So, after man years of putting off building a layout I am finally going to dive In a get my N scale trains up and running. I am a raw newbie and looking forward to a new learning experience. But, I have a question that I did not see addressed in the existing topics. I live in Riverside CA where the temperature can run up to 117 Degrees. I have a finished garage but no air in it. The inside of the garage can get up to low 100’s. I’m concerned about the heat affecting the trains, the track and scenery. Anyone have experience with this? Thanks in advance.
Now, on the question - Yes, high heat will affect trains, track, and your roadbed/sub roadbed. Just like the real thing, heat can cause issues with track buckling due to expansion. (Both rails, roadbed and sub roadbed.)
Also, heat will cause some issues with motors running warmer, and power supplies overheating and shutting down if they get hot enough.
Heat and humidy will adversly affect your layout. Since you mention that your garage is “finished” is it correct to assume that you have insulation? If you do, I’d consider either adding airconditioning or if your current system can handle the extra load, you should add some ducting and create a seperate zone with thermostat.
If you could somehow partition your garage so that you have a ‘train room’ in it, as I have, you’d be so much further ahead in terms of controlling both humidity and temperature swings. One or the other isn’t so bad, provided you don’t get extended swings one way or the other.
Too cold, and you can’t enjoy the space without some kind of heat.
Too hot, you make lubes get soft and sag out of gear towers, or electronics get so hot they quit. And you…you can’t stand being in there dripping over your trains and scenery.
Too humid and you’ll have swollen timbers, mold on surfaces that you have touched, and it will possibly lead to corrosion of unprotected steels. Eeeww.
Too dry and you may get cracking in timbers, rails pulled apart at joints, buckling of the tracks.
Even if you were to just spend $200 on a quick pony wall and a few sheets of drywall, it would help. If you were to add some batting and cover it with some poly, you’d have the same space I have…now. I heat it with a slant fin electric portable heater, and I open the lone window and slide the end of a portable air conditioner’s exhaust duct into the slot when I need it.
One other consideration is lighting, and yet another is at least one wall socket along that wall. More money, yup. What’s it worth to you to be able to walk into that space any time and be confdent you have a usable layout?
Last September I attended a Free-mo setup (HO) in Aptos (CA) inside a barn converted into a community building. Temperature got to 116 F. On one of my modules, one of the rails bulged out sideways of the plastic spikes–about 2" long. I put some “temporary” metal spikes in, and it was good to go. That was the only heat related event.
As I said, no problems with trains or layout other than that. The humans were another story, though all survived. After proper refreshment.
So, my recommendation is to allow for rail expansion. Don’t solder rail joiners–attach feeders to the rails, instead. And maybe allow a snidge of extra gap in the joiners for expansion. Except if you lay your track at 116 F. Then you don’t have to. But you’ll be wanting that refreshment.
I live in Bakersfield so I’ve been there and done that. I model in HO scale and the heat/cold expansion/contraction on HO rails can be a big problem. I’ve never had heat problems with my locomotives or power supplies.
My garage was finished but the roof to ceiling didn’t have insulation and my garage would reach 108° in the summer and into the mid thirties during winter. I had soldered all of my track joiners and the 70° plus temperature swing took out 60’ of track over a four year period.
With the high energy costs for temperature control my garage isn’t a candidate for that. Even a few hours a day would cost me $150 a month. Money that I rather spend on my railroad goodies than Ready Kilowatt.
I had the roof insulated to R40 and that reduced the highs to the low 90°s and the winter low is upper 50°s. Reducing the temperature swing to the mid 30°s really helped. I didn’t solder the track when I replaced it but I was careful about checking the gaps in the joiners.
I live near you and the worst problem isn’t the high temperature but the swing between the heat of the day and the cold of night. For people who don’t know the area there can be 50 degree changes between daytime highs and nighttime lows. Just this week it was 90 in the day and 40’s at night.
I don’t soldier my track together so that the track can expand and shrink without causing problems. Frequent feeder wires help maintain electrical flow.
I don’t run the trains during the heat of the day during the summer. I wait until night and open up the doors to let the cool air inside. If you install a small window type air conditioner, which you can easily cut into a wall, be sure to mount it up high for best efficiency because heat raises and cold air falls. Fans will be useful also. Mostly remember that model railroading is a winter activity not a summer one so do most of your operations and scenery construction in the cooler months. In the heat of the summer build model inside your house instead.
Use cool burning lights like LEDs so they don’t heat up the room. Block off any windows because a garage can turn into a very hot green house when the sun shines into it. I use aluminum foil to cover them.
Looking back over the years I think the only damage done by the heat is that model car tires can melt a little bit and stick to the road surface.
living where outside temps can and do exced 120 in the summer and the layout in a metal building that only has west wall and roof insulated . i never have track related problems , what track i have laid was done when outside temp was around 90 , but did leave gaps of .015 every so often . the only damage related to heat i’ve had is the plastic axle gears on athearn and proto drive trains.
Before starting layout construction in my garage I insulated the walls & celing & had wall board installed. Summertime temps that used to reach into the high 90s to 100 during the hottest days have been knocked down to at most the mid-80s. Also makes for warmer winter time temps.
My layout has to share the garage with the family buggy. As Lone Wolf and Santa Fe mentioned, it’s best during warm weather to leave the buggy outside until after it cools off, but in the winter it’s engine heat can be welcome.
The addition of an insulated & rubber sealed sectional garage door helps too, not only to mitigate heat and cold, but also reduces dust. Sealing the concrete floor with an epoxy coating is another dust fighter.
Increasing comfort and cleanliness in the layout area makes working on and running trains much more enjoyable.
So far, this seems to be a “left” coast thing. I’m thinking those on the far "bottom"coast must experience the same, maybe with more humidity to go with it.
Way up here on the “top” coast, we have extremes of both hot and cold. The good news that most of us up here have basements (notice I said most), which is a great place to be when it’s red hot outside, but since basements aren’t always heated as well as the living area above, I for one need to make winter time temp. adjustments for comfortable railroading.
So far, I haven’t had any problems with operating my basement layout, it’s just the comfort thing. Not everyday do I feel like plugging in the space heaters when outside temps are at the extreme lows, but than again, winter is my only time to do my model railroading, so I make the best of it.
I live in Fullerton with a large layout in my finished but uninsulated garage. While not quite Riverside, Fullerton does see summer/early fall temps as high as 110 degrees. My layout has been up for about 10 years now and I only had weather related problems with it for the first couple of years. These problems were limited to gaps in the rails closing up due to rail expansion and shrinking of the wood benchwork. I found that simply recutting these gaps on a hot day solved all such track problems. Now that my benchwork has “seasoned,” I no longer see many track related issues.
The only other weather related problems I’ve had mainly affected “fresh” scenery. Scenery materials will tend to shrink in high heat and I have had to go back and fill in a few cracks. I also had a problem where one of my craft foam-over-styrene roadways buckled, likely due to the shrinking of the plwood it was attached to. This was cured by cutting a narrow gap across the roadway, gluing the styrene and craft foam back down, filling any remaining gap with WS Foam Putty, then painting the repair to resemble a typical roadwork repair/repave.
Overall, the “problems” you’ll likely encounter really won’t be that big a deal, certainly not enough to make you continue to put off building a layout. If you leave small gaps between the ends of your rails and solder only those rail joints that really need extra strength, your trackwork will be fine. Instead of soldered rail joints, use feeder wires to ensure that each rail section gets power.
All of my layouts have been in the Air Conditioned part of the house.
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I have helped three friends build garage layouts in South Florida. All did not end well. In winter time the garage can drop into the 50s some nights, then during the summer it hovers well above 100.
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This is too much fluctuation, and all had problems.
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I strongly advise a smaller location under central climate control.
The heat makes your track expand and if you don’t have small gaps between the pieces of track you get heat warp which goes away when it cools off. I don’t solider my track together so I don’t have that problem. There is usually enough slop with railjoiners to not have the problem.
This problem happens on real train tracks also causing serious derailments.
Similar situation here in Tampa where summer sun is directly overhead heating the garage up.
As I was building my layout table I convinced my wife that we should add an air duct into the garage ceiling off the air handler (conveniently located in the garage ) so her “Laundry” would be fresher and I could work on honey-do projects comfortably. (Hey, I had to come up with a reasonable excuse besides model railroading!!!)
When the air is on in the house, the garage has the same room temperature so my trackwork stays intact without issue- at least that which I have laid down so far.
If you can run air into your garage, that would help a lot.
First, apologies all for waiting so long to reply. Work has been hectic.
I would love to run air inito the garage. However, my electric bill during the summer runs over $400. Don’t want to add on to that at all. It usually cools down into the 50’s or 60’s in the eveing so opening the door to cool things down is an option.
Partitioning off that area is most likely in the future. I’m getting ready to add a second garage in the backyard hopefully this year budget permitting. That will clear out most of the garage and I will be able to wall that area off. That will make a huge difference.