M100 & 200 Digitalisation Complete

All four new trains arrived from the conversion safe and sound, and they now have ESU LokSound v4.0 decoders inside of them as well as a pickup shoe and other necessities for 3-rail conversion. All have been programmed into my CS2 and they run just fine.

Everything neatly back in storage again

I opted not to include headlights or interior lights at this point because of the huge costs and difficulty of installing them. the decoder however has the fittings for these installations so they are still possible to do in the future if needed. I wanted to have sound decoders since all of the other rolling stock has them too and such the trains have now been also fitted with a little speaker and some sounds. Currently the operating sounds and door sounds are still generic and the announcement sounds are missing. I am looking into a possibility of recording some true-to-life sounds and adding them to the decoder some day.

Now they just need to have some decals applied and after that my new trains are finished :)

New Train Arrivals! - Introducing the M100 & M200

Last autumn I started looking for a way to get models of the older M100 and M200 trains to my layout, and this project is now nearly complete :)

The whole layout started from an inspiration I got from the M300 model that I got a hold of, with only 400 pieces being made as a one-time run. This would mean that these models wouldn't be available forever and even though my layout is far from finished and I don't even know what the future of it is going to be eventually, I knew that I would at least have to gather a complete collection of rolling stock anyway. I wouldn't want to find myself with a space for a complete up-and-running layout in ten years with no trains available!

After getting hold of a good amount of these M300 models and digitalizing three of them for the layout, I decided that I also have to find a way to include the older M100 & M200 stock. After all, this kind of special layout has a very limited amount of prototypical rolling stock anyway, so I want to at least be able to display all of them. So, after gathering some material and figuring out the best and also at least somehow cost-effective way to produce these models, the solution came in a form of a private professional model builder who has a unique cost-effective way of producing models, that don't have the same factory-built quality like the big manufacturer's models have, but still capture the essence of the prototype and look very good and pleasing to the eye.

So now that I had found a suitable way to produce these models, I had to decide what and how many of them I want. I figured out that the best way is to just take the hit and get all the models done at the same time, rather than spreading the manufacturing and costs over a longer span. After all, a slight 'mass-production' usually also serves to reduce costs a bit. After a lot of research and thinking I decided on four complete 4-car trains: four motorized two-car units and four unmotorized ones, adding up to a total of 16 cars. What I wanted to achieve was a maximum amount of variation and interest to the fleet and thus my plan was to have:

M100 - non-refurbished

1: A model of an old non-refurbished version of the M100 train. Three of these units still run on the
real system. The cars are numbered 101 to 106, and my train includes the first four of these cars. The differences are very subtle: The decals will be a bit different, with black road numbers instead of white ones and a colorful version of the operating company's logo instead of a white version, different mirrors and a slightly different front.

M100 - refurbished

2: A model of a standard refurbished M100 train. This is the most common sight in real-life too and
has new-type mirrors and detailing. My train will include cars numbered 153-154 and 177-178.

M100 - refurbished with advertisements

3: A model of a standard refurbished M100 train with one of the units being fully covered in a
purple 'Sonera 4G' advertisement, cars numbered 119-120 and 165-166. The car number 199-120 is used for these ad's in real-life with the Sonera ad being a nice and easy example to model. I decided on this just to bring some more color to the fleet and reduce uniformity a bit. This kind of advertising really just makes the trains look more ugly and unbalanced than the 'clean' ones and that's what I wanted to achieve too.

M200

4: A model of the M200 train, made by Bombardier and introduced in the early 2000's. This is
currently the second-newest (and second-oldest) type of train running on the real system. The real system has much less of these than the older ones, so that's why I also opted for only one example to have a similar scarcity of these present in the layout.

One way to reduce costs was that I decided on using the chassis of an M300 model and only ordering a new body to the train. This reduces realism slightly, since the M300 chassis isn't 100% correct in size (it has some 1-2mm differences in certain measurements) and of course the 'undergarments' are a bit different, but I think the price reduction (about 2-3 times less!) more than makes up for the slight reduction in realism.

I ordered the trains last autumn and after about 8 months of waiting time, I sent the chassis's to the model maker and got the finished products back in a couple of weeks time. I'm very impressed with the results and couldn't be more happy by this huge new addition to my collection. What's left is that I now still have to do the digital conversion to these four trains and of course order and apply all the decals to them. After that I have seven complete metro trains for my project!

PS: These are most probably the only H0-scale models of these trains in existence ;)

Major Update!

I had almost a full weekend to only concentrate on this layout project for once and thus I could finally do many of the things I've planned to do to change the layout. I've been gathering some materials for a while and now I had all the time I needed to work on the modules and other things. 

I've been avoiding building new modules for a while now since my plans have been changing quite a bit over the last year and I want to be totally satisfied with the level of quality, functionality and realism of the current modules before I move on to new ones. This has resulted in a huge amount of work since these first modules were built at a time when I had totally different plans considering the layout, different standards that I set for myself and even less model building skills that I now have :)

Now that I'm starting to be satisfied in the current modules and can consider them 'finished', it might be time to start building something new soon!

New on the Layout

Here is a list of all the work I have done to all the four current modules. This took about 12-14 hours in total..!

Heart Cape

- Tidied the surfaces up with some water and paint

Flamewood Island

- Added a second row of Led-lighting to the roof. Now there's lights on top of both tracks and so the light spreads evenly on the station. I previously thought of just going with the original one row but wasn't satisfied with the lighting. The station originally had just one row because only half of the roof was modelled. The stations now have full roofs with a hinge-system for access purposes so I now have to also model all the lighting.

Hedgehog Avenue

Then...

- New trees have been placed around the module for a more varied scenery.

- The module has been treated with some Woodland Scenics soil to cover the last remaining surfaces that until now had just painted styrofoam.

- Platform displays have been added to the roof of the station, one on each side.

...and now

- The ticket machines have been converted to Finnish HSL-machines instead of the original German ones.

- Viessmann street lighting has been added.

- Two missing signals have been installed on the module and all four signals have been tidied up.

Eastern Lane

Before...

- The whole module has been lengthened by 7cm to accommodate for a new pair of turnouts.

- A new pair of turnouts has been installed and electric motors and decoders have been installed to all four turnouts. All turnouts now have the hand levers removed to be more prototypical.

- The track has been properly ballasted with grey ballast instead of the previous way of just laying the track on top of a gravel mat surface.

...after!

- The road has been changed to a wider one and curved parts fixed (the originals were way too clunky-looking). The road also now reaches the end of the module to be continued on the next one.

- Viessmann street lighting has been installed.

- The module got more trees, bushes, foliage and soil to cover all the painted surfaces as with Hedgehog Avenue. The background 'forest' area has been expanded and now includes a small gravel path that leads from the buildings to behind the track fence.

- A new woods-area has been made to the other end of the module on both sides of the track, previously only having a grass field. This includes low-density pine trees instead of spruces.

New on the Website

- All-new pictures added on both the Eastern Lane and the Hedgehog Avenue pages.

- Some other pictures changed from other pages to reflect the current state of the modules.

Introducing the Tka 4, along with some bus models!

New Rolling Stock

The Tka 4 work car is now finally finished! I have converted it from the Viessmann 2611 "Robel" that closely resembles the one found on the real metro, and can now say that I'm happy enough with the results.

The most obvious change is the paint scheme. The Tka 4 is fully yellow, so I had to paint the black parts in the original to yellow. This took a tremendous amount of work, much experimentation with enamel paints and although I still couldn't achieve a 100% smooth surface, I'm now fairly happy with the result. 

Image from www.raitio.org

Other new additions include a self-made exhaust pipe, new handrails (also self-made from scratch), decals, separating the front window and headlight panel into different parts with yellow borders and changing the location of ladders.

Some details of course still differ from the original but this modification is close enough to the "Tka 4" that I think the typical viewer accepts the minor differences, especially when considering the enormous amount of time saved by converting from a ready-made model instead of building from scratch.

Check out the video demonstration of the Tka 4!

The other thing that I finally did is that I took the necessary amount of time to go through the bus models, which I still were not happy with, and cleaned them up to a point that I can now finally consider them finished. Now I've set the standards for myself in how I want to convert the buses and what amount of detailing and quality is enough for me, and therefore I have now ordered three new models and will start working on them soon enough!

New on the website

- Updated the "Rolling Stock" and "Work Cars & Other Equipment" pages with pictures of the Tka 4.

- Updated the "Public Transport" page with pictures of the finished bus models

Layout section updated!

New on the website

Eastern Lane track plan made with Railmodeller Pro.

- The layout section has now been updated to suit for current plans, and now include new, more visual and detailed track plan screenshots, as I've begun to use Railmodeller Pro instead of Scarm.
- The "Overview" and "Modules" pages have been slightly altered and some text has been moved from one to the other for more coherency.
- Yet again, some corrections with spelling etc.

Train additions, new details & more

New on the layout

Yesterday I had a chance and inspiration to work on the layout for almost a whole day and therefore I managed to accomplish quite a lot. First of all, the fleet of trains has now grown to three as I welcome the M309 and M319 to the collection! I have owned these trains for a while, they've now been converted into 3-rail digital operation and yesterday I finally fitted the new road numbers for them as my decal-order came by mail.

However, I'm still not a 100% satisfied with the results since the white letter decals are only 2mm in height and the seller only provided one spare of each number, it was really a struggle to get all of them done correctly. I have now already ordered multiple replacements and am intending to replace some of the numbers that didn't end up pitch-perfect.

See the article on the new road numbers!

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I also worked on some new signals for the layout. I've been accumulating the N-scale Roco 20010 signals every time I've managed to find one and I now converted all five I had to resemble metro signals. Read more from the Making of -article I posted!

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Heart Cape and Flamewood Island -stations now
finally got the clock- and timetable displays above each platform. They indicate where the next train is terminating and how many minutes it will take for the train to arrive. These displays have been done from painted balsa wood, with self-made printings glued on top and tidied up with a permanent marker. Very simple and cost-effective. I also made some for the Hedgehog Avenue station that I will install later on.

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New on the website

- Added the Articles -section
- Added a "Making of" article about the signals
- Added another "Making of" article about the road numbers
- Pictures of the new trains have been added to the appropriate section
- Some more recent pictures have been added to some of the pages on the layout-section

Bus updates

New on the layout

My two bus models got a slight overhaul today as I tidied them up a little and added the missing road number to the other one. Both buses also now include some advertisements, which are positioned slightly out of place and make the bus look a bit more ugly - just as in real life!


New on the website

- Again some minor spelling mistake corrections
- Changed the "Public Transport" section to resemble current plans

Test-driving!

New on the layout

Today was time for some test driving regarding future modules. I set up a temporary test layout on the floor and figured out some things that I had in the list of things to do.

First of all, I wanted to determine the actual minimum radius required. The smallest one of 360mm was tested up to the maximum speed in both directions and the M300 can handle it just fine. This is good since I now know I can turn the train around in a small space when necessary. Naturally I won't be using that small of a radius in any visible parts of the layout because of the unsightly looks of it.

Next I tested the upcoming X-crossing and wanted to see how the train can handle it. The were absolutely no problems whatsoever, which was a nice relief. I also tried different methods on programming the switches and decided to have all the four switches follow a single digital address for maximum ease of use. I have altogether resorted to digitally programmed switches for the layout because of their ease of use and minimum amount of wiring required.

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Finally I programmed the Viessmann 26111 "Robel" work train and all the functions work just as they should. The acceleration and deceleration characteristics are very nice and the operations are altogether very realistic. I'm in the process of converting the Viessmann 26111 to resemble the "Tka 4" work car and will post pictures and a video of it when I'm satisfied with the results.

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New on the website

- Minor spelling-mistake corrections
- Deleted the info section about the Lindholm Lines -long distance bus since I no longer plan to use it on the layout