I have been out of the hobby for thirty-odd years and have been dreaming of laying rail again over the past 5 years, ever since I got my old HO stuff when clearing out my Mums house. I have been lurking for a while, subscribing to MR and AMRM, collecting job-lots off feeBay and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.
I have a room for the railway in a room that must also do duty as sleeping accomodation for guests, and thus it must also accomodate a queen size double bed and some drawers. The room looks like this;
Now, into this space I was fantasizing that I could put3 tracks of staging down the RHS wall, My old 4 x 8 hollow core door in the top right ( adjusted left 6 inches to fit the staging ) which would fold up when not in use, an18 inch wide shelf on the remaining top wall to a fixed triangular section in the top left, leading to a shelf about 9 inches wide past the window, narrowing to a single track through the wall to a modelling workshop.
Placing the bed head on the bottom wall and the tallboy hard up against it on its left will allow this. The side tables are short enough to not get in the way pretty much anywhere in the room.
I was thinking that a combination of John Armstrongs Nasmyth & Lake Michigan R.R. on the 4 x 8 ( flipped so that most of the track is at the front of the board ) and Linn Westcotts Logan St. yard on the triangular section - with somebodies modified shelf layout inbetween/surrounding, would allow me to have continuous running, and some switching to provide relief and a reason for the rails to run.
Welcome back to the hobby! It certainly has changed in many ways since you left, technology has run rampant!
I have pondered your space and g&d’s and I can’t really think of a better plan than the one you came up with. Having to coexist sleeping quarters with a functional railroad is a challenge, and the fold away/ shelf design is an excellent compromise. The other choices are to have a high shelf around the room, but that does not lend itself to anything other than display running, or to have a low caster layout that slides under the bed when not in use, but you are limited in verticle height of scenery and you need sufficient space to roll it out to operate (while sitting Indian style with bad knees and backs![B)] )
Once again, welcome back and thanks for participating in the forum!
Welcome back. I was in the same situation three years ago. I had the music studio, now unused, which also was the extra TV room and the dinning room for large groups. What ever I did, I needed to save space for tables to seat 20 people and a small den for the grand children during parties. I found the dinning tables made wonderful assembly benches. The bed may to the same for you.
What I did was find three pictures of areas I wanted included. I laid those on the floor and ran blue masking tape around the floor simulatinmg the full size layout until it sort of worked. I also wanted a continuous running loop so I could run trains. I then built free standing table work that held that track plan, still on the floor. Then I started. I have made some changes, but I do have a layout.
Some people benefit from extensive pre-planning, but I am not one, so I was ahead of the game by starting the build. I now have my loop of track, my three scenes, with a forth being added and a great sence of joy. I wish you the same.
It is good to have you on the forum. It has been good for me to share progress and learn as I go.
The layout you linked to (shown below) is one I designed for a smaller room than yours. It’s logging-themed and could be too tight for your larger engines, since it uses a 22" radius. It’s described here. With enough room, you could probably increase the minimum radius and add more passing sidings and industrial areas.
Unless you have a strong sentimental attachment to the 4X8, you may find the work to make it flip up and down and re-register precisely is more than you want to invest. Also, the radius on the 4X8 is perhaps tighter than you need now for your larger engines.
Building around-the-room with a liftout or swing section might be a lot easier and is something to consider also. Working on the overall shape is one way to start the design process – another useful way is to think about the kinds of scenes, traffic, operations, etc. that you would like to achieve and working out the layout footprint from that vision and your space, time and money constraints.
I have considered the around the room with a swing option, it would have the same re-registration issues as the flip up wouldn’t it? The tallboy is 73 In. to the top of the mirror, so it would be a wombat-eye view for an around the room layout and less inclusive for my kids.
Opening out cuyama’s plan and stretching it to make room for the bed in the middle of the dogbone sounds good, but I will need two 4 foot squares at either end to turn around. One can easily go in the top right, but the other end would have to be at the top left as it would foul the bed and tallboy. Unless I move the bed and tallboy, but that just moves the chokepoint as far as I can see, not remove it.
I chose the the J.A. plan because most of the tight corners are concealed, and that’s probably a good thing with a 16 In. locomotive on toy-train radii.
I don’t think so … moving and re-registering a 3-foot-wide, 6-inch-deep lift-out or swing gate will probably be a lot less demanding than moving and re-registering a 4X8 foot layout.
Tracks can probably go behind the tall dresser also, not only over.
If you run only one main line that would only take up say 4 inch, two main around 7 inch so that would not be that bad.
Lift out gates are not that hard from what I have seen.
One of the things I like about a round the room bench is you can have large turns. A 3 foot wide bench will hold 32 inch turns with no problems. Here is a plan I found on the Internet.
It will not fit as shown in your current bedroom, but it may get you thinking.
You could all so have drawers under the bench for storeage.
By the way, while I am reluctant to be critical of John Armstrong, in my opinion this is not one of his stronger efforts. The layout doesn’t really fit on a 4X8 in HO anyway (note that the tracks are right at the edge – impractical in real life with elbows and the odd paunch flying about). In addition, the 12" R curves and #3(!) turnouts on the branch, along with the tight grades, will make this branch difficult to operate reliably.
Further, the grades and track-to-track vertical clearances are going to be pretty demanding of construction precision … perhaps not the best choice for a first layout (if it is your first). I doubt that the curve under the turntable can be made to work as drawn in any case. And certainly, a number of the turnouts would have to be handlaid to fit – off-the-shelf components won’t work if you are trying to keep this on a 4x8.
Some of Mr. Armstrong’s designs are more theoretical explorations of a design principle than practical track plans from which to build. In my humble opinion, this one falls into that category. (I know, heresy. So be it.) Rather than try to shoehorn this somewhat impractical 55-year-old theoretical exercise into your room, you’ll probably be better off with a more reasonable around-the-room confguration in your case.
[This layout was first published in the November 1953 Model Railroader and reprinted in The Classic Layout Designs of John Armstrong (Kalmbach 2001).]
Where do I start? Thanks to everyone who has taken an interest so far. I knew that this post would change my plans a bit, but I did not know they would be so comprehensively trashed![sigh] Ah well…
Having looked at the shelf-around-the-room concept a little deeper, I am warming quickly to the idea. More mainline, bigger radii and a big hole in the middle for guests. So I am toying with the idea of having dual levels on 3 of the sides ( more rails -WOOT! ), and got to wondering, how will I treat the window as far as scenicing <sp?> goes? A shelf must run past it at sill height at least, and it will look pretty naff to have suburbs → 87 times lifesize colourbond fence → bushland as a backdrop… To take that concept even further, has anyone tried dual level shelves past a window? How would one maintain the illusion?
Clod, as far as the windows, you could hide the shelf from the out side world with blinds. Or, what I would do is use bridges. If you want to take it to the next step, make the bridges lift out as well. Few people here use bridges as lift out sections. You could all so have a lift out back drop as well.
If you look round on the site, you will find people that have multiple level benches using the round the room bench. You could all so have a removable freight yard that could go in the center of the room for when Dad is not using the queen sizes bed.
My next bench will be around the room so I don’t lose the room to trains only.
I have been doodling and think that I can put everything I originally wanted and a little bit more into 3 shelves around the room. What is a good vertical seperation for shelf layouts? I have seen anything from 10 inches to 2 feet in various books/sites. I think that if I build it as a huge spiral around the walls I may not be able to get decent seperation without making the grades too steep, OTOH, helper operations are something I am interested in[D)]. I don’t know that I am skilled enough to build a helix, although I have snaffled a useable quantity of threaded rod from a previous workplace.
Before you cut wood: have you considered the option of a Murphy bed along the right hand wall. Depending on the setup you might even be able to run a single or double track behind it giving o full around the room layout.[2c]
Thanks for your thoughts, but ditching the current bed and buying a new one would not do my meagre budget any good. Apart from that I am not sure that murphy beds are even available in Australia as a pre-fab unit, I have certainly never seen one.
If I move the bed and tallboy away from the wall about 1 1/2 inches I can put a single mainline behind them at about 36" height, this will give me the around-the-room effect. My decision is whether to go for one huge spiral shelf, or 3 ‘flat’ shelves with connecting gradients.
One window has a shelf in front with trains on it. Across that back of shelf is a back panel planned for backdrop.
When it is complete, no one is physically able to enter through that window without making much noise and damage giving us time to deploy home defense.
That is how I see windows.
I recall a thread years ago where a home association was fooled by a fake window complete with drapery, flowers etc all painted white facing out, but completely covered from inside as part of layout backdrop scenery.
Iain Rice has a couple of track planning books, one of which is called Small, Smart, and Simple Track Plans or something like that. One of the plans is for a spare bedroom, incorportating the bed and other furniture into the plan. Might be worth a look, if only to get some ideas.
