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Because it's easy, because ties are fairly dark brown and stained with creosote so it's close enough, and because most modelers who care about the color of the track paint it anyhow, while they're also painting the sides of rail--and bright shiny rail sides is a lot less prototypical than dark...

Nonsense! Build AROUND the four-poster bed: make a couple of notches for them, and mount a narrow (maybe six-inch) shelf in front of the posts. The plan below is just a schematic, but a 6" shelf is enough room for a double-track mainline with subway wall behind it (pretty easy to make out of...

Here's an example of a 1-foot deep shelf layout that goes around an 8x10 bedroom. At 48" high, it's low enough to be easily accessible by adults and adolescents, but high enough that other furniture such as beds, desks, short bookcases and dressers can easily fit underneath it. It is also low...

Have you considered an around-the-room shelf layout, perhaps at 48" off the ground? This would give you the option of a long mainline run, more varied scenes, room for a serious yard, and easy access to every inch of the layout. It means a bit of creative planning, including a swing-out or...

The only advice I can give you on the yard is that if you skootch the switch leading to the yard to the right a bit you'll have space to actually park a car on the fourth track. Why do you need so many yard tracks? If you're running subway cars, all the yard tracks do is store cars--you won't be...

...sorry, to continue...The "code" is the height of rail in thousandths of an inch. Code 100 is the most common, easiest to find, and probably the easiest for you to work with, so I'd recommend using it, but Code 83 is getting more common. If you really want to use both there are special rail...

The switches are called Atlas Snap-Switches. The switch numbers you often see are the ratio of a switch's length to the width of divergence: a #4 switch has a 4:1 ratio, a $6 has a 6:1, and so on. The Snap-Switch is a little different, it is specifically used to serve in the place of an 18"...

Keep in mind that HO scale track radius is measured from the middle of the track--thus, a circle of 22" track actually needs 48" of space. If your outer loop uses 22" radius track, you'll need more than 48" wide area to fit the ramp on the outside. Personally, I'd suggest using 15" radius...

whoops, the photo didn't upload...let me try again. Four tracks for a layout that size is plenty of yard.

The main problem you'll encounter is that your ramp is far too short. You will need, at a bare minimum, about 2" to clear the upper level, and you have a ramp about 2 feet long. That means an average 8% grade, with no transition. If there isn't a transition (a gradually sloping curve upward)...

Here's some serious inspiration for fans of narrow-gauge switching layouts. The plan is from a Sanborn insurance map, dated 1915, in Sacramento, CA. The location is just north of Southern Pacific's main yard and shops area, and it is now a big junkyard so any physical evidence is gone, but these...

I heard there was some sort of steam event scheduled to happen in Monterey--could this array of equipment be part of it?

Looks useful...I have a few brass and plastic Ken Kidder models that desperately need repowering, such devices might prove very useful!

I'm 38. Personally I think there will be a new generation of model railroaders coming along since trains are once again playing a more prominent role in American life, both in carrying cargo and people. Model railroading appeared when trains were *the* way to get place to place: people primarily...

Wow, a shack so small you can't even fit a "C" on it!

Going back to horses is no solution: a massive problem in cities before the automotive era was horse dung on the streets! Not just a little bit, but mounds of dung in the street and along the side of the road, add water (rain) and you get a filthy, soupy disease-carrying mess. The lives of...

One thing you might consider is that an island-style layout dominates a room a lot more than an around-the-walls layout: you can set a shelf layout onto furniture instead of mounting it on the wall. This leaves the middle of the room free for other functions, while a 4x12 layout will require an...

Shelf layouts can be just about any size. My current layout is 12 feet of shelf layout with a "peninsula" in the middle, but most of the layout is 1 foot deep. The eventual plan will be for the layout to go all the way around an 11x25 foot room, but it will still be a "shelf layout" because it...

Shelf layout lighting can be done with commercial shelf lighitng of various sorts. Personally, I have tried compact fluorescent fixtures, although I didn't really care for the quality of light (but I'm told that using special bulbs that are a closer match to sunlight helps.) For my current...

Nickel-silver track (or any track) has a certain amount of resistance to it. The farther your locomotive is from the feeder wires, the more resistance the electricity has to overcome before it reaches the motor in the locomotive. So if you only have one set of feeder wires from the power pack to...