Has anyone set up a railroad on the floor are is this just not a good idea at all?
I suspect all of us had a layout on the floor back in our Lionel/American Flyer days. The floor is not optimal for some obvious reasons. First at some point someone is going to want their floor back for walking on etc., so we are talking about temporary layouts presumably with toy train track. HO and N sectional track is really not meant to be taken apart and put back together as often as rugged toy train track is.
Second, your view of the trains, even if you are laying flat on your stomach, is not great. Third, if it is on carpet then carpet dust and threads might get into the gears. And engine oil might get on the carpet.
Some people have put a layout on a board with casters so it can be shoved under a bed. That takes care of some of the problems and you can have scenery and buildings and more sophisticated wiring but again the viewing angle is just not great. But if that is the space you have, you make the best of it.
Dave Nelson
Yea, I did. I think it was in 1956. My Mom got a little annoyed about the nails…
My first layout rolled under the bed. It was easy to work on, sorta. But the scenery possibilities were limited. Just as soon, as I could, I liberated space in the basement for a stand-up layout.
Nick
YES-not a good idea. A few years back my job took me away from my home (layout) to an apartment. Since I was single at the time, I decided that a layout on the carpet would be a good temporary alternative. I had just purchased a Digitrax Super Chief (radio) and I wanted to practice using the system. My home layout also runs long coal and grain unit trains which a large oval 30 x 20 feet with two passing sidings would alow some basic operating. Sometimes when I am working at the work bench I like to run some of the long unit trains as the sound of the wheels is theraputic. I purchased a small fortune of Bachman sectional track with roadbed so I could use it on the carpet. It worked OK, for a while but became boring as it was all flat and no scenery. It did give me an opportunity to learn how to use my Digitrax system.
I now take a small modular/domino layout with me on the road. This layout gives me the same opportunity as the floor layout, with much more. The sections are designed to incorporate into my home layout, so nothing is wasted.
I gave the sectional track to my nephew anong with a train set. So nothing was wasted.
JIM
Two rather good reasons: dust, dander, and pets getting into the works, and the tracks and rolling stock tend to get jarred and knocked around by inadvertent movements.
Okay, a third reason, and this could be a deal breaker with women involved in the living space…no storage under layouts on the floor.
That’s what got me into the HO rr business! [:O] A nephew had given my sons (they were then 2 & 3 years old) his HO trains. I was in the process of packing & moving the family to go back to school. Three years later they talked me into unpacking the trains and setting them up on the floor. Twenty minutes later there were several broken couplers and I was stumped. [banghead] A neighbor recommended a LHS (which was actually 40 miles away). [8] I purchased the needed couplers (horn hook), two books one of which was, “The HO Rail Road that Grows and Grows.” Shortly we had trains running on a 4x5. That was the beginning of “my” railroad.[swg] That was 38 years ago!
Mine was thumb tacks, but yeah mom was really annoyed with the holes in the hard wood floor.
I can think of two different interpretations of “layout on the floor.” The first is to push away the furniture and set up track. That’s going to be temporary, but it would probably work, well, sort of OK. In HO, you would want to use one of the track products with built-in roadbed, made as sectional track which locks together.
The other possibility is an actual layout, on a board of some sort, which sits on the floor rather than on legs. My first Lionel layout when I was a kid was like this. It was a 4x8 with 2x4 studs under it around the edges. That gave me a bit of room to run wires, but of course I had to lift the layout up on a block of some sort to reach under and snake the wires through. Somehow, this all worked, but when I went to HO I made sure to put the layout up on legs.
I’d consider on-the-floor to be a thing for small children, or something required for rollaway storage.