One thing that I’m big on suggesting for shared areas, is to include usage for other members of the family. If the space under this layout were to turn into a bookshelf and/or DVD storage area, the spouse will then see more usefullness of the layout. If the spouse can benefit; you can benefit. When the spouse sees that the layout doesn’t just take up space, but can actually create space, said spouse will be much more inclined to offer additional space. Sit down with her and collect her ideas as to things she would like to have. I’ve seen the space under layout for everything from book cases to hidden food storage.
You are very welcome. It was a pleasure discussing your layout plan with you!
Slight change in URL: http://www.aelfen.net/train_main.asp
(train, not trains).
Good luck building your layout!
Smile,
Stein
How embarassing is it to misquote the web address of your own web site?! [:I]
Unfortunately, the space under the layout is already occupied, since it’s in our bedroom. I didn’t want to push my luck. [:)]
Greg, interesting how your layout plan has evolved. My first choice would have been to put industries along the back, as the plan eventually got to with Stein’s great help.
Just a word about staging. . . . . If you have room for storing long narrow cassettes, that might be the way to go for your staging operations. One cassette could hold one train including it’s loco and caboose. So. . . . if you have four cassettes, you could have four different trains entering and leaving the layout. That would provide for more varied switching operations using more cars. The layout could have a slot in the top surface that the cassette would sit in and align with the main. By turning the cassettes, you could actually change the direction of the trains arriving and departing. (The cassette would most likely be the mainline but could be the staging track as well.) But again, the extra cassettes would have to be stored level someplace, and that may be a problem for you.
Anyway, just something to give you food for thought.
gkhazzard I want to take this opportunity to welcome you to the forum. I’m originally from Oskaloosa, and worked for a window company in Pella. I drove dirt track stock car in Oskaloosa and Eldon. I’m loosely modeling the Rock Island on a switching layout. Now that I live in Alaska, I understand your wanting to model the area of your roots. I wish you luck. One thing that will help is to obtain a collection of good railroad planning books. Get them for both HO and N scale. I only model N scale, but I’ve gathered a wealth of knowledge from all of the books that I have. Atlas has a very user friendly simple track planning download that would be very helpful to you. There are some other trackplanners such as 3rd Planit, which I also use, but they take more of a learning curve, and are more advanced, as well as more expensive.
Thanks for the welcome Otto!
Yes, I am living in the land of cows and corn, thanks to my lovely, and very stubborn wife, who refused to move out east before we got married. But, I think she’s worth it.
I actually (thanks to Stein’s influence, no doubt) ended up teaching myself to use XTrkCad. I do have the trial version of 3rd Planit, but I just couldn’t find anything it did that XTrk doesn’t to make it worth the cost.
And now I have to ask, why does anyone choose to move to Alaska willingly? [;)]
Honestly, I think the layout plan I have now is about 1000 time better than when I started, thanks to the help from Stein, and everyone else who posted in this thread.
And you have hit on the crux of my dilemma. As the wife, kid, cats, and I all currently occupy a 960 square foot apartment space of any kind is at a premium, especially storage. While the cassette idea is definately interesting, I don’t think I have the storage to keep the extra cassettes while I’m not using them. However, I will keep the idea at the back of my mind.
We wouldn’t happen to be brothers-in-law or something, would we ? [:D]
Oh well, at least it helps explain why our kids can be a little hard to budge sometimes. When you combine a pig-headed Norwegian dad and a lovely and - umm - tenacious - Midwestern mom, you sometimes get stubborn kids …
My wife also hails from the US Midwest - in this case from the Twin Cities, but fortunately she agreed to move north and and across the Atlantic to Norway with me when we got married.
We live east of Oslo in Norway - at about 61 degrees north - about as far north as Anchorage in Alaska. And thank God for that- we have visited Minnesota in the wintertime a couple of times since we got married - the US midwest is way too cold in the winter!
I keep teasing my father-in-law about the relative brightness of those Norwegians who emigrated from Norway in the late 1800s and managed to find a place to settle that is colder than Norway in the wintertime [;)]
But Midwestern summers are pretty wonderful. Trolling for walleye on a lake way up north with my brother in law on a bright summer morning before the rest of the world wakes up. Nothing like it in the world!
Big grin,
Stein, really looking forward to yet another Minnesota summer in 8 weeks time or so
It’s good to see you making such impressive progress in such a short time. As for moving to Alaska, we just got tired of the cold winters and hot summers, as well as the pace of life. We live on an island on the southwest side of the state. The temperature rarely gets above 70F, and people start complaining bitterly if it gets down into the twenties. My wife is a nurse and got a job here at the hospital, and I’m semi-retired due to a disagreement between the fourth turn of the Eldon speedway, 6 other cars, and mine being used like a football. I do some writing and volunteer work for the local museums; mostly making dioramas of some of their dig sites.
Otto,
My layout will be over my wife’s “layout” and the huge storage pace needed for mostly seasonal decorations. The Dept 56 display will have my Marx train and maybe a Thomas or Polar Express Lionel train run through it for the boys. The size and nature of the HO layout is heavily infulenced by the overall needs and wants of the entire family. Even the cats have to be taken into account. If you use the space under the layout for miscellaneous storage, be sure to protect any wiring, switch machines etc. Nothing more annoying than a perfectly operating railroad suddenly becoming a weekend troubleshooting project.