Remember all those garage bands of the 70s? There were 3 on my block growing up
Anyway, how many of you have your layout in the garage? I have my layout in the garage and I wanted to find out what problems you may have encountered becuase of ambient conditions, etc. Addtionally, what are some positive features you have discovered railroading in the garage?
Sean in California - The land of no basements
I’m one of the many who have confiscated the garage and exiled the motor vehicles to the driveway.
Actually, there is another thread, “To Canazar and other South West modelers,” started by Mr Moto, where this subject has been covered in considerable detail. I’ll see if I can bring it up close to this one.
Well, two posts above should be close enough!
Chuck (Who has a railroad in a garage that would make Satan feel right at home)
The only problem I seem to have is reconstructing my layout after crashing it to shreds every time I drive my car in the garage, anyone else contend with this problem? ?
Hmmmmm, Been giving this some thought!
Why not build a setup so when the garage door raises, so does your layout to a heighth that allows cleance for your car or cars?
Mine is in the basement for now, but considering enlarging my garage to allow for more room.
But thenI will have to take into consideration heating and cooling changes, etc.
I have a 3 car garage with a 90 degree turn into my garage which I hate, so my idea is to extend my garage out further, still having a 3 car garage, and rehanging the doors to face the street, then what used to be my 3-car garage will be my trainroom, but then I’ll have to heat it in the cooller weather, and cool it in the warmer weather.
My garage is about 40 feet wide by 21 feet long, and my Ford 150 extened cab barely fits inside, with only enough room to to scrunch my way around it if the nose is almost touching the front garage wall.
I bought the huse from the original owner-builder, so if I were to do it myself, it would be layed out different.
Right now it houses my F150 and my 06 Mustang, and my riding mower, and various other things required to keep my place up,so no extra room leftover.
Another option would be to raise the roof, and build above the garage, as my house is higher in the middle section because of the vaulted living room ceiling, and lower on both ends ( the roof that is)
My ideal setup would be to have the room on my property to put up a steel type building for my trains, let’s say 40 feet by 30 feet.
I actually own another piece of property in the same neighborhood where I could do that, but my idea then would be to go about 60 feet by 30 feet and have a section or separate room for all my tools , power tools, etc., but then I’d have to get estmates on heating, cooling, construction, etc.
My ideal setup would be a General Steel type prefab building.
But dreams are dreams!
Extending the garage outward and rehnaging the doors solves all of these problems,. My bas
I live in southern Maryland about 18 miles south of Washington, D.C. The water table here is too high to have a basement unless you build on the side of a hill. I have (had) an attached 22’ x 24’ 2-car garage in which I house the layout.
I went all of the way and removed the garage door and closed the opening. The cars sit out in the rain. The trains are more important anyway. I heavily insulated the room and installed heat and air conditioning. There is drywall on all of the walls and on the ceiling, so the room has a nice finished look; much more so than many basements I have been in.
I can also easily get into the ‘attic’ area over the garage which makes it easy to install lighting in the room.
Dale Latham
Garages…yeah, its a love/hate relationship. My wife gave me the whole garage for m,y little world. I have a 19x19. Have a 15x19 layout with a 4’x19 area for chairs, shelves and my work bench.
if I owned the house we are renting, I would fix it up in a heart beat. but I am kinda stuck with i can make out of it.
Here are my Cons: HOT, very dusty, and the occasional bugs to deal with. Oh, and freakin HOT. Did I mention hot?
Pro’s: Lots of room. Concrete floors,easy entrance with with hte big door for supplies. Plus, opening the door makes for a nice day in ther “train room”. Attic entrance for easy venting when painting or fumes. Oh, and a lot of room. All, in all, its only HOT for 3 months out of the year. Its a fair trade for what I have.
I love cold mornings, cup of coffee and a great view whiel playing in the train room. Only 2 more months !!
I too am a garage Modeler! As one problem here is in Australia, Basements are pretty much non existant, unless your off your nut and worried that the USSR is going to Nuke you. [:)] I have the corner and the back wall for my layout not much but at least it’s a start!
Pro’s…
Easy access as John Said ^
Nice and airy when the doors are open, which lets in lots of natural light.
Warm in winter
Cons
Stinkin’ hot in Summer!!
and the odd spider living inside a coal hopper…
Here is apic from my first summer.
Needless to say, when the MOW crew got out there to “fix” the problem, they were not happy.
I am fortunate enough to be able to use most of a spare bedroom in the house itself for a layout, so not layout in the garage.
But I do have garages on the layout.
I have a problem besides the Bugs…Live in Winnipeg, Canada and thus some of you may know, it does get cold here, we have a detatched Double Garage which was sealed & insulated as I have a 20 x 12 ft section for myself. We do have a Gas Furnace in the Garage but the problem is we do not want to pay/can’t afford a hefty Gas Bill for 6 months of the year; so it is shut off unless I’m going to be out there which I do a fair amount during the winter. I do take my good engines out when I’m not there. The dilemma is I would like to go to DCC but the hookups do seem more permanent then the DC I currently have, any suggestions…Cary
Cary,
I am not sure what you mean by “DCC more permanent” than DC. Are you speakin’ Canadesse?
[:)]
All kidding aside, is it the cold you are worried about hurting the DCC system? I would think as long as you could keep it above freezeing in there you should be OK… Or a system like the NCE PowerCab would be good. All of the controls and sensitve computer stuff is in the handheld. All you do a simple unplug from the phonejack type connection and take it in the house with you.
Cold… I cant even imagine that. its 9 PM here and its 93 in the garage right now… yuck
I had a test layout in my shop, but it gets so frikkin hot in middle Georgia in the summer, I dismantled it. I’m working on insulating it now, and then I’ll find a used package unit and see about a possible larger layout in the future. Right now I have the spare bedroom. I love being inside.
I’m thinking about building a garage in our large backyard to use as a shop and train area, since we are limited in the house. My wife has given a preliminary OK to it, but we’re also perhaps going to try and find a larger house and sell this one, so we’ll see if I end up in the garage. I’m north of Winnipeg, yet, (though in Saskatchewan), so I’d have to have heat and a/c in it to make it useable for me and so I have to trench in gas and electrical and that just keeps getting the price up. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.
I planned my layout to allow one car in the garage to eventually be parked inside, but it seems we have resorted to more of a den like situation. This just means I can expand, but I left it alone to limit the size and demands.
The main drwbacks for having the layout in the garage here in Riverside is the summer heat. It can last from JUly to December but usually it is only unbareable when above 95 degrees. My garage is not isulated ( mistake ).
The humidity will cause expansion problems if you don’t prepare for it. I cut extra gaps in the rail around the layout but I still ended up with some of my turnouts out of guage from the presure. I simply cut more gaps and problem solve, of course I had to add more feeders but no big deal.
Some good points is that you can leave it a bit of a mess without trcking to much into the rest of the house. The people, mostly kids, will see me in the garage and want to run some trains, so I like the idea of them gathering in the garage where the parents can see them easier and they don’t have to come in the house at all.
I am in the garage here in North Texas and its hot. Its insulated with carpet, I have a dual window unit and it can get it relativly cool and or heated depending on which part of the year. I would love to have a building off in the backyard. Maybe sometime in the future.
I have double deck layout in a 12x24 basement room with a 12x18 workshop in the next room. Constant 75 degrees year round with about 5 to 10% humidity.
Eat your hearts out! [:D]
tatans;
MR (I believe) tackled this problem in an article some years ago. The writer had a single car garage with the layout having to share space with the family automohoopie. When he suggested to his wife that, perhaps, the auto could stay outdoors - they were in the (deep) snow belt somewhere - she ask him if he knew how to spell “divorce court” and that ended that.
I’m not sure of the exact measurements involved but the gist is that he designed his layout to raise using some sort of a cranking mechanism. He didn’t raise the layout all the way to the ceiling, just high enough to provide clearance for the car hood - that’s a bonnet for our British friends. His wife - he said it was his wife; wonder if he’s still married - was forever pulling the car too far forward and striking the layout so he had suspended a ball beneath the layout and when the ball struck the windshield that was the time to stab the brakes. He said their was only about six inches from the rear bumper to the garage door when everything was in place.
This article prompted a letter to the editor outlining his solution to the same basic problem; the model rail here was forever misjudging his clearance and striking the layout so he suspended his ball across the width of the garage and when the windshield and ball came into collision with one another he would stop and that ended the heady days of running into the layout.
theK4kid;
Nice if you can do it but this whole thing - of raising the layout when the garage door is raised - sounds very rubegoldbergish to me. I can think of how to get the layout to lower while the garage door is opening but you can’t lower the layout until you get the car out from underneath it which requires the garage door to be open which subverts your lowering the layout in the first place. This subject of raising the layout to fit above the car in the garage has been tackled numerous times in the hobby press; the concensus of opinions -
Sean…I’m also in the land of no basements…Central Division (Texas)!! Without a basement and with spare bedrooms that are just too small I opted to close in one stall of my garage for my choochoos. I just ran the two new walls where I wanted them. They’re insulated and I used sheetrock on both sides of the studs. My room turned out to be 9’X17’. While still not as large as I would like, it offers possibilities. I’ve added an A/C duct from my main supply and it seems to keep the room cool even with the west sun beating on the outside wall and all the lights and other electonics working in the room. I also installed carpet which I think helps with the cooling and makes for a much better surface to stand on for a long time.
While this works I’m still looking forward to the day I can retire and move away from Scum City and return to the land of basements and cooler weather! Until then I can watch Decapods pulling coal cars in relative comfort!
Roger
I’ve designed a few layouts for garages for myself and others, and I worte a long article about it in the Layout Design SIG’s Layout Design Journal #28 (Fall 2002). Some of these ideas are also on my website.
I’m in California and the afternoon sun really beats down on my garage in the Summer. Replacing my old tilt-up wood door with a sectional insulated steel door was a huge improvement. It significantly reduces the temperature swings in the garage.
I also had an attic gable fan built-in to the sidewall of the garage, exhausting outside. This took some engineering to build a box to support it, but it’s also helped a lot. More details on my site, but here’s a view of the inside (top) and outside of the fan with the commercial louvers we added to make it more appealing for the neighbors.
A lift-up layout was discussed in article by Jim Hediger in the June, 1977 issue of Model Railroader. John Armstrong also had a couple in his book Creative Layout Design (Kalmbach). These layouts must be stiff as well as light. Counterweights (bricks or whatever) are necessary as more scenery and such is placed on the layout.
Although some have had good luck with walling off a portion of the garage to create a separate room for the layout, I think it does limit the amount of space the layout can use when you must share with the car. Of course, it depends on how difficult the garage environment is from a temperature, dust, etc. standpoint. In my view, building the layout so that some portion of it extends over some part of the parked car is a great way to “find” more layout space. This is wh
My layout is in my garage. It’s a one car garage so in the summer I just keep the big door closed and open the door to the kitchen. I also have a window unit AC on the side door.
I’ve been debating whether to move the layout into the spare bedroom and since I’m single there’s no one to veto my decision.