HO to On30 Turnout Conversion

There are fewer turnouts available in On30 than there are in HO by several magnitudes.  The difference between On30 track and HO track is in the ties.  The ties are bigger and spaced further apart in On30 -otherwise the track is interchangeable.  So what do you do if you need a special turnout at a particular spot and an On30 turnout just won't fit but an HO turnout will?  You can easily convert an HO turnout to On30 if you have some basic soldering skills.

First get some On30 PC board ties.  I got mine from Fast Tracks.  What you do is cut out a couple of the HO ties on the bottom of the turnout, swap them with a PC board tie and solder the new tie in place. I started at the 3 ends of the turnout. Then I cut out a couple of ties in the middle of the turnout and soldered on another On30 PC board tie.  Repeat the process until the whole turnout has been converted.  Be careful not to solder the moving rails on the point!  On my PECO turnouts I left the ties on that have the little spring built in to them at the points.  They are bigger and look like O scale already and I wanted to keep the manual spring action.  I found it necessary to glue this tie assembly in place to keep it from moving without the rest of the plastic tie strip around it.

It was necessary to make new guardrails as the PECO ones were plastic and did not survive the operation.  I did need to get my NMRA gauge out for this to put the guard rails in correctly.  Otherwise the gauge is preserved by virtue of replacing the ties one at a time and soldering them on as you go.

The converted HO to On30 turnout in place on the layout before painting and ballasting.  You can see where the new PC ties have been soldered to the rails.  Also note the brown plastic ties with the point mechanism have been preserved (bottom of picture) to keep the spring action.  Since I replaced the ties one at a time the whole assembly was kept in gauge.

Building the Port

 

The Sea wall at Sausalito is one of the most distinctive features of the layout.  It covers the whole front edge so I wanted it to be well detailed.  I started by getting a lot of 1/4" dowels and sawing them up in to close but random lengths.  When they built walls like this they used a pile driver and the posts are slightly different heights.  I used a razor saw to rough up the poles along the grain and cut notches and other imperfections.
To stain the posts I soaked them in alcohol with a small amount of India ink and a dab of burnt umber oil paint. the oil paint does not dissolve quickly so I wait a couple of days before using the mixture. I soaked the posts overnight by dumping them in to a jar with the mixture andthen fishing them out and drying them on a piece of wax-paper.
I glued the posts to the edge of the wharf with yellow glue. I glued strips of balsa along the front and stained it also.  On the balsa strips I glued on Grandt Line nut-bolt-washer detail parts previously painted with burnt umber.  Along the bottom of the posts I painted the posts a greyish color to represent barnacles.

Closeup of the pilings.

The water was done by painting Sap Green, black an yellow ochre acrylic paints in patches and mixing them with a brush.  I used a lot of paint and brushed in one direction and left it streaky.  Over this I put a heavy layer of thick Gloss gel Medium which I shaped with a brush to make waves.

The Gel medium is still drying.  After several days it will become clear.