Zealot

Hi people --

Just wanted to drop by and say "hi" to everyone for my first post here at The Gauge model trains forums.:wave:

Quick description of myself : 43 years old, lives in Norway in Europe, had a Märklin layout as a child, but then left the hobby for about 30 years, until I got kids of my own.

The kids have Märklin sectional tracks and paper buildings we set up in our living room occationally:



I am working on a H0 scale around the room shelf switching layout in my little 6 1/2 x 11 1/2 foot storage room/workshop. The layout is inspired by urban scenes from Minneapolis ca 1957 - mainly the Omaha Road's trackage in the Warehouse District, but also a grain elevator scene and a scene loosely based on the municipal barge terminal in Mpls.

No staging - I intend to bring very short trains or short cuts of cars with interchange traffic onto the layout or off the layout using a cassette which can hold an engine and 5 cars. When the casette is empty, it works as a bridge for continuous run.

Here is my layout plan:


Here is a car location diagram showing industry spots on the layout:



A few images showing the current state of the layout:

Left end of warehouse district - leftmost track is mainline/exit from yard, low building straight ahead is freight house. industry/warehouse flats along wall on the right.


Looking right along waregouse district - mini yard of three tracks, more industries/warehouses.


Right side of room, elevator in the background, Hun't baking pwder co (red paper over foamcore building), Williams warehouse (two Pikestuff warehouses spliced end to end).


Cassette/bridge in front of door.


Testing out track alignments for the barge terminal scene using various placeholders:


I have since scratched out a coal barge that hopefully looks a little better than the placeholder tray in the picture above:



Anyways - that is the present state of my layout. It obviously needs a lot more work before it start look anywhere even remotely as good as some of the layouts I have seen in this forum.

But I'm having fun "working on the railroad" and hope to learn more and get more ideas following this forum :)

Smile,
Stein