Im new to these forums, and i could use some 4x8 plans on HO scale, woodland/ mountain theme. if anyone could give me some scenery tips too, that would be great.
thanks
That’s kinda like saying I have a thousand bucks. How should I spend it?
Read the beginner’s guide in my signature below. That will give us a place to start talking.
Well Hullo there and [#welcome]!! I would not just look at Space Mouses excellent pages, but also spend some time forum searching/crawling. There is literal gold mine of info here, you just need to look for it!
Upon re-reading, I guess I was a little abrupt. Sorry about that.
Welcome.
Is this a requirement for the amount of space you have (is it an entire room, or the corner of the living room?), or a bill of rights saying you can only do HO scale? My suggestions are larger space, or N scale. If you can’t (or don’t want to) do either of these, I would try having a parade route on one side, and a town or village on the other. A parade route is basically a single or double track route that travels through loads of scenery. (you wanted mountains and woods, right?) It also meanders, instead of being completely straight, and it takes away the toy like feeling of a 4x8 layout. If you can possibly fit it, try 22" curves (don’t worry, that’s 2 inches of room on each side of the table), and take picutres of what you want your area to look like.
thanks for the advice
For a 4x8 to be successful in the long term, you have to define your interests and vision pretty tightly. There just isn’t much room for anything else in HO. Begin by thinking small.
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Thinking small with choice of era. Real world locomotives and cars have gotten progressively bigger over time. The only exception was during the beginning of dieselization - the early diesels were smaller (shorter) than the steam locomotives they replaced. The standard 18" radius doesn’t do well with rolling stock over 50ft long, and smaller is better. In the 1870s, freight cars were around 26ft long; they grew to 40ft in the 1930s; and 50ft in the late '50s and early '60s. Today’s freight cars can be 89ft long, and these will NOT go around 18" radius curves in HO scale. So earlier eras are more compatible with an HO 4x8, and the earlier, the smaller.
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Thinking small with prototype. Branch and short lines operated older and smaller equipment, especially locomotives.
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Thinking small with train length. To avoid being on both end curves at once, and to fit the likely passing tracks, train length is limited to 56" or less. This is 5 or less 40ft cars plus engine and caboose. Can you be happy with such short trains? If not, you will need double track, or be limited to a longer single train running through interesting scenery - but not performing any switching. Chances are if you like bigger, or modern equipment, or long trains you will not be happy with a 4x8 for long.
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Thinking small with limited amount of rolling stock. 3 locomotives and about 20 cars is all you can practically use on an HO 4x8. Anything more has to be stored elsewhere and rotated to/from the layout. Making these few pieces fit in with your era, prototype, region, operating scheme, and industries becomes much more important than on a large layout where there is more room for a fe
What Fred says.
I find that you really have to plan to get good results from a 4 x 8–well any layout actually. But when you have space restriction, you need to think outside the box.
The major problem I see with most designers of 4x8’s is that the loop makes the scene fold back on itself. Most people take this as a given and they build one location. Railroads are from here to there not here to here to here to here, over and over.
A good way around this is to split your sheet in half with a divider and create two scenes. Then when you leave one scene you arrive at the other. Each scene has it’s own operations, and the other is it’s destination. One side becomes staging for the other so to speak. The train that left, when it returns, is different than when it left.
The same effect can be achieved though scenery. In my original Rock Ridge and Train City, when operating Train City, Rock Ridge looked like a forested mountain. When operating Rock Ridge, Train City looked like a town in a valley in the distance. This is even though they were less than a foot apart.
So what everyone is saying is know what you want and think it through.
You’ve gotten some good advice already. I’d just add that maybe you ought to reconcider what can be done in the space that a 4x8 REALLY occupies. See this link: http://home.earthlink.net/~mrsvc/id28.html
You might take a look at the Gateway Division’s project layouts http://www.gatewaynmra.org/project.htm which are 4x6, 4x7, 4x8 to get some idea of what a small HO model railroad looks like.
Enjoy
Paul
Assuming you have a decent Public Library, look for Dewey decimal number 625.19 This is the model railroading section. There are a number of good books (101 Track Plans for Model Railroads for starts) which have track plans.