especially considering my growing collection of cars.
• R2 - lowers the current flowing through the LEDs and ensures a proper level of brightness. I'm using 4.7kOhm currently but it's slightly too bright for the N-scale. I might be using a higher rated resistor in the future.

All those components are available in very small packages so it all fits into an N-scale coach. The capacitor was the biggest challenge and the solution was using a tantalum SMD one. But how exactly I fit that into my cars is a topic for another story...