I am wanting to build a layout in our basement around 5’ or 6’ X 20’. My main goal is to have it be a 2 tier layout bottom being “O” & the top being Flyer. The only thing I can think of in order to have enough room to do this to where you could see both run.
Take the top layout & have it cover the bottom by half with a size of something like 2’ or 3’ X 20’ with the ends of it where the flyer would make the turn around of the track/s & head back to the other end.
I would like to be able to run 2 trains on each layout with a little action if possible.
I am thinking I would like to go no smaller or bigger than curves that are 42" to 54" for the “O” & no smaller than 19" or bigger than 36" for the flyer if that will accommodate our challengers we have.
Thank you for the input.
Take care.
I would think you could build a handsome 2-tiered layout in a 5 x 20 foot setting. Not sure you could squeeze two lines of Flyer on top without covering up the O. A city scape on one end, and a mountain side on the other, would help mask the scales of the trains, and keeping the S towards the backdrop would help with the forced perspective.
The only downside I can think of is that AF curves come in 40" and 54" diameters. The Pikemaster track was about 31" diameter but a lot of AF equipment had trouble running on it. With just 5 feet to work with, you’d have to do a dogbone on the upper level, maybe extending out the full 5 feet on the two ends, and dropping down quickly to about 1 foot to leave room on the lower level for Lionel. You could certainly put one loop in that space; two might be possible but I don’t know for certain.
Then again, there’s one other possible approach: I’ve seen layouts that used Lionel O and AF S on the same layout on the same level and it actually looked pretty good. If you’re using all scale equipment the disparity might be jarring, but if you’re doing postwar with Plasticville buildings, such a layout can look nice.
I would think if one stole Sturgeon-Phish’s trackplan and replaced the outer loop with a loop of O42 or O54 to run Lionel, such a layout would look really good. I’m taking a wild guess that his layout is probably 10 or 12 feet long, but it would probably be easy enough to extend to 20 feet. (This coming from someone who stole a 4x7 trackplan from Spankybird and stretched it to 8x8.)
Regardless, I like your idea. It lets you get all the best of both worlds, and they really are two great worlds. I need to quit looking at Sturgeon-Phish’s pictures or I’ll end up with a Flyer layout at some point. [:)]