Hey all. I am getting back into model railroading after a 2yr hiatus. And what im looking for is something small that I can work on. I live in a fairly small place. Not big enough to do up 4x8 or anything bigger. Im thinkin of starting a modular layout. I have the space to start small and can store a smaller layout than something bigger. That and I need to be able to move it whenever me and my family move. I am modeling in HO and was wondering, is there a website that i can go to and get a specific track plan with material lists and go from there or should i just wing it. And if I wing it how should I start it?
Start by measuring your room and making a sketch of your room, so you can find out how much space you actually have and where in the room you can put a layout.
If you post your sketch here, people can help you figure out if there are any possibilities you hadn’t considered that would work well in your space. How to upload a picture to e.g photobucket and display it here: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/159460/1757744.aspx#1757744
Layouts can be made in a lot of odd shapes, and can be made to fit into quite a few different rooms.
I would probably go sectional instead of modular, unless you are planning to take your layout with you to club meets with a group of other people who follow the same modular standard, since modular (where modules could be put together any which way, e.g. A-B-C, C-A-B, B-A-C etc) makes the design more constrained.
But it can be done modular style as well - look for articles on e.g. David Barrow. Or have a look at this design by Byron Henderson: http://www.layoutvision
Back in the '60s and into the '70s layout designs presented in MR and RMC used to give a list of sectional track requirements in order to complete the layout i.e. 20 pieces of this and 15 pieces of that and 9 pieces of thetuther etc, etc, and so on. You will still occasionally encounter sectional track layouts today but less so than formerly.
MR–and RMC also for that matter–when they do some sort of a project railroad usually list the structures they used in this project’s construction. This should not be written in blood; you may not, for instance, want a lumberyard siding on your layout–put in a cold storage warehouse in its stead. Awhile back there was a forum member who was building a layout based upon some far removed plans and he had discovered that a particular kit which had been used when this layout had been initially constructed had been out of production for ten or fifteen years; he was poleaxed and wanted to know what to do.
It sounds like you want to a shelf layout of some kind, but I’m not certain from your description.
Modular refers to interchangeable layout sections, which implies some standards for each interchangeable section. The interface between a module (sometimes module set of sections) and other modules has to be specified pretty tightly to have this interchangeable property. There are several different module standards that are being used in HO for some very fine modeling - the Free-mo and Sipping and Switching Society standards come to mind. These allow a group of module owners to bring their modules to a setup and create a large layout for a weekend of operating fun. If that’s where you are heading, you will want to use a modular standard that is used for setups within the distance you are willing to drive your modules.
A sectional layout is a layout broken into moveable sections. Depending on how frequently you plan to move, a section can be as simple as joining 2 sections of benchwork, with track, scenery, and wiring bridging the joint, and to be cut at a later date. Or it can go all the way to a modular standard to make the moving easier - but at the expense of flexibility in the layout design. Or anything in between. Generally, the tradeoff is portability and ease in moving vs i
Thanks for all the replies…based on what im reading from you guys. It is sectional that I want. I misinterpreted what modular/sectional were 2 different things. What im looking to start is something I can work on now and move into a basement when im finally in a the right spot(economy being bad sucks for me). But right now I just want something to work on because im getting stir crazy not being able to do anything with it, outside of building/weather structures and rolling stock. So flex track is the way to go? Sounds like a good plan to me. While I am partial to sections I do have some flex to work with. Is there any articles for flex track for beginners. Last layout I did was all sectional. Let me ask you this without starting a new topic. My brother gave me a bunch of I wanna say Peco turnouts code 83. The flex track and sections I have are all code 100. I bought some of the Code 83/100 adapter connectors, would it work matching the two ot them up or would it mess things up? they are boxed up and put away, so later I will pull them out and check them to verify it, but im sure thats what they are. Also im thinking maybe a 2x4 sectional to start…something i can tuck away under the bed, but dont stick off the wall to far if i can find a place to stick it on the wall in the living room to give me a good place to work on it.