Looking for a place to build a layout. Have very little room in the house, but do have a big back yard. I was wondering if anyone here has their layout in a shed or a used Office trailer. I live in PA so it would need to be insulated, off the ground, and have heat and A/C. If you have one of those office trailers where were you able to pick up a used one? About how much did it cost ? I can’t convince the Wife that a Caboose at $8k plus moving and installation is a good move. So I’m looking at the next best thing. She’s ok with a nice looking shed. Would need to have at least 7 foot ceiling so I could stand in it. Layout would be “N” scale so need not be too large. Thanks for any replies. Dave
Dave, I haven’t built it yet but ---------
Here in Texas, basements are almost non-existant, so usually layouts have to go in garages, spare bed rooms, etc… With this in mind, and living where I don’t have to worry about building codes, I have come up with a design for an 8’ x 16’ building built as a portable building ie on skids. With Plywood walls and floor with all framing members on 16" centers, I have priced out the material cost from Lowes at $675.00. That does not include roofing (I have sheet iron on hand) nor insulation, nor sheetrock (which I also have on hand).
Keep in mind that here we don’t need as much insulation as you do and most frame buildings use 2 x 4 studs. However, you might find a source of the hated ‘white beaded stryofoam’ in 3.5" that you could use as insulation.
In that $675 figure no door is included. But because I have sheet iron, sheetrock, and pleanty of electrical wiring on hand, I will be able to finish the 8’ x 16’ with lean-to type roof for well under a $1000. It will be simple and quick to build and will work well here.
If you decide to go this route, design your building in increments of 4’ – building materials work best with the least waste at 4 foot increments.
John T. in the wet cow pasture in Texas
I always though an old travel trailer would work well. Could even keep the bathroom and gut the rest out. A few hundred out to get one these days.
If you look in older trailer parks that are trying to upgrade, you can often get an older unit free just for hauling it off. There was one fellow got a 24x60 double-wide, and with a little crowbar surgery had a nice MRR clubhouse with room for a pretty good size HO layout If you have a large yard it is surely something to consider, eh? jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
Check with your local contractor and see where they rent or buy their office trailers. These are usually very well insulated, because most use electric heat. Dealer/rental may have used ones that they will sell. As stated above, some have bathrooms. (In many places if you hook up the toilet it is concidered a mobile home and taxed as such.)
Used travel trailers also a possibilty, there again check with dealers.
Mobile homes are great if you have the space, but remember older ones are not insulated as well as newer ones.
All the above may need new roofs. A pitched roof with insulation on top of the unit virtually eliminates further roof repair and the insulation helps a lot with heating. (Did the roof and insulation on my mother-in-laws trailer.)
Insulated over the road trailers are also available reasonably (?). Be sure to get an insulated one (wood interrior) the others sweat in changing weather. Takes much less to finish them even if you add more insulation. You do have to provide all the lighting. Also may need a roof as above.
Have fun, good luck,
before you go and buy a trailer you had better check the city codes out. In the town i live in we can (not) have a moble trailer unless its in a trailer park. We used to and I could scrape them but they changed the ordences and I can’t even do that any more.Not to discourage you but the building would have to meet codes to.Good luck Ed
Interesting idea. Lowes, HD and Menards each carry about a half dozen different garden sheds around here (Chicago). I’ve never looked inside one, so I don’t know how suitable they are for interior framing and insulating. Might have to mosey by today and stick my nose in one just out of curiosity.
A couple thoughts. You’d most likely have to have a concrete pad poured to put a shed on. That might get pricey. Also, around here, electric heat is ridiculously expensive. Running a gas line to a shed might be expensive as well and you’d want to check your codes to see if it’s even allowed. Maybe a propane heater like in a camper trailer? Don’t know if they’re considered safe for long term and you’d probably have to keep it running almost constantly in the winter in PA (I’m guessing).
I’ve run electric lines and added breakers to home panels and it’s not at all difficult but getting the inspector out to ok it can be a hassle.
I think it would certainly be worth looking into though. Too bad about the caboose!
Big back yard eh? Sounds to me like your best bet is a G scale garden railway. The money you would spend on a shed (with insulation, AC, heat etc) could go a long way towards a garden pike.
Much like the guy from Texas, we have the same problem here in the Low Country of South Carolina - no basements. So the choices are an outbuilding, converted garage, or spare room. My amazing wife actually went along with the out building approach - we went to HD found one of their better sheds and had it built with a few upgrades. You will have to check you local building codes of course - here above 200 sq ft you have to have a bulding permit,etc. Mine is 10 x 16 so it worked out ok. Had a contracor run power to it, but the rest - insullation, internal wiring, wallboard, ceiling,etc I did myself.
Without it I’d still be modeling on my small bookshel RR.
Good luck!
Charles
I’d have to go with nucat and shay on the sheds from a building supply outfit. That way you’d have a decent looking building that could be used for something else should you decide to sell. Theres plenty of those things around here and they seem to work very well. One of my freinds builds all his R/C planes in his. It won’t be too bad to insulate and finish the inside. You should be able to set it on concrete blocks and then skirt it too keep the critters out. Be sure to allow for ventilation underneath. Consider different sources of heat. If you buy one from a specialty outfit you might get better advice on how to set it up the way you want rather than buying from a big box storre.
I have a 30’ x 16’ built on site shed. It has little insulation in the walls and nothing for the ceiling. It is not climate controlled. I have a 4x8 HO and a 4X4 N layout in there that are bacically track on cork on plywood. This building gets to over 100 degrees here in middle TN in the summer. There are no windows so heat does not escape except through the roof turbine.
Both of the layouts I have inhareted so I have no $$ or time in them at this point. The kids and I love running the stock we have. I am wanting to disassemble this HO and build a medium size layout we can “get-inside” of, like 10x10 around the room or maybe “E” shaped.
Other than personal comfort of the engineers, how does track work hold up to heat and cold? Is anyone operating in a shead that is NOT climate controlled?
Happy 4th!
A late model railroading acquaintance of mine - I just recently found out that he passed away a few years back - had a mobile home shell built and installed on property which he purchased when he relocated back to the Dallas/Fort Worth area following his retirement from the Air Force in the early-‘80s. If I recall right this was a 16’ × 40’ unit and was subdivided on the inside to provide a ‘layout’ room and a ‘work’ room. I never had the opportunity to visit his layout but I did see several photos of it. Somewhere in the mid-90s he sustained a fire of suspicious origin and that wiped out - at least for the moment - his modeling. The last I corresponded with him he was still undecided on what he was going to do and I have no idea whether he ever resumed model railroading. He was very happy with what he had done and felt that, if building code allowed it, a mobile home shell was an excellent choice for a model railroading structure.
I reside in a 16’ × 72’ - that’s 68’ interior dimension - mobile home located in a park on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona. At the time I located to this particular location a little over seven years ago I was a bachelor and I moved and set up my 4.5’ × 10’ N Scale layout into the front/second bedroom; I never really got the layout running and that room - what I came to refer to as my ‘layout’ room - very quickly degenerated into my ‘storage’ room. I married the widow lady next door three years ago and we opted to use my home for our residence because, being older, her’s was easier to sell, which it has been. Her presence required me to move what I called my ‘train’ room - my ‘model railroad’ office space - out of the living room -I was a bachelor, remember? and bachelors can get away with things like that - into my ‘layout’ room, the layout was suspended/turned against one wall, and was recently
I am also looking to build a 24 x 44 foot building (with a 12 x 15 foot workshop attached) on the side of my cul de sac lot. I am looking into steel buildings and prefab housing builders. Both of them can pretty much custom build to your specs.
My neighbor, who is a contractor, has volunteered to construct it using 6 inch steel studs to provide for 6 inch insulation (necessary here in Sunny Scottsdale, AZ) and sheath it with foam panels covered with stucco on expanded metal. Once the new breaker box is installed (and the A/C unit) I can do the drywalling, wiring and lighting myself.
I strongly recommend that you design the proposed layout first so that the building can be built to fit, rather than trying to squeeze it into a office trailer or mobile home.
In spite of my extolling the virtues of a good sized garden shed,I have for years been looking at abandoned mobile homes as a home for a MRR.Its all a pipe dream but I still like to wonder what a guy could accomplish. Sometimes one of those old trailers in good shape will sell for as little as a couple thousand dollars. But alas I have no room. Say, how about the possibility of taking 4 of them and placing them in a square shape an making adjoining openings. You could model G-cale indoors with plenty of room.
I think it was Harry Brunk of NG&SL Gazzette fame who had his narrow gauge in a mobile home so he wouldn’t have to dismantle it when he moved. Anyways fun to think about.
One of John Armstrong’s designs was intended for an 8 x 32 trailer, so the idea isn’t especially unusual.
As far as climate control is concerned, I stepped into my layout space this afternoon, did a little work (removing clamps where the caulk had set up) and ran the next two trains on the schedule. As I was leaving I checked the temperature - 116 degrees (F.)
Didn’t seem to bother the layout (which has also been operated when the temperature was below 40 degrees (F.) DID bother me - anything metal was uncomfortably warm to the touch, and on my layout virtually everything is metal. I usually work on it during the single-digit hours after dawn, when it’s cool.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Mojave Desert garage)
Wow. Conventional wisdom would insist that you’d be having all kinds of problems with buckling and heaving and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Truly, I’m surprised, but if you’re not having problems, that’s great!
Seems like I remeber a large Pennsy layout built in a gutted out house trailer in the guys back yard in one of the magazines maybe RMC a few years ago…Cox 47
A local club has their layout in a gutted 12x40 +/- mobile home. The kept one bathroom, the rest became layout and workshop space. The outside of said mobile home was reconfigured to resemble a caboose, with one end platform, marker lights, etc. Another member used a 10x16 prefab storage shed, which had been insulated, finished with drywall, electricity provided, and (to an extent) climate controlled, for his layout. I’m in the process of building an 8x20 trailer for my “portable” layout, which will be built to resemble a caboose, complete with cupola, and insulated, moisture barriered, powered, and generally built up to all applicable codes. It will be registered as a cargo or camper trailer (depending on local laws), so as to avoid neighborhood covenant violations.
I worked for GECMS (who leases office trailers) and they often sold 10-15 year old “distressed” units for $1000-1500 or so. Usually these were in good structural condition, with good electrical and mechanical systems, but often needed much cosmetic work. These were titled as office trailers, and would avoid mobile home permitting issues, but could create office permitting issues. As always, you would have to check local laws. However, it may be possible to rebuild and re-title a unit as a storage or utility trailer, to make it possible to get permits for one depending on where you live.
Another possibility not mentioned is overseas cargo containers. These are usually uninsulated, but insulated ones can be had, or you could insulated and finish a plain one. These can be had for $1500 or so, and often don’t need work to fix leaks (in other words, they’re “dry”). Most places may object to road trailers being used as storage or workshops, but (for some reason) less so for the containers.
I’ve not seen a camper trailer converted into layout space, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be done. My traile
Shipping containers the way to go. I’m currently in the process of lining the interior of a 40’ x 9’6" hi cube at the moment. The other option is the chillers, which having the choice again is the way I would go, no work beyond cutting out and installing doors and windows. Uninsulated ones have a major issue when it comes to heat. There is a couple of pics of the current one I’m working on at this site http://www.southernstartrade.com/ssr/index.html
Here’s a swelling idea…if the wife won’t let you have a caboose…why not take a construction trailer and: Add a cupola (real for ventilation and light or fake for looks); a front and rear real or simulated “porch”; a break wheel (some chains?); paint it red (or other color) and stencil or stick-on the logo of the railroad of your choice???
With proper trailer skirting, no one would no there’s not the proper wheels under it! The porches could be made out of wood, painted well (inexpensive); or could maybe be fabricated out of metal…??
Be sure to put it on a concrete pad…it will keep it stable. DOn’t ask me how I know this.
hhhmmmm…new ideas are forming in my head…