I was examining my railroad the other day trying to decide if I should expand what I have or simply start over. What I have had been cobbled up and added on to over the years in addition to being moved from one house to another. It is okay as it is but from time to time the interest fades until I sense a desire to head to the basement and work on it again. Be that as it may, I have not completely decided what to do. But it did prompt a couple questions. Once you all decided on your location and era, how did you go about developing your plan? Was it taken from a book, was it an original design or a combination of both? Did the plan incorporate portions of an earlier layout? Did it solve known issues or did it create others? There are probably several answers to this, but I am curious what some other people have done.
Hi!
I’ve had a number of layouts - Lionel in the mid '50s, then HO, an N in the late 80s, and now back to HO. I’ve always been one of those layout doodlers… some guys would draw cars or plans, I would draw layouts.
Anyway, to answer you questions it all depends… My current and previous layout was designed to fit and fill the 11x15 room. I’ve had other layouts constrained not by space, but by money. So once you get your era and RR and locale established, then you confront the issue of space and money (and available time).
So once all that is established, then out comes all the sketches and the serious design work begins. Yes, I looked at a lot of published track plans, but what I ended up with was all mine.
My previous HO layout was built in the early '90s and lasted until 3 years ago when I replaced it with a new one. Both occupy the same space, are two levels, and basically the same “round the room” track pattern.
But the second one is a definite improvement… The previous one had 4 or 5 shortcomings, and I could address them on the new one. In fact, I kept an ongoing list of what I did wrong and right and what worked and what didn’t, and used this as a guideline on the new one.
Also, the new one was my jump into DCC. This was a major thing for me, and frankly the best thing I’ve done with the trains since I remember.
My first layout was an oval of Lionel track with a passing siding. It grew when we moved, but I was still a pre-teen then, and I don’t remember much of the planning phase. Even then, though, I too would draw layouts, so I probably had a few sheets of paper with plans on them, back in the 50s before computers.
My current layout started as a 4x8, on the screen. That didn’t last long. A few clicks later I had a 5x12, which freed me from the minimal oval of HO scale and let me play a bit. I spent a lot of time developing a plan with Atlas RTS on the computer. At some point, I took out all my old brass track and laid it loosely in place, a valuable exercise which pointed out some flaws. With a couple of exceptions, this is the layout I built.
I received more right-of-way when my daughter went to college and no longer wanted as much of the family room. I designed Phase 2 as a long shelf with a balloon at one end, meeting the original Phase 1 layout on one of its short ends. I was able to join the two without much trouble, but I realized that my “future expansion” planning for the original layout didn’t end up in the right place. It wasn’t a big deal, but I suppose that sort of thing could be a thread unto itself.
Now, I’ve begun a bit of planning for Phase 3, although I’m probably still a year or two from completing the Phase 2 scenery, and I won’t start any benchwork until then. I’ve been using XtrakCad for my more recent layout work. But, all the planning is in my head or on computer now.
I have a 13’x 11’ room. I found a plan(HO) in one of Kalmbach’s railroad plan books that was bigger than my room, so i modified the plan to fit my room. This plan was good for all era’s. I decided on late 1990’s to present era. After that, i bought track and put it out on the bench work to see what it looked like and how much room I had. I decided on some buildings to use and cut out card board rectangles of the buiding dimesions and put them down too see how everything would fit including my cardboard road/street templates. After moving this and that to make it look good for ME, i started installing track and building structures and the 4 bridges i need. Overall i really didn’t have a original plan.
I look at the space, particularly if it is a new location, and I imagine doing in that space what I enjoy most, or what has the most reliable and consistent appeal about the hobby to me in that space. I quickly imagine a few scenarios/options, and one usualy sticks out. This happens within about two to five minutes, by the way, and almost always standing in the space newly available.
From there, I sit down with graph paper, compass, protractor, finely sharpened pencils, and a glass of red wine after supper and spend the next hour or so attempting to make my idea more concrete. Sometimes I get it that evening, sometimes it takes a couple of sittings.
I have already established that I enjoy steam and transition railroading, so I have a wide variety of roads and rolling stock. I refuse to constrain myself to a more rigorous attempt at modelling just one railroad well. I have no interest in that. That’s not to say I can’t get ideas from, or learn from, those who do. I enjoy fast passenger service and slow coal drags. I enjoy them singly or concurrently, but I have not been able to enjoy them concurrently operating by myself on a single track main. So, this time around, I have constructed a double main. Now, imagine the fire that new capability has ignited in me…a first in my adult life!
Find the match to light that fire, Harold!
Crandell
I built a 4x8 to get trains running for the grandchildren. When building it, I included the switches for the expansion that would come in the future. Then I planned and built the rest of the around the room layout.
I didn’t make a detailed plan, but I did have a picture in my mind of the finished layout. There have been many changes of mind along the way. I recently tore some of it out and rebuilt it, benchwork and all.
My current layout was in another location and much smaller. I was able to move the 10x12’ layout in sections and reuse much of it as the basis for my current 27x29’ layout.
How I did it— long-drawn out thread here:
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=88991&highlight=island+seaport
Busy with graduate school last couple of years, not so much progress, but when I gradate this summer…
The development of my plan for my railroad has been an ongoing project for 30 years. The era and local has never changed, just the configuration. All depending on what I had for room. I have poured over most every plan book out there. What I have gotten from them mostly is yard trackage ideas and switching areas. Every time I build a new version, I take what I didn’t like and try not to do that again. I have never been afraid to tear out track and do it over. One of the things I learned a long time ago, is not to short yourself on staging. My plan has always been a fairly simple one. Single track main with two or three passing sidings and a branch line. No large jumble of special track work. It always seems to come out as a folded dogbone. Finally owning my own home has been the biggest help. And yet there are still things I can think of to do different. If I could just talk The Boss into letting me knock out the living room wall…
My original trackplan was for a fairly conventionally-shape room of about 850sq.ft., although calling my sketch a trackplan was a bit of a stretch. [:-^] At some point early in benchwork construction, higher authority expropriated some of my space, and I ended-up relegated to the approximately 560sq.ft. shown below:
The sketch was abandoned, and I modified some of the already-built open grid benchwork to suit the available space, then completed the open grid around the room as shown. Next, I cut roadbed of various radii out of 3/4" plywood, settling on 30" as my absolute mainline minimum (most ended-up 34" or greater) and splicing lengths together as necessary. These were placed everywhere on the layout where a curve would be required and I used the widest curve which would fit. Then, all that was needed was to connect the curves with (relatively) straight track. The only “planning” needed was to determine the grades, as the portion of the layout shown in grey will eventually be double-decked (the peninsula is the grade between the two levels, starting at South Cayuga and rising about 16" to a point above Elfrida).
Despite the somewhat seat-of-the-pants methods, the railroad seems to work well for my preferred method of operation - one operator running one train at a time on a sequential timetable. The setting is 1930s on a secondary line, with as much or as little traffic as I wish, but at a fairly relaxed pace.
Wayne
In my situation, I started with what I wanted in a layout from an operation perspective, knowing full well that compromises would follow. My priorities were:
· A linear track plan of staging-town-town-division point (yard)-town-town-staging, that has continuous run ability and no duck-unders.
· One multi-track reversing loop staging area that would serve both terminals.
I am now building my 6th layout although some of the previous ones were nothing more than a 4x8 or 5x9. I actually sold 2 of them. This time, at age 70, I am building what I think is my dream layout. I have a 24 x 26 addition I built 4 years ago just for my layout when I retire. Well I am retired 4 years now and have about 40% of the layout done. It took me almost a year to come up with a track plan and that was a modification of one I found in the 101 Track Plans book. Now that most of the track is in and running (I just lack one industrial/waterfront area) and I switched to DCC, I am anxious to get into the scenery phase. I actually did some scenery just to change my needs; some days I do scenery and some days I build structures or rolling stock. So many projects, so little time!
I see mistakes that I made but don’t want to change them now. I realized after running trains for the past few months that I don’t have as much space for real estate as I should and am forced to cram some places with more buildings than should be there. But, I guess in real life we have to build on whatever land we can find.
I love my layout and feel blessed to have so much of what I enjoy right through the bedroom door.
-Bob
If you have decided how or what you want your RR to do, and it is different than what you have now, it would be time for a change. You should have something in mind in the way that you want to operate it before you start.
For me, that meant two things. I wanted to have something that I could have some guys over and have operating sessions sometimes, plus I also wanted to be able to just sit back and watch some trains run. My last layout used a lot of twin coil switch machines and they were giving me a lot of trouble now. Plus I wanted to move into DCC with sound (HO scale). All these things combined to affect my decision to start a new layout. I also like to do switching.
My present layout started from a switching module that had a couple of different levels on it. Then I incorporated it into a plan where the mainline went around the room twice. One end of the layout has a two track interchange yard with a run-around or through track. This end acted as the two ends of the RR. One interchange track for one off-line RR at one end, and the other interchange track for another off-line RR at the opposite end of the line. I also decided to use Tortoise switch machines. The new layout is in a room that is 10 by 24. Bench work is around the walls, and I have added a second level that acts as another RR.
This RR is better than any of the others that I have built because I use what I learned from the others, and used new up-to-date electronics and other products.
My layout is just an oval with two sidings in a three and one half foot by six foot space. I’ve had it since 1997, and over the years I’ve modified and detailed the scenery here and there. It’s a rural/small town setting with a wooden grain elevator being the only industry on the layout. Typical train length is four to five cars (including the caboose). Switchers usually run alone but I always run road engines in pairs.
My layout grew in four stages. But I started with a more or less finished master plan.
I started by taking a segment of the design that I could build as a photo module. It was a small section, about 12" x 3", so I was able to pack it with details and really have fun with it.
Next, as I was renovating my attic space, I started working on one of the more complex sections out in the garage, with the idea that I would move it up to the attic once the room was ready.
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Then, recognizing that there were limits to my time and money, I built a set of temporary loops and a small yard so I could at least run trains as I accumulated the necessary hardware to build the rest of the plan. That phase lasted about 3 years, but it gave me the opportunity to work the kinks out of my operating schematic, as well as to putter around with scenery techniques.
Finally, I was able to undertake the massive reconstruction to complete the final system plan. I’m about 75% through that process now after about two years.
When I began the design of my current layout - I was only worried about getting the modeled CR mainline in.
I had the ZTS maps for the area I was modeling and designed the layout using these maps as I was building an Operational layout not a Railfanning one!
I had 7 interchange points at various towns along the route and wanted to have more than just staging tracks there.
I made the town areas large enough so that once the mainline was in I could go back and add to each of the Interchanges and towns.
About this time MRR magazine did a spread on Ken McCorrys layout with its multiple levels. I now could visualize having multiple levels and each of the Interchanges soon turned into a live working railroad all on its own.
Some of these Shortlines ended up being as large (mainline track) as some small to medium layouts.
I now have over 3500 feet track down on 4 levels in an area of over 2500 sq ft.
I can keep 20 operators busy for hours and that is what I had set out to do!
My crew makes recommendations that they see could make OPs easier/faster.
So I am continually making upgrades to the layout just as a real railroad makes changes!
This keeps the layout fresh and the operators ALWAYS on the lookout for new things/changes.
This way the layout never is the SAME OLD Layout - that they have seen/run on in the past!
Unlike some layouts I have run on or visited over the years
If you are not making changes - you might as well tear it down and start over! The WORLD never stops - neither should we! 
BOB H - Clarion, PA
I have had about 5 or 6 major railroad layouts since the late 50’s. Each better than the last, or at least I thought so. The trouble is, I have many interests and hobbies and when the MR bug bites, it bites hard and I usually tear the old road down rather than expand. I tend to hit MR about like everything else and enjoy a few years with it and then it lapses into another different fever in another hobby.
I have lived in the same house now since the late 70’s and have had one layout in a 2 foot wide shelf going around the eaves of my attic. (About 60 -70 feet of shelf). I am currently in my third rebuild here on this shelf. The time line for the roads was 78-82, 87-93 and now late 2010 - date.
In all those years between layouts and MR fever spurts, the table was not in the way and just sat there, up in the eaves, over my head, moldering away. So my experience is a bit different. When I got tired of MR, I just didn’t get the 2 foot high bench out and stand on it to “play trains” in the eves.
I am an old model railroader, for sure, but not what anyone would call a constant one.
When I get the fever, I never expand. I tear up the old surface board and track and put in new 2X8 foot base board sections all around on the old elevated frame work and start from scratch creating a new rail empire. This time, it is my first HOn3 road using the new DCC with all loco’s in sound, something I have always wanted to try my hand at.
I always felt that early DCC was crap and early sound out of speakers in and around the table was equally poor. Now that all are rather fully refined and installed in the locos, I jumped back in model railroading. It took nearly 20 years of technological advancement to re-kindle the model railroader in me.
Richard
Having decided to push a pin into space-time at a specific location, I started with the public timetable and added in my observations, my notebook full of the prototype’s track and ground plans, my album of prototype photos - and started to collect the necessary rolling stock. (In 1964 I was a Staff Sergeant living in minimalist quarters, so any layout more extensive than a test track was the impossible dream.)
I also developed a detailed fictional history (6 close-typed legal sheet pages) and a map of the area, very similar to the real thing but with a few key differences.
The master plan developed around the timetable. As opportunity offered, I built layouts - usually on the European plan (one modeled station, plus hidden staging, on a loop.) Later there was a mini-empire along two walls of the guest bedroom, then I got one stall of a two-car garage.
Finally, after years of paper planning, I was granted title to the entire garage - room enough to build out my master plan. The track plan features LOTS of hidden staging, two mainline stations plus the connecting track (hanging onto a steep valley wall by its fingernails) and the entire length of my coal-originating feeder line. Construction has been glacial, but I’m having fun.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)