This may sound a little silly but I’m going ask it anyway.Has anyone ever laid Fastrack all through their house from one room to another and back again?It seems to me that a really large temporary layout with broad curves would be pretty neat. Theoritically, with an infinite amount of space at your disposal and with TMCC control, you could follow the train from room to room all through the house. Most of us who are serious about this hobby have permanent layouts with scerenary, which is fine, I have that too, but I have just been thinking about trying this while the wife is gone on a trip. If you have tried this, how did it turn out? How big were the engines you ran? How long were the trains?
OK, your mentioning that you are thinking of doing this while your wife is out of town now makes sense to me. Sure, I’ve done this with traditional 027 track taking up a couple of rooms - heck, that’s one of the glories of our gauge - ie the ‘Carpet Central’ and millions of holiday layouts… I ran it on the floor - essentially a few gigantic extended loops, each with a single lockon and associated transformer. I was surprised at how well the power ‘travelled’, Kurt. The upside: it was fun to mess around with the track. The downside: it was a pain to take up again. I wanted to keep it there and scenic it [;)]
I asked my wife this very question a few days ago. Her response…
“Why what are you planning on doing with your trains?”
Now I’m working on our Master Bathroom and have to finish painting the shed… so what makes her THINK I have something planned for the trains? [%-)] I do currently have a large FasTrack layout up in the basement using everything except the 4 switches and 1 crossing gate. takes up most of the trainroom and spills into the main basement area… [:)] I’ll post pics this weekend…
And I did inform her that I am out of track to make the Carpet Central larger…
Back in the late 40’s or early fifties a few friends and me pooled all of our stuff and ran track through two rooms in basically a large loop. Was a lot of fun until time to take it up though. If I recall correctly, we had quite a time keeping the track together also.
Not multiple rooms, but we have a room over a 2 stall garage that is 24 x 24. Last Christmas I bought a bunch of 027 tubular track and set it up all over the carpet. We had a blast and I was amazed at how quiet the trains were. This year, I’m buying even more so we can run multiple loops.
For several years now, our living room based Christmas layout has spilled out of the confines of that room, down the hallway to the bedrooms, past the hall bath and banking right into my son’s bedroom. There is a reverse loop that runs under his bed with tunnel portals, that feeds the trains back to the living room.
I have had to run multi-conductor cabling from the control center in the living room through the basement for power feeds to a hall closet access & behind the bedroom door for track power and constant voltage to the switches.
We run everything on “O-72”, “O-54”, & “O-42”(min. dia.). Power is usually a PH-1 w/ PM-1/CAB-1, a RS-1, a CW-80(awesome transformer) or PowerChief 120 all phased for control to 3 loops/districts total.
Cool! I had a carpet HO layout for a while and it expanded to fill the livingroom. My wife made me take it down for company that November and after Christmas we got Chewy… Since then, I’ve only had a couple small O layouts that were temporaries…
This reminds me of a scene in a Cary Grant movie - I think it was People Will Talk!
back when I first got married we lived in a 12 by 65 mobile home and I did that around xmas and my wife accually liked it and really laugh when the dog chased the train down the hall but came screaming back as the train chased it back up the hall .
Ive had Lionel Trains since I was 9 but never set up a train around the tree. The cats would always go after them. But this year Im going on the offensive vs the animals. Im whipping out my loudest operating accessories to scare em off.
My little brother and sister are going on a surprise trip to disney world with my parents next month and Im going to set up the trains all over the house for when they get back (another surprise).
My goal would be about 200 feet of mainline in your example. That’s a lot of uninterupted track in the average house. At about $3 something per foot it would be expensive, but very cool.
Keeping the track together was indeed the problem with the great carpet ryes of the 1950s. Most of us had hardwood floors. Wall-to-wall (nobody calls it that now) carpeting was a rare thing in those days. It was amazing how far a train could go after departing a separated track onto hardwood. Cause we ran em fast, don’t ya know.
I am so excited I found this post! I want to do the exact same thing as I do not have any room in which to create a layount like the ones I see here. I do have a large apartment, though and would love to have two lines run around the living room, dining room, den, foyer, and kitchen on the first floor. My cousin did it years ago.
I had my father’s trains when I was young and am now getting really into them and collecting. I have 0-gauge track and trains and hardwood floors with large thick oriental carpeting. I fear issues with trains crossing the carpet fringe, old floor heating vents, thresholds… Any suggestions? The trains spark now and again, and I worry about fire with the track (NOT fastrack) sitting directly on the carpet. Anyone have any tips or words of caution?
I am excited to work on the layout - up and through end tables and under couches - with the ability to use switches to create multiple routes. Any creative ideas or tips are welcome!
Stores like Home Depot have this rolling up plastic sheet that comes in about 2 foot widths. It is used to lay on carpets in high traffic areas. You might want to try laying that under the track if you are overly worried about carpet. As always, make sure transformers are uplugged before leaving the house.
Why should we NEVER leave trains running unattended? Because fires although extremely rare can happen. Sometimes you get a high resistent short…not enough to short the circuit breaker but just enough to really heat something up. This happend at my club once or twice on derailments. Mind you this is after running about 12 hours per week for years.
Still…I would be very careful about having anything flamable near tracks (thinking carpet fringe here or papier machie).
I often let trains run in another room (such as during party at christmas) but I am sure to check in fairly often.
This is what trains are all about! I set up my 0-27 from room to room in the basement and had a ball. The neighbor came over, saw what I did and dug his train out of the attic and we ran his…next thing you know I am building a 30 x 30 foot layout in American flyer The O guage was reserved for Christmas. If you have enough track do it! Just watch the foot traffic… can’t tell you how many bent track pieces I have!
