A compelling toy train layout with animations done on the cheap

Layouts featuring Lionel, American Flyer, and other O or S gauge trains don’t have to be expensive. Joe Rampola has lots of ideas for creating a good-looking layout with lots of animation (aside from the trains) using mostly inexpensive items. His site has lots of pictures and video clips.

His work has been featured in both Classic Toy Trains and O Gauge Railroading magazines.Among his better ideas: Lay a loop of HO gauge track, then put 0-4-0 mechanisms from cheap HO scale locomotives in the frames of 1:43 scale die-cast cars and make streets for the layout. This is a similar approach to K-Line’s new Superstreets, but Rampola did it years earlier, and his approach is a lot less expensive for those who can live without instant gratification. His approach also allows you to use any vehicle you want, so long as you’re willing to modify it.

He also has plans and instructions posted for lots of inexpensive animations he did using the cheap unpainted (and unfortunately, discontinued) K-Line figures from the classic Marx molds of the 1950s. Sometimes you can still get lucky and find a box of unpainted K-Line figures hiding on hobby shop shelves.

He even has his animations controlled by an old Timex Sinclair 1000 computer. He gives enough detail that I suspect someone good with homebrew circuits could adapt his circuit and his program to another computer, such as an Apple or Commodore. Even a 3.5K unexpanded VIC-20 ought to be up to the task, let alone a behemoth Commodore 64.

I’ve always bristled at the thought of adding electronics to my traditional layout, because my trains are my escape from computers. But using a real computer–real men only need 8 bits–to control parts of a layout does have some appeal to me.

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2 thoughts on “A compelling toy train layout with animations done on the cheap

  • March 19, 2005 at 3:07 am
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    I think I remember see some MC for real I/O for the TS 100 in a magazine, but that was many years ago.

    BTW – even today, much of the interlocking (look it up!) controls on mainline and transit propertys is run on Z80 derivatives.

    • March 21, 2005 at 9:55 am
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      Yeah, the Z-80 is a great chip for embedded applications. It’s cheap and easy to program. I know the thing I liked best about it, back when one of my hobbies was programming in assembly, was that the I/O all had a separate address space, so a 64K computer really was a 64K computer.

      The 6502 lives on in embedded applications too. Its I/O takes address space away from RAM, but it’s more efficient per clock cycle than the Z-80. I also liked its instruction set better, but that may just be because I learned 6502 first and then Z-80.

      Of course at this point I don’t know if I could do much of anything in assembly language on either of those chips anymore. I remember getting the books out about seven years ago, for old time’s sake, and even contacting the editor of what was then the last remaining C-64/128 mag in North America, but I was really rusty even then. I think it’s been 12 years since I’ve written an assembly language program that actually did anything.

      Controlling 1950s trains with a 1980s computer still appeals to me–I guess it’s because I spent so much time learning the ins and outs of those old 8-bits 20 years ago. But if I did it, I’d write the controller program in Basic. 🙂

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