Where is your layout located?

ezdays

ezdays

Out AZ way
Feb 3, 2003
6,339
0
36
Arizona
bigbluetrains.com
There have been polls here recently about different aspects of railroading in general, but I'd like to get a bit more specific and personal. Where is your layout located, and about how much room do you have dedicated to it.

My N scale is on a 34" x 80" door that is mounted on a cabinet with casters so it can go just about anywhere. Right now it's in my workshop because the shop has A/C (it was 106 today) and I'm working on messy scenery and want my wife to stay happy.:rolleyes:

Don
 
My layout is in the finished room in the basement. The room is about 16 feet square, and I have about a 2' shelf around the outside of about 3 1/2 walls. On one wall it narrows a bit because of the fireplace, and there is an opening for the stairs and the laundry room door.
The layout sits on top of Ikea shelving, and is L girder with Homasote(TM) top. The L girders go along the outside of the shelving to keep it on.
And my wife decorates the edge with a tartan sash to hide the wiring.
 
Right now mine is "in my head." I have "rights" above a bookcase unit on two walls of a spare bedroom to make a 7' x 9' "L" shaped switching layout in ho scale. It seems as fast as I clear space on the shelves, more clutter shows up!
 
I never know what space to say I have, as either way I say it is a lie. I have a 13 foot 10 inches long layout, that is 7 feet wide, but down the other long wall half way down it opens up to 9 1/2 feet wide. So do I have a 7 foot wide layout or a 9 1/2 foot wide layout? Its in a room that was meant to be a study.

After walking around the house moaning I didn't have room for a proper layout with no basement and no garage, and walking by the study about a thousand times pondering the - "where to put the layout?" - question; a light bulb went off and I discovered the study room.

In it I have built a double decked affair with plans to add a third staging deck a few years down the line underneath the lower deck. This room has worked out very well.
 
Untill the new addition is built (not holding my breath till then), I have my workshop and 8'x10' HO layout in a remodeled 8x20 travel trailer. It actually worked out pretty good.
The 2 1/2'x6' N scale layout is in the living room temperarily.
Haven't set up the O or G, no room yet.
Got 2 1/2 acres for the 7 1/2" gauge whenever I get the time and money.
 
The new layout is in one of our bedrooms inside the house. A great improvement over the last layout which was in an unheated garage. Only problem is I have to be very careful with paint/plaster/glue/etc as the room is carpeted. Jim
 
I have in order of "gauge"

"Z" in a briefcase

"N" on a shelf 1X4x8 in my office at work

"HO" on a 1X6X8 in my Living room (2 track)

"HO" around my Dining Room Walls - About 6" below the ceiling

"Standard Gauge" Around the X-mas tree Every Year

and "G" on a 9'X12' layout in my celler - 3 levels (Top level hangs from ceiling)
 
This is interesting. After looking a pictures of some of the layouts gauge members have, I am thinking that when they go house shopping, the first consideration is "where do the trains go?" and then if there is still room for the family, they go ahead and buy the house. :rolleyes: :D :eek: My first consideration was could I build it somwhere that I didn't have to be careful about dropping paint, plaster and glue, yet be able to bring it into the house once I stopped being sloppy.

Are a lot of these layout done so that if you had to move, you could? I know some layouts are small enough to pick up, and others are built into rooms, so it would be easier to move the whole house then to take the layout apart.

Don
 
Originally posted by ezdays

Are a lot of these layout done so that if you had to move, you could? I know some layouts are small enough to pick up, and others are built into rooms, so it would be easier to move the whole house then to take the layout apart.

Don
Click to expand...

And Believe Me!! It is no fun taking apart (Destroying) a layout to take it out of the house. The only salvation we had was, that we could start a new one.
 
[My first consideration was could I build it somwhere that I didn't have to be careful about dropping paint, plaster and glue, yet be able to bring it into the house once I stopped being sloppy.]

Sure, My HO layout is built in three sections and can easily be dissassembled and moved.
After I get all the bugs out of the trackwork and catch up on some opperating sessions, I plan to dissassemble it to make scenicing easier.
 
Mine is in the unfinished area of the basement, which is an L-shaped section. Of that, one arm of the L had to be devoted to storage (30 years worth of cra- ... I mean priceless heirlooms, plus furnace and water heater).

I chose the shorter arm of the L for a train room since that area had no ductwork overhead, making covering the ceiling (with plastic) a lot more feasible. The area measures 12 x 16 of which I am using 10 x 13 for the layout. So far I have only built the left side of the benchwork, again an L-shape tucked into one corner, but will eventually extend into a loop on the right.

cheers
Val
 
My layout room is 8-1/2 x 9-1/2 ft in the basement of the three-family house I'm living in. It is heated, has a linoleum floor and two fairly small windows. Across the corridor is the laundry room, so I have easy access to water for doing scenery work (once I'll start with that... :rolleyes: )

I was lucky to get that room after a 25 year (!) struggle. Until 16 months ago it was used by the owner of the house as a room for storing all sorts of junk. And he just wouldn't give it away, although he never used something whicxh had ended up in this dungeon. :mad: :mad: :mad:
But then he and his wife moved into a home for the aged, and they gave the house to their daughters (who live elsewhere). This time I went full blast and was effectively able to rent the room a few days later. The best thing was that the new owners had the whole room completely renovated for me, following all my suggestions. (The only thing they wouldn't do, was painting two walls blue for a sky background ;))

Needless to say, I felt like in paradise - now if I could also rent some more time to spend down there... :D :D :D

Ron
 
I have taken over a large portion of the finished basement in our three bedroom log home. It is paneled, has a drop ceiling and linoleum on the floor (old stuff that ALREADY has stuff spilled on it!). I built a layout table 8' X 8' for my HO layout and it remains a "work in progress" (it will never be done!). Beside the layout is my work bench, which is about eight feet long and about 26-inches wide ... giving me lots of room to work. We built the "desk" for "crafts" ... and luckily the railroad craft was able to "take over"! My "portion" of the room is probably twenty feet by fifteen feet ... and the larger section is the wife's ... where she does her Yoga, etc! I am fortunate that I have all the space (future growth plans!!!).
 
12 X 20 area in the finished basement. I made a room divider between the layout and the "family room" part of the basement so when things on the railroad are a mess we can still enjoy being down there. :) I'd have to disassemble the layout completely were we to move. Yep. I did basement shop while house hunting.
Ralph
 
This is getting to be one very interesting thread! My HO steam logging layout is under construction in my 12 ft. X 13 ft. carpeted den. It shares space with my rather large desk, a file cabinet, and some built-in display cabinets. Those cabinets made for some interesting height-of-layout restrictions, as did the access point location which is open to the entry hallway leading from my back door to my kitchen. The room is nicely finshed, but lacks good lighting for our purposes. The layout was planned using Cadrail software, which turned out to be a VERY wise choice. The layout has been under construction for several years. I work slowly--too many rolling stock projects distract me from work of the layout. The Crandon & Northern is built in sections with 25-conductor plugs spanning the joints. I've used this system on previous layouts with good results. "Heavy construction" and painting are done in a workshop away from the trainroom. Benchwork is 95% complete now; 50% of track is in and wired. Scenery is yet to be constructed. I want to do most of it sequentially so there is some uniformity to it.

I really like to be near my coffee pot, running water, and ... oh yes ... the bathroom! This is much better than a previous basement layout in that regard.
 
I have one of the best places for my layout. I used to do tv vcr repair until that entire industry disolved several years ago, a victom of our disposable society. I had been working out of an 8' x 32' trailer by the house that I had redone into one big room. So when the electronics shop got moved out I took a look around and started imagining an entire little world in there. I have been cutting sheetrock plugs for all of the windows and bought a good little oil heater that keeps things nice and toasty in the winter. Next summer I'll be looking for a small swamp cooler for the heat.
I have been designing this layout for about three years now. I know that may seem a long time for some of you, but because of certain restrictions everything has to work the first time. I won't have the luxury of laying down some track and then working some scenery in around it and then tearing it all out to redo it. I've dubbed it my "Mission to Mars." Like a rocket ship to Mars, once it leaves the launch pad everything has to work.
It has been as much fun, not to mention frustrating, to design that much detail into it before the first piece of track is layed. I see it in my mind, now all I have to do is to make it real.
 
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