Okay, it’s a tract house in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. “Ranch” style, whatever that’s supposed to mean, LOL It comes with a 2-car garage. NOBODY in Northern California parks their cars in a garage, at least here in the Valley. We have driveways for that. Garages are for storing things or shops. Ergo, I had 24’x24’ for the Yuba River sub. It’s a Sierra Nevada mountain railroad.
In HO, it means I can pretty much duplicate some of my favorite Sierra Nevada sites with judicious Selective Compression. In N, I could have put in a lot more of the mountains. In Z, I could have done the whole darn mountain range, California Valley to Nevada Desert, LOL!
Since I’m HO, I’ve been able to approximate what I want out of the ‘miles and miles’ of running by doubling the mainline back on itself with elevations. No Helixes, just plain doubling back and varying the scenery enough so that the eye follows the mainline through various elevations from foothills to high peaks and back again. The space allows me the generous radii (34-36") that I need for my big articulateds to look at least halfway decent on the many curves, and the space also allows me to keep my grades (2.0-2.4%) within mountain mainline railroad practices.
And since I’m running California mountain railroading, there is not a lot of local industry–I’m modeling a portion of a Transcontinental line–so what yards there are are kept small. My main yard at Deer Creek exists mainly for changing out “Valley” to “Mountain” locomotive power, not for industrial switching. So my action is not working yards as much as it is either changing out or adding/dropping helpers to the motive power fleet as the trains move either east or west.
I’m the type of guy that gets most of his pleasure from running the trains, not necessarily making or breaking them up. So the
We moved into our “final” house after completing my service. The basement is finished, with a small extra bedroom that I can use as the “man cave”. It houses 2 computer work stations and equipment, my modeling workbench, and a recumbent exercise bicycle. Not a lot of space left for layout unless I can make the other functions work under the layout. The “someday” dream is to build a detached garage with walkout train room underneath close to the house. This would give me a 20ft x 24ft train room, if it ever happened.
Reality has poked its head into my dream world, and I have discovered that time and money are far bigger constraints on my model railroading than the small bedroom space is. And time is even more limiting than my modest hobby budget. I swore I never would commute 90 minutes each way to work, but here I am doing it. And I’m still raising teenagers in my 50s, with college tuition to come.
So for the present, small layouts remain my forte. I’m currently struggling to try to complete one enough to give switching a real honest try to see if it will prove to be as enjoyable as I hope. My past layouts have all been about layout building, with perhaps some simple either back-and-forth or loop running before it was time to move and start over.
Scenes for the current layout are the standard/narrow gauge transfer facility, a dog hole harbor with dock, a lumber mill, and a log landing. Depending on final configuration, a fishing village may also find a space. Setting is foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900.
– What is your layout space like? How did it seem when you first view it? Was it limitless and expansive?
The first house that I owned in NJ which gave me enough space to do more that a 4X8, had a large basement. So, my 4X8 concept RR started to expand.
My vision was Northern California steam logging. It started out more whimsical than prototypical but the expansion plans soon ended when like many others with a growing family my space soon became limited to a 1/3rd corner of the basement.
When we moved to Memphis, most of my kids had grown up and had stared their own families. I then thought I had all the space I would ever need over our new two car garage. My vision then was to build a part narrow gauge freelance logging RR blended with prototype SP in the Mt. Shasta area of CA. At the beginning of this year, I had all of the trackage in place and about 60% of the scenery. However, as Einstein may have once said, space and time are interconected. And as the old Philosopher Satchell Paige did say, " Don’t, look back, something might be gaining on you". In my case it is family health issues which have put my layout plans on an indefinate hold. In the end , time may be the key factor rather than space.
– What is your layout space like? How did it seem when you first view it? Was it limitless and expansive?
Was it limitless no, was it expansive, sorta. It was expansive enough. It would be able to model either of the two sites I would like, but I think it will do just to one more than the other.
– Do you have all the space you would like to have? I know many people actually say they could get by with less. So okay, what about the way the space is laid out? What compromises did you have to make to get your layout designed? How might it have been different if some (you pick) element had been different?
The amount of space is good, but the layout is dicey. I am hoping to be able to shift some things around, but it is now turning out that the original builders took some very iffy shortcuts and we may have to add some vertical supports to the center of the room, there is also the storage spaces I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, but “she who must be obeyed” says no.
– What about specific features on your layout? What did you initially want? What did you end up with? What were the thought processes and trade-offs you had to make as you went from your initial concept to the actual plan you developed into your layout?
My original plan was to keep it small, and to do a yard to yard layout. Small yard to small yard, nice interchange possiblities, Soo Line, Milwaukee Rd, GB&W, CN&W. Soo Line and Milw at one end, GB&W and CN&W at the other, my RR in the middle. Lots of traffic, but small yards. My wife though is making the arguements that I should do a small yard to three yards. I just am not sure, scratch that I am positive that I couldn’t give the justice to 4 yards as i could to 2. And in the this case the shrinking wouldn’t do anyone any justice.
The original plan also had me having a significant passanger volume, but that has also changed. Partly form actually r
