Want to add some fun and a great bit of realism to your layout? Consider adding model railroad signals. Watch as modeler and DCC expert, Steve Barkley, describes how a signal driver card operates your model railroad signals system. Actually, they operate like a decoder for your signaling system. Steve grew up in the 1950s watching the Northern Pacific railroad operate semaphores to give a green (Go), yellow (Proceed with Caution) or red (Stop) signal to oncoming trains. He wanted the same kind of realism for his NP layout which models from Livingston to Billings, Montana. He found some DCC companies manufacture signal driver cards that operate either colored lights or semaphore systems. Choose the model railroad signals system that’s right for your railroad in the era in which you model and get ready for an added texture of realism for your pike!
Tags: Free Videos, Wiring
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8:09Oftentimes when building a model railroad layout, it’s beneficial to utilize a stacked scene with multiple levels. Multilevel model train benchwork offers a number of unique advantages to a scene, one of which being the illusion of grander scale. For instance, you might employ the layout of the multilevel model train benchwork if you were
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4:32Some of our favorite model railroad layouts are set in decades past, as far back as the 1940s, when the rail industry was first booming in the west and evidence of World War I still lingered. This era is so fascinating to us that we decided to try our hand at recreating model train scenery
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37:53When building benchwork for model railroads, the first thing you have to plan and think through is the type of scene you want to construct. Depending on the size, shape and placement of your scene in a room, the benchwork you choose might vary. There are positives and negatives to each type of benchwork for
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4:11There’s nothing quite like a poorly blended backdrop to take a viewer out of the staged reality of a model railroad scene. But, you can avoid this issue and maintain a fluid scene by making the joint between landscape and backdrop as flush as possible. Good news is, painting model railroad backdrops that smoothly transition
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video didn’t describe how to use the card or set up the system. very poor !!
Hi, John. Sorry about that. We’ll have to look into that one. A local club here in town is using JMRI to operate their signals.
Very good written article. It will be useful to everyone who utilizes it, including me. Keep doing what you are doing – i will definitely read more posts.