How many carpet runners have we here?

Classic Toy Trains Forum
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Quote from infrequent poster twaldie: “O Guage engin,s have incredible acceleration! (until the first curve) Luckily, no damage has occured to date, mostly due to thick carpet.”

Since moving outdoors I’ve gained some respect for carpet runnings. Most have strong backs. You gotta do lots of bending down. OTHO, you can watch your trains in the prone position.

Suddenly, windows, doors, benchwork, and all that nuisancy stuff ceases to be a problem. And, new trackplan? No sweat!

OTOH, you do have carpet hairs to contend with that could get inside your motors. True carpet runners pick berber, in earth color, of course. Minimizes the long hairs! Recall the ugly 60s,70s shag carpet? Uggh.

A “scale” carpet runner might add some dirt and ground foam to the carpet for more prototypical rivet-counting operations. Heck, you can still outsource carpet cleaning pretty cheap if you need to!

Wiring could be a bit of a problem, unless you use all manual switches and perhaps minimal power feeds.

Perhaps the best advantage of carpet running is the ability to change trackplans on a daily basis. Fasttrack is God’s gift to carpet runners, as it comes apart and goes together easily. Tubular gets my vote too.

Hey, we DID after all, have the most fun as kids running carpet. In my case, it was a dirt basement floor. Let’s give 3 cheers to carpet runners!!!

Carpet runners, show your stuff. Unite!

2

well, there’s Chief,

and Chief,

and Chief,

and let’s not forget, er,

Chief [:D]

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That’s me. It’s indoor/outdoor stuff that doesn’t yield up fibers very easily. But you’re right about the bending. That’s why I’m thinking of a table tops at 48" heights :).

4

All my tinplate gets run on the floor. It stays on the floor until the wife trips over it and cant take it anymore. Shes very tolerent though.

5

Count me in. As a kid I ran on the carpet, a bare floor, a ping-pong table, and even in a dry-but-dusty crawl-space that had it’s own “mountains.”

When my own kids came along, I built a layout on a low table where each of us could run a train at the same time as the others (the old-fashioned way – totally separate tracks); and later on a forty-inch high homosote layout that was long on accessories and non-derailing switches. It was a basic folded dog-bone scheme with additional sidings and multiple routing possibliities and we dragged, loaded and unloaded a lot of coal .

Since moving into the “old folks home” ten years ago, however, I am back down on the berber once again, despite a very bad back. What goes around comes around.

wolverine49

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I run em on the deck, does that count?

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I run my O scale trains on the carpet. I hope to build a 5’ x 20’ layout later on.

Stan.

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THE THRILL OF CARPET RUNNING IS SOON LOST ON ALL BUT THE MOST DEDICATED. WE DO PICK UP SOME SORT OF MATERIAL IN THE ENGINES BUT I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS CARPET FIBER.

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Oh yeah - trains the way JLC intended: on the floor!

You can achieve pretty sophisticated wiring with a floor layout. I use speaker wire for feeders and run it under the track so it doesn’t show.

Command control is the key. For switches and accessories, I hide an SC-2 inside a structure. Molex plugs and multi-conductor cable keep the wiring reasonably neat and easy to rearrange:

Another structure on the “layout” contains one of the Electric Railroad’s Mini Commanders; using the various outputs on the device it controls a UCS track, an icing station, and power to a spur.

Yog

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I took some photos of my carpet layout in last week’s Photo Fun, though no one took note of it. Its a combo of some FT and Tubular together. Simple for now but effective. I also have it out now because when my new cars arrive soon, I want to be able to run them.

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Christmas on the carpet

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Phlueezz! Let’s get our terminology straight - we are not “carpet runners” we are members of the Broadloom Conspiracy (people who run trains on the rug but don’t make a big fuss about it)! [:)] …and yes I’m one - been a member in good standing (actually laying down on the rug and watching the trains at eye level) for at least 40 years!

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Do I semi-qualify? My layout isn’t on the rug, per se, but yet it is in a way, right?

BTW: I get around the wiring issue by first laying down 1/2" blueboard which I’ve cut into 2’x4’ sections, customizing shapes as needed, and leaving gaps between the pieces for wires to run thru. I then lay the Homasote on top of the blue board.

Of course this does require some advance planning to know where you want the wires to go.

And I agree, what I like the most is that every Christmas I get to change it over completely!!! [:)][:)][:)]

2005’s version:

  • walt
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http://www.victoriana.com/Carpet/ingrain-rug.html

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now i will move up to a table layout 8x20

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LOL - good one Bob.

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and then there are the carpet baggers…

BTW, do you think carpet layouts are worthy enough to be included in CTT feature articles?

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Yeah ! I run my Trains on the Carpet when there is time to set up a oval of track for it. Dave- If you set up a carpet layout complete with lights & signals & a Transformer for BB to operate the layout with- Then CTT may be interested in doing a article entitled “How Carpet Layout’s are going to the Dogs”[;)][:)][8D][:o)]

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I don’t know about an article but they have published pictures of my carpet layouts in past issues. In fact, one of the pictures was voted best picture in the “Display Case” section for that year (I seem to recall it had a 2 vote lead over the runner up).

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mersennne6,

I do recall a great Attic layout in CTT. It was a floor layout, tho not on carpet. Personally, I wouldn’t venture into the attic as it’s colder than the artic in winter and hotter than hell in summer