I am finally getting ready to build my first HO scale model railroad. I have built a small 2’x4’ N scale layout. However, I am no longer 21 and my eyes are not what they were. So, I have chosen to go with a larger scale rather than new glasses.
I have a space of around 15’x15’ in which to build an HO scale RR. To be sure I could go significantly larger, but I I woud prefer not to as I believe if the layout is smaller I would be able to devote more time to detailing it.
My goals for this RR are.
Primarily modern image rolling stock and a couple of large steam engines such as a Challenger or Big Boy. I was hoping to achieve this with 24" curves, but it appears 30" curves maybe more practical.
Model railroad railfanning will be a big part of this railroad. Therefore the ability to run trains continuously so at least one loop of track would be good.
I would like the layout to be portable in case we move from our current home. However, this is not a must.
Being a sailor in both the merchant marine and navy I will eventually want a what feature of some kind. Likely a small port.
I plan on making it DCC.
3 or 4 significant industries etc to give trains a reason for moving from one point to another.
1 or 2 small towns with stations. I have always found passenger trains fascinating.
Initially, I had thought a version of the Red Rock Northern may work. However, due to the 24" curves I am no longer certain.
I’ve been a HO sale model railroader since 1951 and I’ve never had room for a large layout. I model the mid 1950s era. My current and last layout is 14’ x 10’ with 120’ of mainline in twice around design. It has a loop and a wye for reversing the direction of an entire train.
The twice around mainline climbs into the mountains to 10” above the lower level and has a 30’ radius 3½% helix back down to the lower level.
I also have a roundhouse and turntable capable of handling Big Boys, 135’ turntable. It has a small 5 track yard and a diesel maintenance shop. It has a typical 1950s look with a passenger station.
My layout is in our garage and built on casters, I can roll it out onto the driveway to aid in cleaning the garage. Out on the driveway it becomes a Kid and Dad Magnet very quickly.
This is a drawing of my layout.
It has one 24” radius curve the rest are 28” to 32”, my Bowser Big Boy easily negotiates the #4 turnouts in my yard at yard speed. My mainline turnouts are #6.
My layout was DC and designed for one train operating at a time back in 1988 and I went DCC in 2005, I operate dual mode DC or DCC.
Welocme to the forum. A lot of folks are very helpful. When it comes to layout design, don’t feel that people are trying to steer you, they are just either making suggestions or even being devils advocate maybe getting you to think about something you may have not.
15 x 15 is a nice space for HO. You could do an around the room, with or without a pensinsula, or a walk in design. A walk in will require the trains to double back onto the same scene. An around the room allows the trains to pass through a scene only once, but it comes with the price of needing a duck under or lift out section. Your choice of which evil matters less.
If you leave the middle open, you can get broader curves, which might be important for passenger trains.
I think having broad curves is one of the more important things to have, so if you have the space, try to plan for those. That will cut down on the number of return loop blobs the layout can have.
3 to 4 large industries sounds like a good number for the space. Fewer larger industries look better than many smaller industries. IMO.
Same with towns. Fewer but larger trumps more but smaller.
IMO, a railfanning layout needs staging, either visible or not. Trains leave staging, enter the layout, then return to staging. A Railfan layout probably wants many trains, so that needs more staging tracks and a lot of space. Some folks like underneath stsging, but that’s complaex to build. If you have a 4 sided layout (duckunder) consider devoting one side to just staging and use the other three sides for the railfanning portion. Or a skiiny peninsula in the middle for staging.
A quick note, the RR Northern crams a lot of mainline mileage into the space. Personally, having that much mainline crammed that close together…not a double mainline but supposedly represents mainline that is miles apart…takes away from the realism of the layout
I am not very good at layout planning, but it sounds like you have a very good idea of what you want and enough room to make it fit. That is important.
Hi Dirk. In my experience try to have the broadest curves as possible. Having tight curves at least one locomotive will give problems (even though the manufacturer says it will go round it.) Been there etc.
For maximum run distance along with decent curve radii, I would suggest an around the walls layout with a penninsula.
If you have along one wall a 24" wide bench then turn back for a 68 inch wide Penninsula, that would allow you 32" minimum radius curve turnback, and along the opposite wall an 18 inch wide bench. That would leave a 36 inch wide pinch point on one side of the Penninsula and a 34" wide pinch point on the other side, which is very reasonable for walking around.
Most Penninsulas can narrow a bit toward the wall so the walkway can be a bit wider on either side. The Penninsula could extend out about 10 feet allowing for 36" wide walkway past and 24" benchwork opposite the end of the Penninsula. This is what I would do with a 15x15 space. Yes, a lift out bridge would be needed for entry and exit to the room so the layout would need to be designed with that in mind.
And if you wanted staging below the visible layout, you could use the Penninsula “blob” to hide a helix looping down below. Again, 32" radius could be maintained with careful design.
Since the OP wants to run Big Boys and Challengers, 32" radius minimum is a really good idea, and even a bit sharpish for those. The
i have a 15x15. It is portable. built with 2x4 sections. I did a lot of thinking first before anything was started. Each section has alignment pins so they line up right and stay that way. The bo
It is possible. And keep in mind the OP wants to run BIG HO steam engines, which ideally need decent curves, such as 30" or larger.
And it depends on your goals. I wouldn’t build a portable layout because based on experience, each place you move had a different available space, both in terms of area and shape.
For example, my first layout was built in a 19x24’ garage. The layout itself was 19x16 L shaped so one car could still fit in with the nose partly under the layout. It was built sectional so it could move. When it came time to move, the home had a basement that was partially finished. But the space was not suitable for the layout - would not fit at all. Knowing this, I advertised it and sold it to someone who could assemble it back together and scenic it. So building it sectional did allow me to sell it and recover some of the costs, but it could not be moved and re-used by me.
The next layout ended up being built mostly in an unfinished part of a home owned by my ex-wife. The layout was 14x24 feet and extended out into the finished are and back in. When I had to move out, I moved into an apartment with no space for anything but maybe a 4x8, and no place to do sawing and the like.
Eventually I moved into a townhouse with a 10x18’ finished basement room. I built an around the wall layout to fit the room. It was sectional so it could be moved technically. After four years I moved into the present home and the basement had a space about 15 feet wide (at the narrowest) and 33 feet long. The old layout could have been move
I’m currently building a foam based around the room shelf layout in 13’x12’ space. If you try that format note that you can squeeze much bigger radius into the corners of the room than might at first appear obvious.
Laying out the largest radius curves on graph paper (I use the old high school science class 1/4 grid stuff) with a pair of compasses from your high school geometry set note that by keeping the curve out of the corner, starting closer to the wall on one shelf and swinging across to the front of the shelf across the 90 degree corner gets you maximum radius. If you draw it in the usual manner from close to the wall at both ends of the curve you end up with a tighter radius. This is not intuitive until you actually swing the compasses.
If you look carefully at the right hand side of Mel’s trackplan note that’s what he has done with the two tracks that cross over, both are larger radius than if pushed into the corner. Crossing twin track curves over each other is another space maximizing trick worth exploring. You know you always wanted a Shinohara doubleslip crossing turnout somewhere on your layout to rattle a bigboy over.
Of course the issue with a medium sized square shape, the broader the radius the curve, the more it eats into the space for straight track…making the layout a big circle.
The challenge for OP is that he is on the cusp of having space that is just wide enough for a peninsula, but not generous, so he will have to keep the wall-shelves narrow which limits how broad the radius can be (won’t be able to have big 45 degree fillers in the corners).
A solution is to have the tracks at the base of the peninsula cross each other, however, when you do that, its not always easy to follow a train because once it darts across the the base to the other side of the peninsula, you’re stuck over on
The 15 x 15 area is a “good space” for an HO railroad - About 15 years ago I started building a 24 x 24 railroad that ended up being (IMHO) marginally a bit “too much”. If you have extra space, design the layout in “chunks” that can be expanded (if you end up with the time and wherewithal) later on - look what John Allen did on the G&D. I’ll be dismangling the existing layout for a move to a smaller 14 x 22 space, which should be a bit more manageable.
As a “railfan” (I am one as well) do not neglect staging. My current layout is a walk in with 2 peninsulas - basically “around the walls” with 10 tracks of hidden staging connecting and “feeding” both east and west ends of the railroad (also with a continuous run option). With DCC I can have 3-4 trains running (double track main with sufficient staggering between trains) at once.
“Portable” is more difficult perhaps than it seems at first glance. My current layout was built to be able to move, but a more practical alternative will be to dismantle and salvage what I can (turnouts, main electrical bus, rock castings, etc.), and throw the rest (mostly wood and plaster) into the dumpster. One thing that I have started doing is to construct models (i.e. FSM kits) as dioramas that can be “dropped into” the layout, and easily removed intact in the event of a move or even just a reconfiguration.
I use 28"/30" curves on my double track main - actually 27.5" and 29.5" with easements, and can run Pennsy J-1, T-1, and Q-2 models and 85’ Broadway Ltd. passenger cars easily, so you can shave a little bit off of the 30" minimum - a few extra inches might facilitate a peninsula in your space per previous comments.
Good luck with your planning and please keep us posted!
The main conflict is the length of the possible straights - with 15 feet and 30" radius curves, the straight track between the curves int he corners will be less than 10 feet. Not a particularly impressive train length to put behind a Challenger.
Continuous run around the walls usually implies some sort of lift out or duckunder, unless this is a basement space with the stairs coming down in the middle of the room (which mens no peninsula). A continuous run could be done leaving most of one side clear if the layout ran more of a no-lix design and had the turnback loops stacked above one another in one corner. But that makes it MUCH harder to make it portable.
30" radius and portable aren’t even remotely exclusive. Two layouts ago, I built an 8x12 donut layout with 4 sections, each 2x8. Take the legs off a 2x8 section and you can easily transport that through doors - I did do that with my last layout, broke it down to 2x8 sections, and it was easily carried down 2 flights of stairs (with a sharp turn twice in the middle). It ended up being all for nothing, as I ended up scrapping it as part of cleaning up the basement to prep for my new layout. That layout had tighter curves, but the 8x12 donut had a dual main line with 30" and 32" curves.
Since lumber commonly comes in 8 foot lengths, building 2x8 sections to form the framework is pretty eacy. First section needs 4 legs, after that, just a pair of legs on the free side, the other side gets bolted to the previous section. A narrower or wider section can be fit between two ‘standard’ ones. Too much narrower and you will have to think about at least a temporary anchor to the wall, as it gets kind of wobbly - even if the legs are rock solid and don’t wobble, the narrow footprint makes it tippy (don’t ask). Clamp each new section on, align it, drill 2 holes, use a pair of bolts, 4 washers, and a lock washer and nut or lock nut. Legs and leg braces can also bolt on. I just laid ro
If you’re having trouble seeing the N-scale equipment, you’re going to have trouble seeing HO-scale equipment. It’s not the trains, it’s your vision. The idea that going to a larger scale solves your eye problems is frankly a myth.
Go to your eye doctor / opthamalogist and ask about getting a pair of “computer glasses”. For the price of a decent model locomotive you’ll get glasses that are geared towards medium distance viewing, roughly 16-30".
