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Building the N scale Salt Lake Route, part 1
Finally! Being from Salt Lake City the railroads there tend to be my favorite. From Union Pacific’s daily freights, Amtrak’s weekly passenger, and UTA’s lightrail and frontrunner, there is a lot going on. Although I don’t model in N scale right now, I have a lot of years ahead of me to change that. Can’t wait to see what’s happening on the railroad!
Glad to see another different US area modeled.
I would like to see MR feature more small layout projects. In the future most people will probably have less space, time and money to devote to the hobby so the ability to build a good smaller layout will be important in order to maximize these resources.
Thanks Dick! I have recently returned to model railroading after being busy with raising a family for many years and up until now have been a “collector” of N scale locomotives and rolling stock. But reading the article in the latest issue of MR and reading your two first blogs online about the Salt Lake Route has given me the impetus to really get serious about building a layout. I am looking forward to the rest of the series!
As an N-scaler I am pleased to see N scale as your 2010 build feature layout.
I switched to N scale last year after starting out building a minimal 4X8’ HO layout in my San Francisco apartment. As much as I prefer HO, there’s no way to make any kind of loop layout work in a City apartment. I decided that I’d have to switch to N-scale if i wanted to stay with my favorite hobby, and now that my girlfriend lives with me the specs were that the layout must be able to slide under the bed with all the other storage we have there and be less than 7-1/2 inches tall. It was great to see a small but high-quality N-scale layout featured. Please show more of this scale. Most of us city folk don’t have 32’ X 48’ basements to build a layout.
Great Layout. I am interested in learning about the operation potentials of this layout. As it stands, it’s a table-top layout with a twin-circle track around the perimeter with a few spur tracks in the yard. I would like to see how this constitutes an operating railroad. It will be interesting to see how this is addressed in future issues of MR.
Nice layout! P.S. I don’t like waking up at 5:15 either.
I’m a fan of the SP and the D&RGW and also the short lived SPSF so I kind of have some bitterness toward the Borg ( The UP for the maybe three people out there who have never heard it called that) but I have to admit that this layout looks rather interesting,
It comes at a good time for me as well because I have to demolish my current layout in a spare bedroom and move out to a 9X14 area in my workshop once it is cleaned out.
My only concern is the use of Kato track. the stuff is expensive!!
Just had a look at some of the new locomotive offerings in N scale, the article is perfect timing. While I model On30, my heart always beats faster when I see modern power hauling a stck train or a mile and a half of coal porters. I am looking forward to this series. Just bought Kato’s new pacer stack train sets and a SD70ACe…
Just completed the benchwork for my Salt Lake Route layout. It took about 20 man hours to complete all the steps described in the February 2010 MR issue. This does not include the time buying materials and cleaning up. Having a KATO V11 superelevated track package allowed me to plot the location of the river wash and cut-out the lowered part of the layout. Construction went very well. Oh yes, you can get masonite with a smooth surface on both sides, thus eliminating the backdrop’s double lamination process described in the February 2010 issue. MR…we need the KATO track components listing ASAP.
Later…Mike…
I understand the size limitations and know that an intersting layout in N gage can be no larger than a bed. It is easy to make the layout slide under the bed for storage. Any interisting features can be modeled in a 4’-0" x 2’-0" area. You may have an N gage club close by and build modules which can be fastened together to make a nice sized layout. Using standard track locations on the modules it is possible to make an extraordinarily large layout. I and my son have modules following a theme of logging which fasten together and make a large layout to just run trains. The equiment although small is very reliable. I have one train that I have run for train shows that has run without problems for over 80 days (About 6 hrs per day) Also moduls that are built to the same standards from anywhere in the world can fit together. At a convention in Louisville in 2009 the layout had 700 modules fastened together. It took over three (3) hours to make one lap.
Too bad Dick didn’t do some creative engineering and put in sub-table staging loops on each end of the mainline 
Of course that might limit the portability, but how many of us would actually want to fold it up?
Great to see MR do such an in-depth series of articles on modern N scale modelling. Thankyou! Being an N scaler myself and loving all the new modern models being produced also helps. Can’t wait to get over there(to the U.S.) later this year and see some of the action in person. Good job MR,keep up the good work!
I model on a door in N scale andwas very happy to see the articles. They promise to be very useful. I look forward to seeing
the one on operations.