“Harrisonburg After Dark” – A Superb O-Scale Railroad Town Shows Its Sinister Side!

Cast your eyes back to June of 2023, dear readers, with this post in which your humble blogger went “on the road” to visit a friend for a look at his own diorama! In that post, you can see an in-depth look at my friend Harrison’s O-scale model railroad that he has set up in his basement, a hobby that is similar to mine, though focused on trains rather than cars. Yes, the scale is different: O-scale, which approximates 1:43 in model car terms, is bigger that what we “Thunderjetters” are working with, but some of the things that Harrison has done with his layout are really impressive, so I visited him-and blogged about it-in hopes of getting some ideas.

Some of the experiences he’s had with his layout were applicable to some of the tricks I applied to building my newly completed carnival area at Drag City, and he and I often correspond about various tips, tricks, and screw-ups that we make along the way as we build our respective worlds. And that’s been great…and especially so now, because…

Harrison has just taken his layout to a whole new level!

And your HB has a lot of catching up to do! To show you what I mean, take a look at what H and his partner have accomplished working together in his basement: his diorama is now fully lighted!

What I think of now is the late great David Lynch, who’s recent passing was mourned by both Harrison and myself, as we were both fans of his work: specifically, I think of his 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet, which begins in a wholesome, middle-American town that appears almost perfect on the surface, with its blooming flowers and white picket fences and friendly neighborhood firemen, but which underneath is hiding a dark secret! Let’s take a new look at this scale-model idyllic middle-American railroad town set in the late 1950s/early ‘60s, which seems so wholesome and safe by day, and look at how it transforms after dark…

Here is how my friend described the engineering behind what you see here:

The power from the outlet comes into this box.  From here it goes out to the distribution boxes…

All of the buildings are 12V and this is connected to the power supply.  It is from here that power goes out to each of the buildings.  The wires attach to the screws then go out to each individual building.  I have two of these distribution hubs.

For the light posts.  This unit converts the 12V down to 3 which is all the power needed for the lamps, otherwise they would burn up.  The wires for the lamps attach to the screws then out to the lights on the street.

Harrisonburg is divided into three areas, the buildings are on one circuit while the street lights are on another and so on.  These switches are wired to the applicable hub so that each section can be turned on or off.  It made it easier to keep the type of lighting separate, especially since different items require different voltages.

So, which direction for Drag City? Well sadly, since the death of my former electrician friend Dale, I have no one in my life that has the prowess and the knowledge of electrical wiring like Harrison’s other half does, leaving your HB to his own devices to learn how to electrify my own layout. And yet, I’m going to have to figure it out, because after seeing this, there’s no way I can’t follow this up!

The problem, as all you readers probably know, is the paucity of availability of these kinds of items for 1:64! Things are a lot better than they were just a few years ago; just since I started this blog 5 years ago, there is lot more available in my scale than there was even then. And yet, there’s still no comparison: stuff that’s readily available off the shelf for O-scale model railroaders is still hard to find for those us of who run Thunderjets alongside Matchboxes and Hot Wheels!

So, here are my plans…

One thing I want to do is light up all the buildings in the town, which probably won’t be very difficult to do; a few sets of tiny LED lights wired into a switch under the table should take care of that. It will be a lot of work, having to take apart the town and lift every building to install the lights and drill the table to run the wires through, but its mostly just labor to do it and then put everything back together.

But there’s a far bigger challenge, and this is the one that really matters: lighting the track! What I want is lighting around the entire permimeter of the course, with-ideally-at least one light every foot. Bear in mind, however, that Drag City is approximately 50 linear feet in length! That’s a lot of lights!

Here are a few things I’ve been looking at to accomplish that:

So I see this stuff online, but some of these products are listed for sale at what seem like semi-shady sites in Asia, and the problem is that, because the scale is so often wrong, its risky investing any real money in stuff like this seen online only: I really need to see it in person. Alas, every model railroad show and swap meet I go to is the same: all they have is stuff for HO and O; no “S” to be found anywhere. So it seems that trying out some stuff on Etsy by just buying it, waiting weeks for it to arrive, and seeing what I get may be the only way, which means some stuff will inevitably wind up in the junk pile.

Fortunately, Harrison has now blazed the trail on the wiring and the parts I may need, so I can take a que from him on how to safely install resistors to cut down voltage and how to wire in the switches to turn it all on and off. If I can learn to do this, with the help of some friends and working in my ever-more limited spare time, then some day years from now, I may have something that looks almost as good as this:

Well, I can dream! And now, you know what’s in store for the future of Drag City and what I’ll be working on throughout the year! It’s going to take time, but I always get there eventually, so STAY TUNED!