Hello everyone, so I just bought a house with a nice sized basement in November and finished my benchwork for my first large layout.
Well now there have been some changes with work and we may be moving again. Now I will be not going forward until things clear up with what location I will be in long term.
My question is going forward what is the best type of room I should be looking for in a new home round 2. What type of room and what shape is best?
I like the idea of finished attic area above the garage for natural light, or the basement. basically if you were looking for a space for the next 20 years of layout building how large would you want it?
I can’t imagine there’s a one size fits all best, even when you’re talking about a purpose built structure specifically designed to host a model railroad. Your personal preferences will dictate all and anyone else’s inputs are barely relevant. I mean, you already expressed a preference for natural light, but I’d want a room with no natural light at all.
The High Bay at Goddard Space Flight Center is my hypothetical perfect room! Its the largest cleanroom in the world. No dusting the layout in there, although working in a bunny suit would be a bit of a hassle. And most of the 1.3 million cubic feet is going to waste because it so tall.
Or…my dad and I once conjectured that properly outfitted twelve foot diameter concrete drain pipe segments could be used to build a large underground layout with unprecedented ability to make straight trackage…
My wife doesn’t care as long as it’s extra space and isnt taking up a bedroom or such. We have our first kid coming in September.
I am looking for a shelf style layout that has a complete loop. Long mainline runs, I am modeling the alaska railroad with the long proposed link to the Canadian railways. ( to add some variety to my layout). This layout would have many elevation changes through mountains. Envisioning modeling both the summer on one half of the room and winter on the other
All layouts are different so ideal space is user pays[:D]
That said you need enough open clear floor space to build the layout
having some extra space for an area for coffee and reading train books
and an area for model building is good if you can get it.
a fully lined etc and prepared attic prferably not divided into rooms would be nice you would want the stairs in the middle somewhere for unimpeaded acsess
And no domestic storage area that would be a serious error.
Well, first of all, the size of a layout and therefore the room to put it in, depends on the scale. An O gauge layout requires about 4 times the size of the same set-up in HO scale, while an N scale layout would “only” need a little less than a third of that foot print.
Second, you need to consider the time and the money you can dedicate to your layout. I know of a lot of people who bit off more than they could swallow in terms of layout size and time it takes to get it up and running. I am 60 and I´d never start a project taking me more than 10 years to get the first train running.
Third, the size of a layout is irrelevant to the amount of fun you can have building and operating it.
My personal motto is “the smaller, the better”! I am right now finishing the planning stage of a 2 by 2 ft. Z scale layout, which would be 2´9" by 2´9" in N scale, or 5 by 5 ft. in HO scale, or over 9 by 9 ft. in O sscale.
The best type of room is one that is finished with heat and a/c and not subject to flooding from overflow above or backup from below. A plus is having it on the same level as the main part of the house so you don’t have to haul building materials up or down stairs (and yourself in later years).
The best size is between 400 and 1000 sq ft depending on what scale you plan to use and what level of detail you want. That is, larger scale larger space, greater detail smaller space. In addition you want a work room next to the layout for model building, maintenance, etc. with lots of storage for kits, parts, tools, etc.
Over the years, many analyses have been posted that provide estimates of $/sq ft and hours/sq ft required to build a model railroad. I would consult these before embarking on a large layout. Wouldn’t it be nice to know in advance if you don’t have the cash or the lifespan required to fill the space you’re thinking about?
Space, time and money all equate to personal preferences.
Ask yourself, do I lone wolf or do I want a Crew to run trains with. That can determine aisle width. Do I like long runs, deep benchwork or do I like localized switching and narrow deck space.
Preference to me is the finished lower level space with the stairs in the middle, but David Barrow made great use of finished space above his garage with the Cat Mountain railroad he was building. Again, only you and your partner can decide.
Build ahead of time? If you plan well, ala Dr. Bruce Chubb you can build many modules ahead of time, store them and put together when you find the next space.
My wife and I are actively planning to move and build in three years after our daughter finishes grade 12. We are going to move away from the encroachng hordes of people.
We found a house plan that is for a small estate winery. It has an attached 32’ x 20’ wine proceesing area that would make a good MRR room. We will also turn two of the bedrooms into a dog bathing and grooming area as my wife is the dog showing thing in a big way.
Realistically the 32’ x 20’ space is probably more than I need, however I would rather have too much space than not enough. It is also part of the house and that is very important to me. If I had to go to another building I would spend way less time with my trains.
We both agree it will probably be our last home as we both have significant health issues, but staying fit keeps us active so it is full speed ahead until we croak, if the time comes we need help, we will get it.
An 80 yo guy I met in the train store told me if he had to do it all over again he would build in modules. That’s what I am doing because I plan to move.
Jobs and companies come and go and your needs and abilities to take care of a house and property changes. Even your ability to go up the front steps can be problematic. Neighborhoods change too. My parents home was solidly in suburbia, 1 mile from a college, a couple blocks from schools and a country club. Now the predators come to rob the college students at knife point.
Yeah, a long, narrow room, about 7’ wide and a half-mile long would be ideal for a point-to-point line.
I had an “ideal” room for my planned layout, which was to be all of a 1200sq.ft. basement, with stairs in the centre. What I eventually ended-up with was an oddly-shaped room less than half of the original size:
The size and shape of the room dictated the style of the layout, and while not ideal, it’s probably better than anything that I could have planned for the larger space. In some ways, it’s still too large.
My ‘last in this lifetime’ layout occupies a space 19ft 4in square with doors in inconvenient locations, a natural gas hot water heater in one corner and vents, but no windows as such.
If somebody gave me a magic wand I’d expand the space to about 30 by 30, with most of the increase devoted to access aisle space. The track plan would remain exactly the same.
However - I’m building to a master plan more than half a century old. Given my limitations, both physical and financial, I wouldn’t want a big, complex layout. My present effort is moderately large, but fairly simple - and it’s really all that I want and about all that I can handle.
Note the personal ‘I’ in the above. Since I have no idea about what’s on YOUR ‘Gottahavit’ list, I can’t even offer a suggestion on size or shape. Others have already commented on livability and ease of access, and I have nothing to add to their recommendations.
You have lots of good advice so far, all kind of coming down to “get what suits the kind of layout you want to build”. I currently have an HO layout in an 11x15 room. I would love to have that doubled or tripled in size for some really long runs. So my advice is get the biggest space you can. Remember, you can always build smaller than the available space.
One other point… maintenance time and problems are a direct relationship to the size of the layout.
