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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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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3:05Next in our journey along the C&S Railway, we leave the main line and follow a branch line through Ruby Junction. Ruby Junction joins together Kebler Pass and Irwin, which sit in the high mountains of Colorado. To make the town of Ruby come to life, expert modelers took advantage of a variety of techniques
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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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2:48At the northwest corner of our expansive model railroad scene we find Floresta Junction, a large staging yard for the C&S and D&RGW railways. In the yards of Floresta, trains travelling both the Colorado & Southern and Denver and Rio Grande Western railways drop shipments and are turned around and reloaded for return journeys, but
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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.