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Description
Not sure that this is the best picture I can make of this, but it's the one I had right now.

I've been really bad about posting pictures of my model railroad modules, despite me knowing that some of you area interested in that. Sorry about that! This is the latest I finished (about two months ago). This is all following the T-Trak standard for small modules in N scale using Kato Unitrack tracks.

The key thing I wanted to try here were Kato's slab track pieces. I've also bought a starter set of Viessman overhead line equipment a couple of years ago and never got around to using it, so I wanted to try overhead lines as well. Then there was also my plan to experiment with noise abatement walls built from polystyrene strips and plates. And finally, when I put the plant together, I decided I wanted some tunnels. I've also decided to make a symmetric module, just for fun, that has the same width in either direction. For what I wanted to show, I don't really need more space. That said, the noise wall does pretty much define what is front and what is rear here.

The tunnel portals are from Faller, and required some extensive paint work to look anything other than horrible. The tunnel itself is formed from black cardboard, painted gray with acrylic paint on the outside. The basic structure is a wooden frame with aluminium mesh stapled onto it, with plaster bandages creating the surface layer. This is the second module where I've used an electrostatic grass applicator, and I think the results are really nice.

For the Kato tracks, the area between the lines looks bad and too much like grey plastic, so I had to choose between painting it (which would mean painting the entire track piece; technically not a bad idea but difficult to keep the rails clean in practice) or covering it with ballast. The latter is easier and still looks good, and you can actually find similar prototypes in the wild, e.g. the slab track "System Bögl".

The overhead lines have no electric function; I use DCC for everything so that would only complicate things. For a line like this you'd normally have concrete poles instead of the green metal ones, but I didn't have concrete poles, only millions of green metal ones, so there you go. The wires are bent up and glued to the tunnel wall where you can't normally see it; there are no plans to create continuous electric sections between modules. To be honest, with this Viessman system, I'm not sure I like the trade-offs it makes; it's a lot of work to install it but it doesn't look all that awesome. I suppose it may be a good choice if you want to actually use it with power, but I figure once my Viessman supply runs out (which will likely be years in the future), I'll look at the more detailed, deliberately non-functional systems e.g. from Kato themselves, Dapol or (arguably the nicest from what I've seen) Mafen.

The train is a Thalys PBKA by Kato; I think I've posted detail pictures of this on here before (years ago).

Description
Not sure that this is the best picture I can make of this, but it's the one I had right now.

I've been really bad about posting pictures of my model railroad modules, despite me knowing that some of you area interested in that. Sorry about that! This is the latest I finished (about two months ago). This is all following the T-Trak standard for small modules in N scale using Kato Unitrack tracks.

The key thing I wanted to try here were Kato's slab track pieces. I've also bought a starter set of Viessman overhead line equipment a couple of years ago and never got around to using it, so I wanted to try overhead lines as well. Then there was also my plan to experiment with noise abatement walls built from polystyrene strips and plates. And finally, when I put the plant together, I decided I wanted some tunnels. I've also decided to make a symmetric module, just for fun, that has the same width in either direction. For what I wanted to show, I don't really need more space. That said, the noise wall does pretty much define what is front and what is rear here.

The tunnel portals are from Faller, and required some extensive paint work to look anything other than horrible. The tunnel itself is formed from black cardboard, painted gray with acrylic paint on the outside. The basic structure is a wooden frame with aluminium mesh stapled onto it, with plaster bandages creating the surface layer. This is the second module where I've used an electrostatic grass applicator, and I think the results are really nice.

For the Kato tracks, the area between the lines looks bad and too much like grey plastic, so I had to choose between painting it (which would mean painting the entire track piece; technically not a bad idea but difficult to keep the rails clean in practice) or covering it with ballast. The latter is easier and still looks good, and you can actually find similar prototypes in the wild, e.g. the slab track "System Bögl".

The overhead lines have no electric function; I use DCC for everything so that would only complicate things. For a line like this you'd normally have concrete poles instead of the green metal ones, but I didn't have concrete poles, only millions of green metal ones, so there you go. The wires are bent up and glued to the tunnel wall where you can't normally see it; there are no plans to create continuous electric sections between modules. To be honest, with this Viessman system, I'm not sure I like the trade-offs it makes; it's a lot of work to install it but it doesn't look all that awesome. I suppose it may be a good choice if you want to actually use it with power, but I figure once my Viessman supply runs out (which will likely be years in the future), I'll look at the more detailed, deliberately non-functional systems e.g. from Kato themselves, Dapol or (arguably the nicest from what I've seen) Mafen.

The train is a Thalys PBKA by Kato; I think I've posted detail pictures of this on here before (years ago).