Been there, done that! I use full sheet label paper, stick it on sign board plastic, drill holes in it for Miniature toggless & 2 mm LED's, to indicate turnouts, yard tracks, etc. The signboard plastic is white, and drills real easy & clean. I cut openings a little smaller than the panels for the toggles & wiring, then attach them to the fascia with small pan head screws in the corners. Joe Bliss
This was a really great and useful video Ron. By the way, in the Windows 10 version of Paint that I am using, if you hold the shift key when drawing the line will snap to straight if drawing horizontally or vertically. If you draw at an angle, the line will snap to 45 degrees.
Station diagrams really help new guys to find their way around the layout. Our group has started to make maps for the modular layouts as well so people know where all the stations are, because the stations are somewhere else for each meet 😁
Great video Ron. For yourself and those asking questions about how to get things lined up and spaced out more accurately - rather than bitmap software such as paint, I'd highly recommend vector drawing software. There are freeware options you can download; Inkscape is my favourite choice. These give you a grid that you can configure to "snap" for alignment and connecting vectors/paths. However the best feature of vector drawings is that they can be scaled to any size. You can draw at a high resolution to get the drawing accurate, and then scale the entire drawing down to fit your print dimensions. I've recently drawn the two mimics for my layout with Inkscape and had them printed on vinyl sheet. They will be mounted on a piece of perspex to hold switches and indicator LEDs.
@@RonsTrainsNThings Somewhat good, 3 days off starting 10/7, big 51 rear-end procedure on 10/9, if I test negative for the virus! Lots of miles before though! California, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut and a whole bunch of shorter runs, Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky!
I am enjoying your build on model railroad academy livestreams. I don't comment or ask questions as I'm not logged in etc. but you do a great job of demonstrating techniques. keep it up !
Ron, once you have your first text box ("Main"), to do the second one, use copy/past (Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V). Paint will paste your second text box right over the first one and you can now click on it and drag it to the line you want, double click to change the text (I'm going from memory here). This makes sure that the text size and font is the same in each case. You can also do this for your "turnouts" and lines. Just do a copy / paste / move and if the line is too long or too short click on it to get the white boxes on the end and adjust.
I use MS Powerpoint, has a few more bells and whistles than Paint. Open Office Impress will do the same thing. Powerpoint is also good for creating signs (fascia and buildings). I do use Paint and Paint.net for photoediting. One thing that Powerpoint has that Paint does not, is that each line you draw remains a separate element, you can group or ungroup them. That way I can go back and change errors or add or subtract tracks if things change or I can use one diagram, then copy it and rearrange stuff to make another diagram. Once you draw something in Paint you can't go back and change it. Paint is good for those who don't want to invest the time in learning another program and want something relatively simple.
Very nice explanation. I've been using Google Drawings for diagrams. It gives a grid background as well as alignment guides to help align and center lines or text.
Nice video, Ron. Very informative. I had put my screen to full, and when your logo popped up, I saw stuff on "my" desktop that I did not have before....then I realized it was yours. I am a fan of paint, and this is a great idea and use for that program. Easy Peasy! Please list your home address so I can send my diagram to you for laminating: o ) Again, many thanks!
Ron, have you used this approach with fascia-mounted toggles for turnouts? I'd be interested in seeing how you would do that. I suppose if you did something like that, you would have to space lines in the track plan in order to accommodate the toggles. ... Well, if I'd waited to the end of the video, I would have heard you talk about this. Thanks for a very helpful video.
Way I did it was on 1/8" fasciaboard painted black with white stripes for tracks. How to paint the lines for tracks was easy. Use 1/4" wide tape and parallel both sides with masking tape, then peel the 1/4" tape off and paint the black gap white....wala, you have a clean white stripe. Now for multiple parallel tracks, same method but now utilize 3/4" or .75" tape on both sides of the 1/4" tape and you'll have clean 1" track centers on your fascia board. This is all coming from my Walthers layout control system!
Ah, lol, sorry. One easy way--after making you your first line, draw your next parallel line, move it to where it is right against your first line. Then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move it up or down to the spacing that looks good and found the arrow clicks. Whatever that number is, repeat that for every parallel track.
Hello Ron. Thank you for your videos. I am slowly working my way through all of them. I am currently working on my first N scale layout. I have a very rough chicken scratched drawing. Hopefully in the next week or two I will build a 30”x60” or maybe 72” table top to work on. Slowly working on my BOM. I was on the MMRR page and saw the Nylon Insulating Rail Joiners. My question is, Why and where would you use insulating rail joiners? I have not seen any explanation on any video I have watched yet. One guy on another video used them but did not explain why. I am an almost complete and utter noob to model trains other than Thomas and Friends with my kids. I am sure I will have more questions in the near future. Thank you for your great videos and thank you for your time.
Hi James. Great question. You would use insulaet rail joiners to electrically separate different parts of the layout into power districts (each district using a power booster to get more power to the tracks on a large layout) or short management districts (each districk protecting the others should a short circuit occur so that only one section shuts down, not the entire layout). That said, the insulated rail joiners are big and rather ugly on a layout. Many modelers will prefer to simply cut a gap in the rails and perhaps fill it with a scrap of styrene. I have not made any videos on the insulated joints themselves, but I do discuss short management districts in a pair of videos I made some time back. Here are the links if you are interested. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6e6IecGiNtM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eK_3xcoDXNk.html I hope that helps. Let me know If I can help further.
