Filosophy Phriday (Space! That Bigglyest Desire)

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Some of us spend an awful lot of time in our trainrooms and maybe our workbench areas. Where our layouts are situated can be anything from an outdoor covered patio, which may be fine in warmer climates, to dark damp basements, spare family rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, garages, outbuildings or specifically designed buildings or additions with nothing but model trains as the reason for their existence.

I saw the advantage of giving up my house in the city for a house in the country as I got more than twice as much house space for the same amount of money and believe me a nice sized layout room was high on the list for moving. Not to mention the girl I had my eye on as a good catch, had a herd of Golden Retrievers.[(-D]

As a very young kid, my first layout was three rail track inherited from my cousin spread all over the living room. Then at the ripe old age of 4, my dad came home with a Lone Star Treble O train set that became a plywood Pacific in my bedroom. Anytime I was in my room, a train was running, right up into my teens. I was in heaven thinking I had an awesome layout. Who da thunk a future wife this train bug would help determine a move to the country decades down the road.

To me, the amount of space was not the only requirement, it had to be a nice place to be as well. I figured as I got older and saw retirement on the horizon, I wanted warmth and a handy washroom, but the biggie was it had to be in the house, so I could just walk into the trainroom if only to glue another stick on a project in between periods of the hockey game or while cooking dinner for my Queen.

I have a handy washroom, a bar and a fireplace in a carpeted room that is the right size as far as my ability to maintain the thing. My only complaint is all the doors I had to deal with, but it all worked out in the end to the point I consider myself lucky and happy with the trainroom I ended up with and the &nbs

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Well, as I get older, and with bad knees, I went looking for a signle story house - with a full basement of course. Usully this gets you basement space = living space, and while I wanted a large space for a layout, I didn’t want a crazy size hoouse - there’s just 2 of us, and a couple of small dogs. Plus I had no desire to be house poor. I don’t care that the bank said I could afford X, I only wanted to space about 1/2X. Well, I ended up here, where the garage sucks off 20+ feet of the basement. But - I have a nice pool and fenced in yard for the pups to play in. I wish I had more layout space, but I just had to think up - 2 decks.

ANd I REALLY need to get the design, at least of the lower deck, finalized - I know have bids from contractors to gut the existing (poorly) finished basement and install proper walls with insulation and vapor barriers (what’s the point of there being heat down there, with no insulation?). Plumber was just here to quote removal and salvage of the existing heat registers and a couple of pipe relocations to trash the (trashy) bar. Electrician next, to undo the crazy wiring and install a branch circuit that will power the layout. It’s starting to get real. I need to move all my stuff out to the garage to make room for the workers. This could be the end for my old layout - while there’s a dumpster here to haul away the scrap, in it will probably go.

By eliminating the room that divides the furnace and water heater from the rest of the basement, I gain more space.

In the end, I’ll have enough to keep me busy for quite some time. I had some old ideas, based on hoping to get a typical full-basement rancher, but I don’t have the space to do that, so i came up with something different. Like most, I do wish I had more space, yet I can still run what I like and it should keep me busy.

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Brent,I never wanted a Godzilla size ISL since I like to keep things simple and quick and easy to build. I creep out in basements anyway so,it didn’t matter if the house had a nice basement or not.

My best loop layout was a N Scale double track 36" x 80" HCD layout that feature yard and industry switching as well as a main line run. In fact I could switch cars in the yard or run a local while a train ran laps on Main #1 or I could switch cars in the yard while two trains was running the #1 and #2 main lines. I only had four loop layouts in HO in 60 years simply because at a young age I found I enjoyed switching far more then watching trains run mindless loops. YMMV and that’s good.

My “dream” ISL would be a “U” shape around three walls. My man cave has those three walls but,I decided to use some of the wall space for my video gaming table and work desk so,a 16" x 12’ ISL is in the planing stage.

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I have an almost perfect space now, 3 walls above a garage, finished with heat and AC. Sadly, as I move towards a divorce (that’s not the sad part, believe me) I will lose this space, but who knows what lies ahead? My girlfriend, who I might end up living with, supports my hobby, so it could work out. I’ve always been a builder rather than an operator anyway.

My current train room is the former family room, which I gradually took over as the family went off to college. It’s now more of a man-cave, 24x24, with a big TV and a couple of couches. Carpet, heat and AC like I said, and it’s attached to the house for easy access. Other than the cursed 45-degree roof line, it’s pretty much perfect.

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The STRATTON & GILLETTE layout history tour:

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SGRR #1, 1983, High School. “The Door Layout”: This was a 36" by 80" N scale layout based on GORRE & DAPHETID #1 built by John Allen. It was in my bedroom along the wall. I thought this layout would be a part of all my lifetime future layouts like John’s was. I was wrong.

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SGRR #2, 1989, Newly Married. “The Dream House Layout”: I designed and built my dream house. It was a three bedroom house with a finished second floor that was all one (train) room. I thought my life was set. I had a massive train room, a good job, and a new family. Well… we were over extended. The house was too expensive. New babies were a handful. My place of employment shut down in December, and things got real bleak. No progress happened on the layout after the initial building spurt when we moved in. We had no money or time. Also, while the layout room was great, the house was too small. A developer offered to buy the house because people in the neighboring gated community needed a parking lot for “eyesore vehicles”, and we gladly sold to get out of debt.

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SGRR #3, 1995, Living in a duplex. “The Dining Room End Loop”: This was the last N scale STRATTON & GILLETTE. This layout was about 30" by 96", and was supposed to be the end of a much longer layout. It housed a mostly industrial switching section. The limitations of switching freight in N scale, my growing interest in detail, and other factors led to my decision to switch to HO. Deciding to switch to HO doomed this layout.

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SGRR #4, 2000, New house & dreams. “The Industrial Switching Layout”: This layout was 24" by 72" and built onto the wall of the master bedroom of our new 4 bedroom 3 bath house. We had three daughters by this point, but the new HO layout was great. Trains ran back and forth controlled by a single MRC model 55 cab controller. The HO STRATT

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Brent, what you said about you and your dad, I do the same! I have a picture of him in the train room and “we talk” about “what we’ve got” now :wink:

I have 3 trials and tribulation stories for ea. of my 3 layouts. Might even “win the prize”…[banghead]

Layout # 1: Age 12-13. 4X8 just got scenicked finally after 2 “kid years” of work and after coming home from a spinal fusion at 16, found that my bed room was devoid of pike! “Where’s my layout”? I asked my Dad.

“I thought you’d need the room to practice walking again (after one month in bed with muscle atrophy). So I took it down”! THAT was worth years of therapy I never got…just sayin’…

Layout 2: “The Big Panhandle” from one of the Kalmbach Books. Approx. 20’X20’ in a cellar that was always dry until… the return of the 100 year flood in '90. The water table ever since, laid 1/8" to 1/4" puddle over the basement floor and this was an unfinished cellar anyway. I had all the bench work and track work in…spent the next 10 years wondering ‘what I can do’.

Present Layout #3 (final layout for me). I removed a very expensive suspended wall (the studs and joists don’t touch wood to wood)/double walled in my recording studio upstairs between the old mic-ing room and the studio mixing room. Ended up with only 8’wide by `17’.

FINALLY, getting this one near scenic completion. It’s a Belt Line/Terminal & Transfer RR with a continuous run (the belt) allowing trans- continental traffic.

Just started Operations sessions with some pals and expanding on that, having a blast!

I owe a great deal to Cuyama (Byron) for his valuable advice to a then, newbie (2008) in pointing out weaknesses in the published plan I was adapting and the shocking education that published plan turn outs aren’t always truly drawn to scale, vary by manufacturer, etc. Check o

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I remember when I was a kid seeing a comic in one of the magazines where the train tracks went through every room of the house including the bathroom. In the comic there was a passenger train running through the shower while the housewife was using it.
While my layout is mostly in the garage, parts of it are in two bedrooms. Sorry they don’t enter a bathroom but the comic gave me the idea that your layout didn’t have to be all in one single room. It could connect to several rooms.
Since my rail height is fairly high I can build shelves in bedrooms without taking up any room at all. The shelves change width depending on the furniture underneath them. The shelf over the bed itself is less than 6 inches wide so you don’t get that claustrophobic feeling. It widens out as it goes over the end tables. Etc.
The part in the garage is too hot in the summer but not bad late at night or in the winter. The bedrooms are nice and cool with the central air on. The carpeting makes it easier on the feet. The shelves look good inside because they are not junk shelves but look more like 3D art, or more exactly, like shelves people put their dust collectors (knick knacks) on. Nobody who has seen it thinks of it as being a toy. Everyone sees it as a scale model and thinks it’s cool. I do have one strict rule: Nothing on the layout that is not part of the model. This includes tools and paint, but they are allowed temporarily but only when actually being used, but even then I try not to do it.

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My first layout was in the spare bedroom of my apartment. It was a large island type layout with an access hole in the middle. I knew I wouldn’t be there long and it was going to be a learning layout. My first house had a 28 foot long basement with a load bearing cinder block wall dividing the space in half. Each half was 11 feet wide. On half had the stairway and all the mechanicals while the other half was wide open except for the water line that came in on one side and ran up the wall. That forced me to bulge the backdropout around it which was nothing more than a nuisance. There were two passage ways between the cinder block wall. One was about 6 feet from the end wall while the other was six inches from the other end. I used that second opening to lead to a staging yard. Halfway into the construction I completely changed the schematic to what could best be described as a folded dogbone. I had fun with it but there were some serious design flaws that kept me from enjoying it as much as I could have. All the while I was planning my dream layout in my head which would be built when I retired to a house out in the country. Unable to find a suitable house that had what a I want I had one designed and built with a large rectangular basement on a 48X28 footprint. It too is divided down the middle but by posts supporting a center beam. That allows more pass through opportunities than the old house. With some just some minor adjustments I have built the layout I began conceiving in my head about 30 years ago. The house went up in 2000 and the layout is now nearing completion. The mainline runs around the walls with stacked staging loops at either end of the run. I am now working on the final phase, a long branchline which runs on both sides of a center peninsula. I hope to have it running by the end of the year.

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I never had the space, nor the funds or even the desire to build one of those basement filling model railroading empires, which would have taken me decades to complete.

Over the 54 years I am into this hobby, I have developed a strong liking of small, sometimes odd layouts. My current layout is only 3 by 5 ft “big”, but with a lot of scenery and detail (once it´s finished) - and that´s in HO scale, albeit narrow gauge.

I don´t think that size really matters at all. It´s the fun of building a layout and running a train, which, at least for me, is the most important factor in this hobby.

Don´t forget - the really valuable gifts in life always come in small packages!

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After a long history of undersize railroads (unable to support the minimum 24" radius required by my ‘mainline’ rolling stock, or shelf/switching designs) most of which succumbed to moves under military orders, I finally acquired a nice double garage just big enough to hold a 15’X19’ rolled-up dogbone version of my now 52+ year old Master Plan. Construction has been proceeding in fits and starts for well over a decade, with LOTS yet to do.

If I could indulge in a dream I would like a room about 30x36, door and windows at one end, in which I could loosen up my present scheme, get the netherworld out from under (by routing it behind the visible world, accessible from a perimeter aisle) and gain a little more space in the main aisleways. I wouldn’t add a single turnout to the present track plan, but I would like to co-locate my workshop with the layout, in space currently taken by that (fillintheadjectives) hot water heater.

Speaking of SPACE, my other hobby, writing SF stories in the Confederation Universe, 35th-37th centuries, gives me the whole Milky Way Galaxy to play in…

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

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Chuck, have you ever published anything? If you want to find out how your stuff holds up you could try “Fan Fiction”. My daughter writes on Fan Fiction and has 148,000 followers. Her room and our upstairs hallway are lined with full bookshelves and I am sure the house is sinking under the weight.[(-D]

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Brent,

A couple of HO layouts at my parents home back in the 60’s. Then the dream layout in the 80’s, in a 25’ by 20’ area. Just dismantled that layout last year., and moved out of a 2200 sq ft home). I am now retired and living in a 4,000 sq ft home with a 1400 sq ft walkout basement. Still dreaming while I mow the lawn(3-4 hours on the JD lawn tractor)…

Jim

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After reading Randy’s and Jim’s stories, I’ll throw something else into the mix. For those of you that moved into that new place with train space at the ready, how long did it take for the new layout in the new space take to get going? I find it takes a year to really get settled into new digs, so I can see it taking a while to get underway on the pike.

Soon after we moved into the house, my mother’s health went downhill and I gave up that part of the house for a while so she could move in and enjoy her only Grandchildren until she passed away. What’s a few more years. In the meantime, we had an awesome Thomas spread in another part of the house.[Y][(-D]

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OK, I have only skimmed through the replies, but here is the short version of my story…

I built/owned several several layouts as a teen, the smallest was two 5x9 platforms in an L shape, the biggest filled an L shaped room, long dimensions 25’ x 35’, 15’ width to each leg.

I went a number of years with no layout space/time, belonged to a nice club.

For the last 21 years my layout has been located above my detached garage, the layout room is 25’ x 40’.

The orignal layout in the space was very complex and could never have been moved and reassembled somewhere else. Had I completed it, it might also have been hard to maintain - too much hidden track.

I am now working on a new layout, fully modular (but not to portable module standards) to allow it to be moved when we fully retire and sell this big house.

It is VERY likely the retirement house will provide an even larger layout space, another good reason to build a layout now that can be moved and expanded/reconfigured.

Layout space comfort - my layout room is fully finished (but not fancy), and has heat and A/C. It has no running water or bathroom, the house is only 50’ away…

I do desire/require that any layout space be relatively “finished” and fully climate controlled.

I am not one to watch TV, or “multi task” in any way while doing things like model railroading. So being disconnected from the house is not an issue.

In fact my “workbench” for model building is in the basement of the house, not near the layout at all.

Music - I can take it or leave it while doing suff like trains. Right now no music in the train room, but maybe one day.

Important statement about layout size - after many years at this, and helping others design and build layouts, and drawing a few track plans for others, and being very set in my modeling goals, here is what layout size means to me:

I want a big space, and big lay