Huge-gantic layouts

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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I was a modeler way back in the 1960s and had to leave it behind for multiple reasons until 20 years ago. I was 41 years out of it, but when I came back I saw a distinct considerable growth in the size of average Home layouts that were being photographed and discussed both in the magazines and online. Many of them cannot be operated without a fair number of people handling various tasks.

I’m wondering how many other people have noticed this noticeable growth in the size of average layouts.

I’d like to take a poll here and get some input about how big your layout is, how many people you need to run it if more than one. Or if you’re satisfied with a smaller layout that you yourself can maintain and operate alone.

I have multiple opinions, but I’ll register mine after a few of the people clock in.

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I will start. I think the layouts are bigger because the average size of houses is bigger and there are a lot of baby boomers fulfilling their childhood dreams. There are also spare rooms in those larger houses after the children move out.
My layout is medium size. It is 17’x21’, 700’ of track and 45 turnouts. The room size set the layout size. I operate it myself, no problems at all.
Maintenance is minimal, maybe once/year a component will fail. I have spares so I just swap out the failed item.

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I can’t speak to the trend of larger home layouts. I can tell you my layout goes all the way around the walls of my 46X26 rectangular basement with a two sided peninsula down the middle. Two of my earlies inspirations were John Allen’s Gorre and Dapthetid and Allen McClelland’s Virginian and Ohio and I wanted something on a similar scale.

I am a lone wolf operator. I don’t operate on a fast clock because I think that would be impractical. I simply operate my trains in a sequence. My layout is essentially a loop-to-loop. There are staging yards at both ends inside the loops and a branchline which operates on the peninsula. I can operate either the around the walls mainline or the peninsula branchline as a stand alone layout if I so choose. Sometimes, I just run trains without any real operations.

If I had to do it over again, I think I would build a slightly smaller layout because it has taken me a long time to get to where I am now and there are still parts of the layout that are not scenicked, even though I began construction about 25 years ago.

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My layout seems big (to me), but it really is quite small. I don’t have the dimensions, but, essentially, think of two or three folding banquet tables, laid long end to long end, and then stacked twice. Then a bit of narrow shelving above that. That’s pretty much it.

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I think houses many people have today are much larger than the ones many of us grew up in. At least that is the way it is for many of my friends. Dad and I had the plywood Pacific going in our nice middle class home in the 1960s-70s, however, the house I now live in is huge and on acreage. I sold my 2200sqft house in the city on a regular city lot and for the same money got a near new 5400sqft house on acres in the sticks.

My layout is 15’ x 24’. I have the room to double its size, but thought I would start with this and see how it went. I found it was plenty big enough just from a maintenance stand point and doubt I will ever make it larger.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbUhA2_F-7M&t=5s

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I really would like to hear from someone who has one of those three or 4000 ft.² layouts
that takes a dozen or more people to operate.

I always wonder about layouts like that, if the owner ever operates it by themselves, and how much can he do or is it only operated at specified intervals when people can come over. The closest thing we have down here in my area that is a guy 100-something miles away and his layout is N scale so I would never go to operate anyway.

There’s a guy 100 miles the other direction who has a fair large layout that some of the big dogs might call on the small side of medium. I go there every few weeks and he has two other guys there to operate with, neither one of them are experienced modelers at all, they need to be helped with everything. So we don’t have anything approaching a large scale op session like West Coast guys have.

I’ve had shelf layouts all of my model railroad life, so I have a hard time getting my head into the mindset of these massive layouts, and I’d like some insight about the motivation to build one at all.

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Your layout is actually very much like the second one I mentioned just a minute ago.

Due to unfortunate financial reversals in my younger life, I was never able to have anywhere near the size of what has a been called a normal size, my house is only 850 ft.² and I’m glad to have it, it’s paid for and no one can take it away from me.

I did manage to get a 50 foot long point to point shelf layout in that house going through a couple of rooms. But I was able to do that in such a house because I was widowed very long ago and had no one there to contest it. That’s not the best way to get real estate for a layout.

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Every once in a while a poll will come up asking how large is a small, medium or large layout. Most of the time mine falls into the larger end of small or smaller end of medium. I have about 130metres of track and 40ish T/Os. Just about the right size for me.

My only complaint is I wish I had more parking for longer trains. I can wrangle three 30+ car trains but have to bust them up after that.

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I’m relatively new here so I don’t know about earlier polls.

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They show up here once in a while, but, between other forums and FB you stumble across them on occasion.

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I think it’s relative to two factors: disposable income and product availability. Let’s start with disposable income.

In the very early days of the hobby most model railroads were #1 Gauge or larger clockwork trains running around on the floor with little to nothing more than a circle or oval. By 1900 electric trains were starting to become available but, only the well to do could afford to buy them for their children. (Adults didn’t play with model locomotives in the gilded age of the early 20th century except for the machinists who built scale replicas.)

When Lionel introduced Standard Gauge in 1906 it was only the rich who could afford them. And even though their houses were huge very few kids had a table to operate them on. Most of them could “play trains” in the daytime but everything absolutely had to be put away before their fathers came home from the office. (See the Banks family in Mary Poppins for an example of home life in 1910).

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By the 1920s the concept of operating the ever larger and more magnificent trains being manufactured on a table in the basement started to take hold. But in Standard Gauge a layout large enough to accommodate a 3 car passenger set had to be at least 9 feet long and 4 feet wide. In modern terms, 4 by 9 could pack in a lot of N gauge, a reasonable amount of HO and a “nice” amount of O gauge. Mine is 5 by 9 with O and Standard Gauge.

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I’ve never lived in a mansion and while I’d love to own and operate the kinds of top of the line Lionel Standard Gauge locomotives that were introduced around the time the great depression started, I wouldn’t be able to do them justice on a 5 by 9 oval. If I had disposable income, I’d upgrade a little, but I’d stay with equipment relative to the amount of operating space I have.

So I think it makes sense to measure your layout options with an eye towards keeping your spending limited to what can “effectively” be operated in the space you have available. I would love to have an O Gauge N&W Y6b pulling a scale mile of coal hoppers that could operate on O31 (15 1/2" radius) curves but smaller power and shorter trains are a better option.

Product availability as far as buildings and accessories are concerned really started in Europe around the turn of the century. IVES was the primary competitor in the United States to Mārklin trains imported from Germany, and Mārklin had stations, crossing gates, bridges and all manner of items that, as Ward Kimball said, "allowed the kids to really play trains ".

Today you can buy just about anything you could want to place on your layout. In the future I have no doubt that more of those items will come from a full color home printer with details we can scarcely imagine. I’ve seen many interviews and read many stories about model railroaders who wished they had a machine that could shrink down what they saw along the real railroads so that they could take it home and place it on their layouts. That is almost possible nowadays.

So, what is big? If you have the desire, the space, the money, the time and the ability you’re going to want to want to build the biggest and best layout possible. Those with the most money often create the space for the layout first, often in the form of an ancillary layout building on their property, and then pay someone to build the layout of their dreams for them. Others have the outbuildings but choose to do the work themselves.

I’ve built many layouts over the years but only two of them were constructed on tables. Both were flat tables too. At this point in my life I’m content to build a few structures by hand and place them on a rug for a couple of months before I change everything.

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By comparison, my 9x19 around the walls is small. Pretty much one operator ISL. I don’t wish for more space.

I’ve only been to one privately owned basement size layout, O scale 2 rail with brass locomotives. Pretty nice. Dan

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there’s a difference between the # of large layouts in the process of being built and the # being operated. There’s a lot to do even after the track work is complete.

there is the cost vs time aspect. Tony Koester originally hand laid his Allegheny Midland but used commercial turnouts for his Nickle Plate Road.

I was a member of a club with a 90x45’ layout in a basement. The basement was actually extended to expand the layout, half of it covered with a deck.
It was originally built in the 1960s using cab control. Trains were operated from one of 9 towers. Tower operators spoke with one another using phones or headset to coordinate taking control of a train entering its district using one of several DC throttle at each tower.

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After the layout was converted to DCC, there was the dispatcher and 3 tower operators. There were 2 tower panels that operators would use to throw turnouts in that area

the Maryland & West Virginia Model Railway Association is a 70x35’ DCC layout designed for open houses during fairground events where 2-4 trains are run continuously on 2 ~450’ double track mainlines with reversing loops at each end. There are no panels, operators throw turnout to get on/off the mainlines using DCC controllers

A member of the NJ club has a 25x40’ basement layout I helped build. It has a large 6 track passenger station along one wall, a larger yard on a peninsula, a 6 track switching area on a smaller peninsula and a double decked staging loops in one corner.

It has 2 large interlocking panels on either side of the passenger station. besides operators for freight and passenger trains, there are ~2 operators in the yard, ~2 in the switching area, a tower operator for both interlock and a passenger terminal switcher

I’ve completed about half of my 30x15’ DCC layout which has a yard, staging and 4 planned towns to be switched, 3 currently completed. I’m
focused on operating the layout. It has no scenery and many cardboard structures.

Someday I expect to have an operator for each town and one for the yard. I’m still figuring out how to coordinate everything. I recently had 4 operators but just had a session with just 2. However, I’m realizing that I’m both the dispatcher and yard master and hope to do less when operators and me become more experienced

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I’ve been in this hobby for almost 50 years now and I’ve still never understood why someone would want to hand lay track. It seems so much more time consuming than simply buying commercial track. Flex track allows one to create whatever radii is required. It seems to me that it would be much easier to make a #7 curved turnout fit the layout than to custom make a #6.58 turnout. Does hand laid rail look better. Not to my eye, based on pictures I’ve seen of it. When I look at track, I don’t see individual ties. If it’s important enough to you, commercial track can be painted and weathered. I do use the rail painting pens to so the sides of the rail toward the viewer isn’t shiny, but that’s about the extent of it. I can’t imagine spending the time to hand lay rail on my large basement layout. It’s taken me long enough to build as it is.

If someone enjoys hand laying rail, wonderful, but I’ve never for a second considered laying even one foot of it. I don’t hand lay rail and I don’t churn my own butter either.

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The only place I would consider handlaying track is on the most rickety spur you can imagine that would be right up in front of the layout where you can closely look at it. And it would have to be code 55 rail. Back home we had a prototype spur like that and I always dreamed of modeling it before reality set in.

In the same camp is something else I don’t understand and that’s why people want to paint individual ties. I haven’t got enough time left on earth to build kits, much less paint individual ties that you never really see when you’re operating anyway. I could understand it on a diorama, maybe, laying staggered ties individually stained differently, and putting down painted code 55 or code 40 real with fish plates every 39 feet. But that kind of stuff fits right in with the rivet counters, another bunch I’ve never understood.

I get the NMRA calendar every year. I don’tbeven look at it anymore before I put it into the recycle can, because all it features is obsessive rivet counting close-ups. If that’s how people have fun, it’s fine with me, just not my particular cup of tea.

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As a kid and again in the 80’s and now since 2023 I have always had the traditional 4x8 HO layout. Too small for Lionel and great for N, but OK for HO (sort of). I can run 2 DCC trains on my layout or even 3 if I had another engine, controller and person. My problem now is running out of room for scenery and buildings.
The kids moved out and we have a typical 1924 Chicago bungalow. The room contains the train layout and my wife’s closet and furniture and is next to our 2nd floor bedroom. Your make do with what you have.

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The other thing about these layouts that need a dozen operators is that you have to live in a town that has a dozen operators within a reasonable distance. That’s not to be had in the deep south. I’ve never quite understood the reason why, other than the weather is a lot better here than up north where model railroading is a six month cold season inside pastime. Of course that does not explain California, which has more than its share of modelers, and beautiful weather at least on the coast.

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Large layouts seem to be more common than they are because they make great eye candy for the magazines and videos. The wealth of commercial material available makes them easier to build than in the 1990s and earlier.
Current big layouts also tend to be a little simpler mechanically and electrically than the older giant ‘pikes’ started in the 60s and 70s. I know of two large solo layouts in my area, one in a space bigger than my 1600 sq ft house, and they always tend to be behind on their maintenance. They also sweat getting a big enough crew each month to make the railroad come alive.
We in the US have grown an upper 5-10% of our population that has the time, space, and money to throw into large projects.

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As an owner of a large solo layout, I have to agree. I spend way much more time on maintenance than I would have guessed when I started it. That’s why I wish I’d gone for something a little less ambitious when I started 25 years ago.

I don’t sweat getting a big enough crew together because I never try. As I mentioned before, I am a lone wolf operator and I operate on a sequence rather than a fast clock schedule. The latter would be almost impossible as I would constantly be running from one end of the layout to another. A day of operations might take me 3 or 4 operating sessions to complete. I’m never in a rush. I just like to complete each task in order, not by a specific time.

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cost. consider that a hand laid turnout costs just a couple dollars in ties and rail and that a commercial turnout costs $20+.

some modelers can build better turnouts than they can buy commercial.

there’s also the need for custom trackwork. Crossing tracks. Some members of the club in NJ built a #14 crossover because it fit the layout (probably the only hand laid trackage)

and of course just to do it