Forum Members,
I am planning on building a new layout in my basement and could use your advice on a budget. What portion of the total cost for your layout was spent on Loco’s and rolling stock vs. track and power/control components?
As an example, if you had $10,000 to spend, how much would you spend on the major components of a brand new layout?
Thanks for your input!
I’d say to buy a small number of very good locos - BLI/Atlas/Kato/Proto 2k rather than a lot of cheaper ones. Spend the cash on the track/scenery/etc instead, at least to begin with. Those long passenger trains look great, but there’s not much point buying one until you have a decent length mainline laid to run it on. The same goes for lengthy strings of freight cars - nice, but not much use until you have the mainline down. As far as power is concerned, this would be the perfect time to adopt DCC if you haven’t already done so, it will make your wiring far less complex as you’ll only need a “power bus” under the boards rather than isolating sections, etc. Hope this helps!
You gave a figure of 10,000. Let me see if I can spend it for you.
15 Switches and 15 Circuttron switch machines @ 400
DCC Digitraz Zephyr Control system @160
Code 83 Track (I cannot guess how many feet) @200
Now we are up to about 760 dollars.
One or two “good” switcher for your yard @150 each
One mainline steam engine (or desiel) @200-
One smaller Branchline steam (or desiel) @200-
One or two favorites gotta haves (assuming that all modelers will buy more locos than they ever can use at one time) @500-
That comes to 1000- for the engines, more if you include sound and DCC in engines without factory installed units.
Now were at $1750
Let’s assume you have a basement, call it 25x60 perhaps bigger or smaller but many houses in my town are at least that big. (no basements where we are)
Lumber, tools materials, paints etc etc etc I will guess @2000
Now we are at 3750
Wiring, workbench, supplies, paints, air brush system, Booth and various little gotta haves to help you build that nice kit. @1,250
5000 dollars gone so far… not even a train run yet.
Now we are going to get expensive.
Assuming you have one town established, you will need scenery, buildings, roadbed and vehicles and people.
I will call it 1000 even. I was told that it costs you about 10 dollars every 5 minutes to pour woodland scenics onto your layout out of them little plastic bottles. Remember I did not talk about trees and such. Those really add up.
Total 6000
Rolling stock. I own about 100 peices of various kinds. 50 of which are blue box kits. the rest are either unbuilt kits that are now out of production (Dont lose that part!!) or ready to run models that require grab irons, kaydee couplers etc…
oops did I say kaydee couplers? Why not metal wheels too? Trust me those derailments will drive you to them sooner o
Very nice Highiron! Thank you for your input also Railroading Brit.
My experience with bugeting for a large basement layout is this …
In analyzing many designs over the years (both my own designs and published designs), I have discovered some things about layout costs.
Benchwork, roadbed, and rough scenery are the least expensive part of a layout
Trackwork and electrical are moderately expensive, with turnouts and their control being the single most costly element in this category
Scenery details, rolling stock, and locomotives are the most expensive part of a layout, with the level of expense growing in the order listed. Scenery details expense can go on and on, however. If you are into lots of detail – the cost of details can in time eclipse the cost of locomotives!
In short, what you put ON the layout, especially what goes on the track, is what costs the big money.
The layout itself is not that expensive (assuming you have the space – the cost of which is NOT included in these calculations). In my case, the basic layout (benchwork, trackwork, rough scenery) is about 1/5 the total cost of the layout. The scenic details, rolling stock, and locomotives (especially the locomotives) are the other four-fifths of the cost!
I have several SP modeler friends who have nice equipment but not a prototype-based layout to run it on. Hey, the basic layout’s a lot cheaper than all that equipment, so I’ll provide the layout and they populate it with equipment. What a deal!
I read somewhere in a Model Railroad magazine last year (can’t remember which one) that a good layout cost around $150.00 per square foot. That included everything from nuts and bolts to detailing items. And this was HO scale.
I agree with all the posts here… One thing you have to remember that this is a hobby and you don’t want to go and buy everything all at once or you will have a stock pile of boxes and stuff laying around… and thing will most likely lost.
now if you truly had that kind of money mind sending 1/10th of that my way… LOL Just Kidding.
Wow!!![:O] That means my humble 22’x15’ layout would cost $49,500 by the time it’s finished…! Then it looks like I will not have a very “good” layout…unless the expenses can be spread out over a lifetime![:D]
My HO layout is 8X15, recently I did an inventory for my insurance.
30 engines, $1420
10 passenger cars, $175
183 freight cars, $1450
36 structures, $560
scenery products $600
DCC and wiring $500
track, roadbed $450
figures, cars, trucks $450
airbrush, and tools $600
I would consider it to be 85% complete for less than $6300
I was kinda shocked myself at the total cost, but it has taken me over 20 years
to acquire “my empire” . Like everyone else seems to be saying engines and
rolling stock are the big ticket items. There are very few home layouts that can
posible run that many engines and cars and I’m sure 25% of my total would
be enough.
Perhaps more important is to spend your budget where it will count the most,
use good quality wood and track. Take your time to ensure bulletproof track.
Everything else, scenery, structures, ect can be redone easily if you dont like the results.
If I had that much to spend right now on the layout, I’d put up a Butler building to house it!
I would build a room onto the house before I would, I can always work on the empire for the rest of my lifetime.
Wonder how much room 10 K would build.
I’am planning on building a layout sometime in the near future and I do not plan to spend 10k on it but if I had the money I would have someone to build it for me(benchwork & wiring dcc)what ever money is leftover would spend it on my family.
While Willy6 says he’s recently read the figure of $150.00 per square foot of layout as a typical amount, the figure of $100.00 per sq.ft. has circulated in the hobby for many years. This is for a well done and reasonably detailed layout less locomotives and rolling stock and a figure I can vouch for from personal experience. And, yes, many reasonably good layouts are in the $50,000+ range (many in MR far exceed that amount).
CNJ831
DSims,
I presume that this is a hypothetical question??? If so, I agree with Joe about the cost of rolling stock and scenery items.
I would say there are a few other factors:
Size of layout??? Double deck, single deck??? The larger and more complex the layout is, the more expensive it becomes and the longer it will take to build.
Size of room and degree to which it is finished. Finnishing a large room (say 20’ x 40’) with electrical, heating and sheetrock could zero your budget in a hurry.
Type of layout wanted: operations based, superdetailed (etc) How many operators??? How many and how large are the trains??? As Joe mentioned a large superdetailed layout will cost a lot more. I suppose this decision has more to do with basic design than cost, but what you decide here affects the bottom line.
Amount of time you want to spend building stuff vs running stuff. RTR is more expensive than kits. A lot more expensive. Time spent in general is an issue. With no time, you might want to pay others to help, this speeds stuff up but eats into the bottom line.
Your skill, experience level and expertise in the hobby. How comfortable are you building a large layout or say mounting switch machines, laying flextrack, wiring reversing loops, building level and square benchwork etc… Most large layouts are the culmination of years in the hobby and large amounts of time spent building the layout…
How many friends do you have who will help you?? As Joe points out with his friends rolling stock, do you have buddies who can help you??? It will be more fun, quicker and bring more satisfaction with friends to share it with you…
For safety margin, I would say take any figure you come up with and triple it!!! It always seems to cost way more than you think it will…