Jim Reardon's On3 - MRH Theater

Jim Reardon's On3 Colorado style layout

Follow trains running through spectacular Colorado mountain scenery on Jim Reardon's On3 layout. This layout was featured at the recent Narrow Gauge Convention held in Portland.


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Click to play the Jim Reardon video segment 1. (you may need to allow popups) Jim Reardon's On3 Colorado style layout - segment 1 (15:29) - Extra 455 runs takes water at No Name City, meets a passenger train at Murphy, battles the grades up Cumbres Pass and down through Toltect tunnel and across the beautiful Butterfly trestle. Jim's layout is a real delight for narrow gauge railfans with its realistic mountain scenery.


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Click to play the Jim Reardon video segment 2. (you may need to allow popups) Jim Reardon's On3 Colorado style layout - segment 2 (9:06) - D&RGW engine 481 leads a train of tanks and gons across Butterfly trestle, then over Cumbres pass and down through Murphy. For a bonus Jim demonstrates his PFM sound system. See how to create realistic loco sounds before the advent of DCC sound decoders!

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ADDITIONAL DRGW NARROW GAGE RESOURCES

Comments

skiloff's picture

Love the sound!

The scenery is great, too, but I love the sound.  It really brings it to life.  The animated water tower was a nice touch, too.   

Dave

Building a TOMA HO Scale '70s/80s era
GMT-6

mecovey's picture

Jim Reardon's railroad

Excellent scenery and operation. I would gladly give up "Fireman Fred" and the cheesey "All Aboard" sounds to get the playable whistle and bass sounds that PFM was doing 25 years ago. Good cinematography. I really liked the slow descending pan from Lobato trestle. Good job all around!

Rio Grande Dan's picture

Fantastic Video

Those Mudhens were "On3" and watching the Video helps with my inspiration for My "HOn3 version I'm building of the Rio Grande Southern with a small portion of Rio Grande Western. I have those same engines in HOn3 and no mater what scale they are they look Great. I can hardly wait for the second segment and I'd like to say thank you Jim Reardon for sharing your Narrow Gauge Railroad with us .

Dan

Rio Grande Dan

Nice scenes, but the train sounds?

Nice scenes and modeling there...Nevertheless, the train sounds were a distraction and a destroyer of realism.  Apparently, no one has explained that locomotives going down hill or drifting sound a lot different than those accelerating or pulling up a heavy grade.  This is what I call negative detail: something added that takes away from realism.  Gee, and even O-scale has tinney sounds.

On the other hand, whistle/horn and bell sounds are useful.  But nobody listens to me about the idea of a card-deck-sized sound unit carried by the train operator for those effects.

Regardless, thanks for the video!

Thank you

This is a very good inspiration for my Hon3 project "Silver Creek".

Wolfgang

Rio Grande Dan's picture

JIM Reardon Has a great layout Video 1&2 are a must see

Thanks Charlie C for some real Fine filming and Joe great interview about the PFM sound system, you guys are getting better all the time. This is really what it's all about UP CLOSE and Personal and your variety of Model Railroads each week have been Fantastic.  I have been and will continue downloading them all and not only I'm I collecting a fine library of Videos but my neighbors have become more interested in Model railroading since you guys have started these Monday videos and I may be helping to expand our hobby by getting 3 of the guys living around me really into the hobby just by letting them watch the Videos from the MRH Monday Videos. Keep them coming and thanks again for the great Work.

Rio Grande Dan

This is one nice layout, and

This is one nice layout, and without all that DCC stuff too, I know, DCC is where its at today, however, I still feel that those old PFM systems were still great for their time, and obviously still are, love the detail of the trains in On3, never could keep my interest in narrow gauge modeling, so I do narrow gauge in V scale, and standard gauge in both V and HO scale..........

More than fantastic.No word

More than fantastic.No word to discribe the movies.

Sound....

Ok, well first of let me say, words can't describe that layout, one of the best I've seen in a long time.

On a different not however, what's with the sound, that's a 25 year old sound system, and it sounds better then any DCC one I've ever heard. I might have to look into finding one of those....

bear creek's picture

Speaker size

Speaker size may have something to do with it... You can fit much bigger speakers into those On3 tenders than fit in HO. The other thing that helps is having a real whislte control that you can play rather than the on-off that is typical with DCC. And there's NO system delay when using the whistle because there's no cab bus...

Cheers,

Charlie

Superintendent of nearly everything 


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