Hi everyone. I wanted to share some pictures of my layout. It’s grown a little bigger from 4x8 to 5x10. It’s also now hung on the wall and can be folded up and locked. I’m going to put rail rax on the wall to store and display the trains and I also want to paint a nice city or mountain scene on the wall too. I built the origional table and my dad had the idea of hanging it on the wall. So he did most of the enlarging and hanging. I do have the legs and can detach the layout from the wall if I want to take it somewhere. It’s very large so that might not happen…ever.
Anyway, it’s fun to keep sharing the hobby with my dad that we loved when I was growing up.
Tell me what you think. Ideas are welcome.
This is great - very creative. My first layout was a three-by-five ft. fold-away except I used folding-table legs and slid the entire creation behind the couch when not in use.
My orders were to have a folding layout too! I haven’t stopped messing with things to get it folded up, or to finish creating the frame to fold it into.
I like the idea alot. Two questions: First, could you post a picture with the table in the upright, locked position? Second, how heavy is the layout coming down? Thanks for sharing. It looks great.
Great idea! About forty years ago, we tried the same idea with an HO layout.
Only one real problem…It came down over my bed. I had to crawl into and out of the bed somewhat like the pictures of sailors’ bunks in subs. [banghead] often.
Whoops, I thought I had posted one of it up and down. It should be fixed now. It’s not terribly heavy right now but of course I don’t have any real track plan or scenery on it. I can lower it with one arm with no trouble. The hardest part is manuvering the step stool while I raise or lower it as it’s higher than I am tall.
Unfortunately yes, they’ll have to be temporarily placed. Someday I’ll have a train room where I can make a nice layout right? Actually, I was reading about the layout in the attic in an old edition of CTT. That really looks fun and I’ve got a very tall pitch to my roof that I could actually do something like that.
This layout will probably be very scenic with lots of low profile scenery. Roads, fields, lake? I think these would do well. I really do want to put a mountain on there too. Anyone have tips on making one that can be removed?
If your looking for an easy temporary mountain, use foam board, blue, pink, whatever color, get 1 4x8 sheet and cut it into arc shaped segments about 2-4" wide. You can make it in 4 quadrants so that you can store em in a box up on a shelf on the wall there.
In my folding-layout experience, I went with a ‘Midwest’ sort of flat-plains look, painted the table brown, sprinkled ground-foam, screwed-down track, drilled holes for trees, telegraph poles and pre-set buildings and took everything off before folding it away. It was quite liberating to rearrange some things whenever I set it up again.
You can still have some buildings on the layout. Just do the scenery around them being sure to leave a very specific footprint and assign it a specific ID that ties the space and building to each other. Install your building lighting on the layout with a hole in the building to sit over the light. Quick and easy, off & on.
I never thought about the lighting. Thanks for the idea. Since I’m still just starting on decorating it, right now I’m trying to figure out what to lay down on the plywood. I’ve read somewhere to use green fabric then spray it with bleach to make the dry patches. There’s also the green grass paper. What have you guys started with?
Was this with your Thomas layout? I like the looks of it. I’ll have to take a closer look to the pictures you’ve posted. I bought some of the dark grey foam roadbed to mount my supersnap track on top of. I’d like to ballast the track but I’m afraid I’ll mess up the track if I want to sell it at a later time. Any ideas on this dilema guys?
You can still have some buildings on the layout. Just do the scenery around them being sure to leave a very specific footprint and assign it a specific ID that ties the space and building to each other. Install your building lighting on the layout with a hole in the building to sit over the light. Quick and easy, off & on.
Heres a simple solution for layouts where buildings and accessories are removed for storage.
Run your wires under the table to two srews, for simple lited buildings etc. Attach wire leads to the building or accessories connections. Crimp a solderless connetor onto the end of the leads. When you install the building on the layout connect the leads to the srews.
Example - these screws have wires attached under the table going to the transformer.
Heres the hardeware I use. The acorn nuts look better and are easier to work than the two nuts as shown in the above picture.
On the layout. The acorn nuts that hold the street light to the table also hold the wires for the light itself. Also if you look close you can see the nuts for the crossing gate.
nice work here. keep it up. cant wait to see more pics as you work on your layout. this is actually a pretty good idea for a layout. fold away and out of the way. i bet your wifey loves the idea of you not taking up alot of space especially when it is folded away. great job again. it’s amazing to see all the different ideas guys/gals can come up with for a layout.
I do have the legs and can detach the layout from the wall if I want to take it somewhere. It’s very large so that might not happen…ever.
