Sunday 10 December 2017

Homemade N Gauge Belisha Beacons




A quick video of my new N Gauge belisha beacons on the zebra crossing. Not too difficult to make, although everything N Gauge is pretty fiddly.

I used two tiny flashing amber smd LEDs, 1.6mm heatshrink both from layouts4u.net. The globes are 4mm clear glass beads painted matt yellow.

First I removed the resistors from the 2 smd LEDs as I wanted to use a 3 volt cell battery (No 2032) in a holder as they seem to work best for LEDs. Above 3v you need the resistors to prevent damaging them. I then arranged the tiny light on its wires, so that it pointed vertically up. The glass beads I bought had a hole through the middle for threading. This provides a small dip to fit partially over the smd. I then glued the glass bead carefully in place on top. I use super glue gel which works a treat on most things n gauge as only a tiny drop is needed. Also a tiny blob on the top of the bead covered the top hole.

Next I used some heatshrink around the tiny wires as a pole. You could then paint small white hoops around the pole but I printed out a small sheet of black and white stripes, which I glued around the poles with paper glue. Finally I painted the globes with matt yellow enamel. Once dried it was just a question of drilling two holes and adding them to my zebra crossing.

Sunday 24 September 2017

Smoking Chimneys On My N Gauge Model Railway



I found quite a cheap way to make the houses on my layout come to life with smoking chimneys. I used 3, 4 and 5mm plastic pipe, a cheap Chinese aquarium air pump and an e-cigarette from Poundland. There are 6 chimneys that smoke. Two are on the station in the foreground, one on each of the shop/apartment blocks behind, one in the pub next door and one at the back in the goods depot office. I changed all the flimsy paper rolled chimneys with pieces of pipe, painted appropriately on all the converted buildings. This has had the added advantage of stronger chimney pots which cannot be accidently knocked off :)


Friday 22 September 2017

Raspberry Pi Operated N Gauge Monorail


This is an N Gauge monorail on my layout. It is completely automated using a Raspberry Pi. It operates a shuttle between the Pig & Whistle Pub station to the Castle ruins and fun fair.

It is custom built using balsa wood, plastic packaging and other items I had in my 'bits & pieces' box where I keep a lot of tiny junk :) The body of the train is the front ends of a Graham Farish GF33A Class 170 Anglia One DMU joined together. I bought just the body shell from Peter's Spares on eBay.

The track is small enough to give the appearance of a monorail but technically it isn't. It's T Gauge track at a scale of 1/450 and the tiny, though quite noisy engine, is also T Gauge sitting inside the shuttle. It operates on an independant 4.5v DC and is commanded by a Raspberry Pi to go backwards and forwards between the two stations giving time at each end for set down and pick up.

Saturday 2 September 2017

Free N Gauge Market Stalls

I've just made some n gauge (1/148) market stalls for my layout as you can see below. I have added a link to the full colour pdf plans I created and used. The single page should be printed out on paper and then cut and scored carefully with a craft knife. A bit of delicate folding and glueing should produce your stall canopy, back and sides. I used a piece of thin wire bent in the shape of a flat 'n', to support the top of the canopy and also produce the two front uprights. You can do the same for the back inside but as the stall is supported at the back anyway, I didn't see the need.



Saturday 26 August 2017