Never say never. At least, that was true for Dennis Parker of Great Britain–he built his OO layout in a four-foot crawl space, complete with a trap door entrance from his kitchen floor. See photos and a link to a video on my blog at http://cprailmmsub.blogspot.ca/2013/01/still-think-you-have-no-space-for.html
It’s similar in concept to what my Canadian friend Dennis did in his crawl space; a link to that layout is also in the post. (The main difference is that the Canadian Dennis, unlike the British Dennis, doesn’t actually crawl around his layout–he uses stools with wheels. Check out that post for photos.)
I have thought about putting a layout in a school bus. Good natural light by day, but with the temp of -18 yesterday AM, think I’d want a better heating system. Would need cooling system in summer as the big yellow can, can get mighty hot sitting in the sun.
Think I’ll stick with my small space for now, as it has good headroom and reasonably constant temperature.
I’ve often wondered if this would be feasible much less how it would look. Looks like he ended up with a nice layout. However I don’t know if my back and other achy parts could handle it.
As much as I admire the work the bloke did, as much I pity him for having to do that. I am a 6´5", 215 lbs. male for whom this would be a truly back breaking affair.
I was 12 years old, I was in the hospital with appendicitis, and dad was trying to talk me into switching from American Flyer to HO. We spoke of the “Inter-room” rail road. It would be built in two dormers, with a line running under the eves of the attic between the two dormers. We never did build such a thing, but I do remember laying some tracks under the eves and running a loop there on the floor.
I think I saw that guy in the movie “The Great Escape”[(-D] The way he slides down through that little hatch he must have had a lot of practice.
I have a hatch down to my crawlspace, it is a whole lot bigger than that. When he get’s old he will have to have his wife lower him in with a block and tackle. I couldn’t imagine the frustration of having a great layout like that so close and not being able to access it do to the physical impairment brought on by old age.
My crawlspace is about 2500 square feet, clean,dry and reasonably well lit. I can walk around in it bent over. Would I want to spend time down there building a MRR? No thanks. More power to him.[tup]
Construction requirements must have been different where he is compared to here. That looks to be a well sealed “basement like” space even though it is not stand up height.
Here in the Mid Atlantic region of the USA, most houses have basements, but when some were built on crawl spaces there were dirty, drafty, dirt floor affairs and would take considerable improvement for such a project.
Today, building codes in this region require slab floors in crawl spaces, so even fewer houses are built without basements because there is almost no cost savings. Since foundations must go 3 feet below grade anyway, and you must install a floor, with just a few more feet of wall and a slightly deeper hole you have a basement - and have doubled the square footage of the building.