A train in the living room!!

[3phase]

as you all may know i'm currently working on a layout and having fun with it.

I have been thinking about a small but large layout that is able to be hung from the wall in the living room.

I dont have anything drawn up yet but try to immagin this in your head.

Lets take a wall say 14' in length. Put a heilix on eather end constructed like boxes covered with some sourt of panneling. The boxes would be about 2' deep by 3" wide and 2' tall. They could be used for shelvs to stor the wifes snow globs and other crap to make her feel happy and crap....

The panneling would have an access door to get to a derailment.

ok, now that we have a helix on eather side of the room in the corners just connect them with two shelvs. 2' deep by 8' or what ever the width of the room is. one shelf would be at the bottom of the box and the other would be at the near top od the helix box.

I would manage to make 2 tracks on it with a to and from turnout in a few places.

With the basic layout in place i would than make the background. For my background i would make buildings "stores and such" and take people that have made a diffrance in my life and give them there own business. Like "Dickinson moving systems john's electronics, joe's garage ect......."

I would also construct the whole thing to be portable incase i would ever want to move it to another room, so i would make it up in blocks about 4 to 5 foot long. I would use dowle pins to hold and alighn the shelvs so i wouldn't have to ever cut the track to move the layout.

Let me know what you all think, let me know if any of you have ever tried this.

 

[seanm]

Sounds interesting! I dont think you have rom for the helixes in the boxes though. I have been working on plans for one and even in N-Scale, they really need to be near an 18" or larger radius to make the grade reasonable. If that is the case, the boxes for the helix would need to be more like 3.5feet square.

 

[rcline]

3phrase - that's a good idea! I might give some thought to what seanM had to say.
But I would be real careful about what you call the "items" that your wife has. You might end up doing your own cooking and washing, not to mention that the couch could get real uncomfortable after awhile!
Good luck with your project!

 

[Bikerdad]

Rather than helixes at both ends, just have a constant grade on one line running from one end, turning back at the other end and continuing up grade to the first end. Put a helix on that end only. Run a second line "down in the valley" (front) on the lower level, "up on the plateau" (back) on the top level. Both of these lines are level, with sidings and what not.

Use foam construction for the entire layout except the fascia, and use a track based adjustable shelving system to mount it.