Hey I'm planning on building a haunted house for my layout since the ones that I do find aren't really what I want and I was wondering, how can I keep my building to HO Scale is there like a guidlines set by the NMRA? Any help is appreicated.
Scale is a matter of exactly that. My building design process starts with looking at the space and forming some rough concepts in my head. THen I do some sketches, and finalize it into scale drawings. If possible, I find it helps to draw them out in full scale if I can. For your haunted house, you're probably best off to draw out your concept and then see if you can find a kit to bash to achieve the effect you're looking for.
Well I decided to kitbash, I found a couple of two stories houese kits that I can use. What I plan to do is to put in blue lights against each window of the final product and have them flash in sequence, so that it'll look like a ghost is moving from room to room. I'll probably also put in a graveyard and if I can hook up a smoke machine. Thanks for you advice [ 31. October 2002, 13:51: Message edited by: Poltergeist ]
Yeah i built my partner a haunted house in HO scale. But she likes the Adam's Family show so i modeled that one. i purchased a Classic Minatures kit, the Leadville House, CM-2. Its' a wood and plastic kit, but lots of fun to build. Found figures to look like the family and a coffin style cady auto. Built the yard with the grave site and erie looking trees. Looked great on the site and it was also a good conversational piece for the railroad.
If you want "spooky effects" you can use a flickering light, done by attaching a grain of rice/wheat bulb to a radio, and turning on music, it is very realistic, well kind of. David Amenta
Welcome to the TrainBoard DavidA! Does that work like the lights that vary in intensity in our record player? If we put on a waltz, they brightened in 3/4 time, and went crazy on rock n' roll ! How do we do it? I'm guessing maybe hook up to the speaker wires, and use the volume control to set the brightness? Would it work on a pocket radio?
Sean - next time you are in a hobby shop, look for an HO Scale Ruler. Then you can make sure things are the right size and to scale. Not sure how tall a door should be? Measure one in your home with a 1:1 scale ruler, then measure your model door with a 1:87.1 scale ruler
It will work with any station, even static I think, You set the brightness of the bulb by using the volume control. It will work with any size radio, but the lights may be too di, therefore you need to get a bulb that will operate on lower voltage. Yes you connect the bulb to the speaker outputs (two wires that go to the round thing that makes noise ) You might be able to use LEDs, but I know that they might look funny, and will also only focus the light, not emit it all over like the bulbs will. Thank you for the welcome Watash Have fun! David Amenta
DavidA, it sounds like, if I had an old cassette player/recorder, that maybe I could use the microphone through the amp. and have lights that would "flicker" just from the train noise, and conversation in the layout room, with out having to listen to Mozart all day! Possibility? If that would work, you could have some really crazy Christmas lights blinking all over town! It might look funny for the lights in a hotel to flicker though.
I'm a bit late on this, but spooky places in the movies always seem overscale anyway - with big, high doors, rooms and staircases - so maybe you should build it to O scale on an HO layout. Of course 'real' haunted houses are probably normal sized . Watash, you use the lamp instead of the speaker, so you just 'watch' Mozart all day. For minimum outlay and if you don't want to tear a radio/cassette apart you can just wire the light(s) to a headphone socket. This will normally cut the speaker off when plugged in. You can then use the radio normally as well. (Don't forget to use 2 bulbs for stereo systems.)
This is all interesting.. Just a thought tho.. If you want blinking lights for the errieness of it all. I'd do all this to a tape player or a cheap CD player. Being in either one, you can play the errie sounds to make the lights blink, well if your doing it for the errieness blinking lights... why not acompany the blinking with the errie sounds as well ? I'd hook the bulb wires to the speaker were its wires come from the radio to the speaker. This way not only would you have the errie blinking but also the music! This would neat. The lights would blink to the sound you hear! Just a thought tho....
Yes, but it might be kind of wierd to do it like that, it would not be very constant, however if you want to go ahead. Yes that would work. Dave Amenta
For an authentic flickering fire, you use two radios and two light bulbs, one reddish orange, the other orangish yellow. YOu set one station of the radio on rap or hard rock, the other station on classical music. I have seen this at a layout locally here in Vancouver, BC; it works very well.
I haunted a house by adding a ghost, painted on clear plastic, "hung" in the attic. I lit it with a blue LED and it appears to hover in the middle of the attic. A special reward for those who look closely.
