Hi everyone. New layout(hand laid track)in the works. Railroadman.wordpress.com


R

Railroadman725

New Member
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]well after tearing down my layout and unfortunately my grandfathers layout too, moving and getting the new house jobs done including finishing the previously unfinished basement I have now after one year in my new house started the layout. Old layout was 11x11 aprox and the new space is 38.5x12.5. Will be all hand laid track again in the early 50's era using code 70 rail. I hope you enjoy the blog updates and I would love to hear your feedback and links to your blogs and sites. Sharing links on our blogs would be great. I live near Simcoe Ontario Canada. If there are any fellow railroaders in the area, drop me an email. I would love to chat.
Thanks everyone and happy railroading.
Daryl[/FONT]
 
G'day Daryl....Wow....Sounds like you are going to have a power of fun over many years. That's seriously going to be a decent layout by any standard..I'm in the other hemisphere ..but I'm already impressed...You'll enjoy interacting with the crew here...It DEFINITELY is the best forum and covers all scales..I'm in Australia's smallest State , Tasmania but every time I'm on the forum it's lke having a fellow modeller right next door...Sounds like you have tons of experience but just the same you'll enjoy adding your own input to the forum or even get ideas on a better way to approach something...Will watch as your new 'baby' comes together...Cheers Rod..
 
Thanks Rod. It will keep me out of trouble. I spent 12 years on my old layout which can be fully seen on my blog. I am very particular and take the time to do things right the first time. My goal was to have something running by April in the hopes of possibly opening the layout for the first time on the local layout tour but I am way ahead of schedule and should have the hidden staging yard done and hopefully fully operational by years end. Keep stopping by and follow my blog for all the updates.
thanks for the reply.
daryl
 
G'day again Daryl...My current layout is a second attempt...To put it bluntly..."I balls'ed " up the first time with the wrong type of radius , turnouts and crossovers so one Saturday I literally ripped the old track up , Bachmann EZ track...switched to Atlas Flex track and went at it again...Common mistake made by many of us I'm afraid..Not planning ahead properly... Sounds to me like you have a clear and well decided plan for the new layout.. Will look forward to your progress through the forum...Cheers again...Rod..
 
I do a lot of planning as it is kinda hard to do hand laid track without a clean plan to ensure everything will work. Takes a lot more time to build and not fun to tear apart due to a error in planning. My biggest piece of planning advice is to make some radius templates out of plastic or thin cardboard, figure out your scale. Mine is 3/4" = 1 foot. Therefore every 1/16" = 1" in the real world. Layout your room to that scale and play away with your design. I always start with my main line keeping my minimum 32" radius in mind and build off of that. Don't worry if you make mistakes or it doesn't work. It will take several before things start looking the way you want them. I went through about 5 drafts before settling on he one I have and I am still working on making a town flip flop with the main and branch for better operation and more work space. I always say that if it works on paper, it will work in the real world and will save you a lot of headaches. Have fun designing.
Daryl
 
Daryl,

Just a little confused by something you said above regarding scale. If you make your own scale, isn't that going to conflict with the scale of track or structures you use? Why not stay with a standard scale, thereby keeping everything in scale? Or am I missing something?
 
Welcome aboard.

Sounds like you have a great opportunity with a basement. I started my layout over 25 years ago handlaying code 70, but ended up cheating by using Shinohara code 70 to complete the track work. I chose the code 70 because I really like the way it looks being that my layout is a small railroad and would have had lighter rail. After leaving N scale for HO scale at the time, it was good to get away from the oversize rail. I also chose to model the transition era. I grew up in the 50's and had relatives working on the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road and was lucky enough to have taken numerous rides in the cabs of steam, diesel and electric locomotives growing up.

Keep us posted on your progress and post pictures.
 
When I referred to scale I was referring to the drawing scale, not the layout scale being HO. You need to draw your layout in a smaller scale as to fit on the size of paper you are using. This has nothing to do with the HO scale. Don't be confused by that. Also I have lots of pictures on my blog but can include a few teasers here. Railroadman.wordpress.com
 
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