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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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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15:01There are a number of ways to add realism to your model railroad layouts, and one of the easiest and most useful is to create lifelike model railroad backdrop scenery. With a well made backdrop, the elements of your layout appear to continue off into the horizon and convince the viewer that there’s more to
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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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1:40One of the greatest tools of the model railroader is forced perspective. The illusions you can create with proper scaling and the right angles are seemingly endless, and these illusions can often be essential for a realistic model depending on the scene and space constraints with which you are working. An important illusion that expert
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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.