Greetings from across the pond !

[mrjamestrain]

hi to all

my name is james i am 15, in the 10th grade next summer 11th, my father is english my mother german . Iam coppletly new to american railroading i am saving up for an athearn sw 1500 and some box cars and starting to plan a ho scale 6x1 switching layout any help welcome

thanks for reading .

 

[Trussrod]

Hi James and welcome to the forum.
I'm David, Trussrod on the forum and model equipment form the 1880's to 1900's in HO myself. I also have some English and German in me too well.

I'm always glad to have younger fellows like yourself get involved and hopefully you have other friends too who are interested in Scale Model Railroading also.

As far as the shelf layout your planning I think that's a good way to go but if you have the room maybe try and make it 18" deep to give yourself a little more room to have some curved track for a little variation and I would say to keep it more open rather than too much track as scenery can add a lot to your layout. Something else you might consider is possibly making an L shaped layout to even vary things a bit more yet. If you do decide on an L shape you will need a corner section that has a round to it to allow your track to make the curve a bit more gradual from one leg of the L to the other. Also it's a simple job to tie everything together.

Are you familiar with using hand tools such as a drill gun and possibly a hand circular saw or possibly your Dad is.

Anyway this is some food for thought, so let us know what you have planned and working with Scale Model Railroading is an excellent learning tool as you get involved is so many different things.

Take care James and talk with you again,
David

 

[Gary B]

Welcome James nice to have you on board. We have some other young members like yourself and we welcome everyone with open arms. We love seeing pictures so please post some when you get your layout going. There's lot of experience here willing to answer your questions. My advise would be to keep things simple. Nothing kills euthusiasum more than trying too much too soon.

 

[Trussrod]

Oh James,

There is a layout Design and Construction section on the forum and some of the guys are pretty sharp using a program called Track Cad & another one I think?

Anyway they have come up with some rather interesting switching layouts with operation in mind which might help you quite a bit.

By them using the track cad program your pretty much assured that things should fit as drawn.

I would imagine that you might be working with a limited budget so as Gary said and I was stating too, just progress at a slow pace. Even if you have a plan drawn out, as your constructing your layout you may see things that you might want to change or need to for one reason or another.

Also feel free to ask any and all the questions you want as everyone here is more than willing to help you along, myself included.

I don't know what type of layout you have in mind but even a switching layout can have different elevations to it to give you more variation over everything being on the same level surface. Now there a couple of ways of doing this and the simplest, if you have a hand held jig saw is what is called the cookie cutter method where you draw your track plan on the plywood or compressed chip board.

I have some pictures on here of what I doing and that may give you some ideas. So let us know what your thinking of and the space you have to work with and you'll get plenty of help.

Planning out a layout design is a lot of fun in itself. The main thing your going to want to keep in mind is to have some reason why tracks go to where they do such as delivery and pickup to shuffle cars around. Also you'll want at least one run around track so you can move your loco from the front to the back of a few cars as need to shuffle them easily.

Actually I even find a lot of enjoyment in helping you out as it stimulating to see what can be accomplished.

Also James, to help keep the cost down for yourself I'd suggest staying with something like Atlas code 83 track and switches which I think are probably the most reasonable at least over here in the U.S.A but possibly Peco in your area is also a good choice and maybe at about the same price? By all means stay with Nickel Silver rail over Brass as the NS stays much cleaner.

So be sure to look in the design and layout construction section of the forum.

Talk with you again,

David.
Ps: It will be very interesting to see what your doing.

 

[Alien]

Hello James

Welcome to the Forum. From the title of the thread, I'm guessing that you are from the UK. If you are from the UK then you may be able to find a model railway exhibition in your area. This may also be a good source of ideas and of second-hand equipment.

Atlas track is not generally available in the UK and will generally have to be ordered specially whereas Peco is stocked by most UK model shops, so you are better off going with that. It may be worthwhile getting photocopies of points/switches/turnouts and messing about with them before spending your money.

Have a go and let us know how you get on.