Hi im wondering where to find a nice layout for a 10x10 room? I have 3 full walls.
Welcome to the forums.
A bit more information would be helpful.
Do you want a switching layout, continuous running (possible on a shelf with some creativity)?
What era?
Where will your railroad be? East, West, city, rural, mountains?
Are there any special industries you want to model?
Are there any other obsticles in your room that you will have to work around?
If you are a subscriber you can check out the track plan database. Long designs can often be bent around corners to make them fit in a shorter space.
Sorry for all the questions, but answering them will help the folks that are good at such planning give you a better answer.
Good luck,
Richard
I stuffed this in a 9.5 x 9.5 shed.
It had point to point as well as continious running. I have to keep the shed it is in usable as a workshop so I deisgned about a 5’ section that can lift out and be stored on a shelf.
Your layout is going ot largely depend on how usable the room really is. Can you draw out a floor plan of the room letting us know where things like closets, doors and windows are located? this will better help us figure out what can and cannot happen.
Massey
A little more information about your room might help. I used to have a medium-grade drawing program (doesn’t work with my new computer) and I drew up a room plan to help me juggle ideas.
Hi There and sorry for the lack of info . I have a 10x10 air conditioned room in my garage that i would like to use as my train room it has no windows or closets .I think a U shape layout would work nicely. My era is 50 60s in West Virginia coal mines .let me know if there is anything else im missing .Im pretty new to MRR so any ideas will be appreciated.
What scale are you planing on, N scale 10x10 ft room would great HO would be good anything larger would not be so good
Im using HO
Take a look at the link I provided. Figure out, what is the maximum size of the layout that will allow getting to different parts of the layout when it is finished and operational. Yes, I know, some layouts are never really finished.
Figure what you need for overhead lighting and make sure that is finished before starting the layout.
Pictures here can help also.
Rich
Jay.
Recieved your PM. As you can see there are a lot of questions to be answered before the good layout planners here can help you. Keep following their comments and answering their questions and I’m sure you will find something to your liking.
Good luck,
Richard
Sounds like a perfect place for the popular HOG Heart Of Georgia layout. Then modify it to your liking.
The LION thinks that you start with the table.
Simplest would be a shelf layout on three sides of the room. Make the shelves 16" wide.
Nest step up would be to make a “blob” in the middle of the room coming off of the middle shelf. If the edges (x2) are 16" and the isles (x2) are 24" you are left with a 48" wide blob in the middle of the room.
You do not need a full 24" isle at the very far end of the layout, the blob can be wider there, and could easily conceal a helix as big as you like.
Now you can have two levels along the three walls .Lets call the back wall North. On the west wall you can have a terminal at the 38" level, a staging yard at the 50" level and another scene at the 58" level.On the East wall, you can have a terminal or an industry or something at the 40" level and the 53" level and another staging area the the 36" level. As I see it the main blob is only on the lower level, which gives you more vertical for your scenery.
Once you know what your table can look like you can discover what sort of layout you might build on it.
The LION just slaps down the tracks and then builds scenery around them rather than making a detailed plan and trying to follow it. Put your wiring in before you start building the track work. Put in 14 ga feeders for track poser (each leg and the blob can be their own cab–or go with DCC). LION would put in 25 pair cables that terminate at telco punch-town panels on each leg ant at the control panel, this way wiring the rest of the layout is a simple matter of connecting to these cables, and you do not have to run wires around scenery that is already built.
The LION has a nice method of installing switch machines on the rear fascia of the tables so that they do not stick down into the staging tracks below.
Hi JayR, Do you know how to Post Diagrams or Photos on Trains.com/Forums ? You must first download photos to a Host (ie. Photobucket.com) Establish an account with them. It’s free ! Go to the title "Image Hosting etc. and then go to My Albums Download digital railroad photos to a dedicated Album. Below each photo will be 2-4 options. Click on the IMG option, and Go to Edit to click on Copy. Return to your posted Text on your own Thread. Click on Paste or ctrlV and a lengthy photo Code will appear. scroll down to Post and click on it. They will tell you that your text and photo have been properly posted. To make any corrections to photo or Text, click on More and then on Edit(middle of box) Make your additions or correction an then be sure to Repost. Bob Hahn 
Does the lion have at least a vague idea about whether he wants to model a narrow gauge railroad in Maine, a subway in New York, intermodal trains coming out of the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach i 2010, or a granger in the midwest in the 1940s before he starts slapping down tracks?
Smile,
Stein
Well even that evolved as the layout grew. I had planned it as a commuter railroad, with Penn Station right in the middle of the room with a four track main line on the middle shelf. The lower shelf was supposed to be for staging yards, and the upper shelf for a branch line.
THEN Life-Like came out with inexpensive models of New York City Subway cars and I shifted the whole layout into a subway operation. I recently pulled out all of Penn Station and the lower level staging yards.
Now 34th Street / 7th Avenue is where Penn Station was, and 14th Street and Chambers Street are where the staging tracks were. A new Penn Station is being built under the Prospect Park station, but this will be a static display not connected to the railroad. It will showcase my older passenger cars and locomotives. They will be lit, but the tracks will not go anywhere.
So even vague ideas are fungible in the end.
For possible inspiration, have a look at these track plans from the Appalachian Model Railroading website:
10x11 foot “Rend Branch” : http://appalachianrailroadmodeling.com/tp_rend.html
10x12 foot “Dixiana Branch”: http://appalachianrailroadmodeling.com/tp_dixiana.html
11x14 foot “Dorchester Branch”: http://appalachianrailroadmodeling.com/tp_intdorchesterbranch.html
Not so much to copy any specfic plan, but to get some ideas of possible ways to fit a H0 scale Applachian mining theme point to point layout into a bedroom sized area.
Smile,
Stein
Does this mean that everything that moves is underneath the “street” on your layout and all you can see is the street and the city above the subway?
I assume you are talking about Brother Elias’ layout (the guy who speaks of himself in the third person)?
Click on the link in his signature to see his layout. His subway is partially underground (but viewable from the aisle side), partly elevated and partly at ground level.
Smile,
Stein
Some of it is already in subway tunnels. All of the work I am doing now will be in the tunnels. 14th Street and Chambers street are on the lower level along the walls, just 12" above them is the middle level which is both “open cut” and on an embankment, with one brief stretch of “cut and cover” (which is the building technique of most of NYCT’s underground system. The lower level will have no out of tunnel scenery, but will have room for some of the mezzanine work. The tunnels themselves are defined by tunnel walls complete with the bench-wall, but without the stanchions that would be found in the subway tunnels. I’ll suggest them in some areas, but other areas will be “cut away” so that I can rescue any train that dies in there.
42nd Street and 34th Street will have the street and city modeled above them. 34th Street will be done with more care and with more building kits. 42nd Street is so far off of the floor, that a visitor would only see the street level if he were standing on a stool. These buildings will be more photographically represented and will be well lit. At times square, the buildings are not really seen, but only the lighted billboards that are built on them. I have photographs of these billboards and will mount them on cardboard buildings, light them up from behind and call it a day.
At the Coney Island station, I will actually build the city street under the station. The terminal is elevated with two tracks sticking out over the street, just hanging there in mid-air. I’ll model some parts of the terminal building under the tracks, put in one lane of Stillwell Avenue. I will spend most of my attention there on the train shed.
Here is a snap shot of a work in progress. Since it is supposed to be in the tunnel, I jus
You assume correctly stein. And I can’t seem to get to the LION’s layout link. I did get to his home page, and it took me a few minutes to stop laughing when he mentioned the bldg code agencies.