Put it this way..."Horribly Oversized"...can we say..."Large enough to require actual GPS tracking of the locos?"
I've always wanted to make a complete layout of the Chicago area.. but then I'd have to make a second layout of the Florida East Coast... always the next one..
My dreams seem to have been hijacked/ modified unbeknownst to me, somewhat of an 'Inception' I have begun to think. I believe the culprit is my wife. For now she has me believing that my dream layout fits in a 6'x6' room. In all seriousness though, being as this is going to be my first serious layout, it is, for now my dream layout. Of course, we all can dream bigger. No doubt, someday I would love to see my 40'x12' garage converted into an N-scale train room. Although that would mean I would have to build a new shop. Sacrifices.... I think I would model the Canadian west, sort of a moderately compressed version from the Pacific to Northern Ontario.
my dream layout is the one I have started, the dream part is it finished, dual level 1100 sq ft N scale
HOW MANY trains at one time? WARNING: I am verbose, and this is my 2nd post on this question because the question has several parts. If “how many trains can you run at one time on your dream layout” means unattended continuous running, I want AT MOST one. That would assume I can arrange some continuous running oval. If the best point-to-point schematic turns out to be reverse loop to reverse loop and a continuous oval is precluded by the layout of track in the room, I would not want automatic reverse loop polarity because that would interfere with my main operating priorities. That would mean ZERO trains running unattended. Only one at most because I do not want a multiple track mainline down the length of the layout. I want single track running with meets and passing tracks. However, in my “big city,” I would like a stretch of urban double track at least 5 or 6 train lengths between the passenger terminal and the “out-in-the-country” single track. The purpose is an “EVENT” I want to hold twice each operating day. Two passenger trains, the Texas Chief and California Special/ Texan held a rolling meet on double track running in opposite directions, trains and directions alternating morning and evening. To maximize this double track, I would probably make my city asymmetrically unbalanced, with many more operating features and industries and scenes on the side of the city where the rolling meet is held. The big division point freight yard would need to be at the opposite end of the urban double-track section from the passenger terminal. Repeating my schematic shown earlier: EXCEPT during the time when the rolling passenger meet is held, the double track through the city could accommodate one through freight or secondary passenger train on one main, and a local or transfer run on the other, while switching leads would allow switching to continue in the division point freight yard, the passenger terminal, and a port terminal railroad interchange yard. Outside the urban area, the layout would also support one through train between the city and the north end of the layout, one on the south end, a train on the East Texas branch, a logging shortline train, a Navy switch crew on Navy base trackage, a Santa Fe switch crew on the south end terminal, and a port terminal crew at the south end terminal. That adds up to 12 trains and switching crews operating at once. But none “just running.” Of course, it’s just a dream, but I see my layout under construction as part of it.
How dream layout WOULD LOOK- Part 1 I have been developing this “Santa Vaca” dream layout plan for over 30 years, so it is complicated, long and drawn-out. PART ONE: NORTH END STAGING TO MID-LAYOUT MAINLINE: NORTON (north end staging, preferably with reverse loop preferably with minimal scenery based on Temple Texas flat passenger station side Against background staging for 3 10-car passenger trains/uncovered platforms staging for 8 25-30 car manifest freight trains and extras staging for 3 12 car locals highway overpass at south end of Norton to separate staging from “operation” rolling hill to motivates curve (Neola “around corner” from rest of layout) about one train length single track to NEOLA -Blackland farm town, junction with East Texas secondary line. passing siding, Santa Fe standard frame depot. Industry tracks: cotton gin, grain elevator, farm supply, bulk oil, stock pen German ethnic background, Lutheran church with high pitched “A” roof. About three train lengths of single track through countryside cotton fields, cow pasture AT LEAST one train length of 2 lane highway just running alongside tracks- a scene observed universally in Texas and not modeled all that much. ENTER SANTA VACA CITY LIMITS/ URBAN RAILROADING DOUBLE TRACK AT BROWNIE JCT. Crossing and connecting track with Missouri Pacific could form reverse loop via “sneak back” connection on East Texas line Double track mainline from here to south of downtown station. 65TH STREET YARD Division point yard leads to avoid fouling double-track mainline. 2 arrival-departure tracks for 25-30 car freight trains Classification tracks for Mainline north (Dallas/ Ft Worth/ Kansas/ Chicago) Mainline northwest (Texas panhandle/ California/ Colorado) Mainline south to Karankawa (Galveston) 2ndary mainline to East Texas/ Beaumont, Port Arthur area Mainline local north Mainline local south Mainline local East Texas In-town local industries, 65th to near downtown In-town local industries, downtown switching district In-town transfer, port area terminal railroad Engine terminal HANSON RD switching district- an area of “outdoor” type industries (urban double track continues) concrete pipe manfacturer, oilfield supply, steel pipe mftr, scrap metal, Total Fabrication (makes 100 foot tall refinery vessels, etc) EL CAMINO switching district- 2-3 story warehouse & factories (urban double track continues) Bethlehem Steel distributor, Canal Bag & Box Co, Gulf & Caribbean Coffee roasters, Texas Cottonseed & Oil Co., Valu-Mart grocery chain SANTA VACA-MASON OAKS- a block or two residential neighborhood settled in the 1920s-30s, houses backed up to double track. SANTA VACA-MAGNOLIA JCT. The neighborhood where I grew up: modeled in a section a little over 5 actual feet long with a crossing and connecting tracks. I use what was actually the Houston Belt and Terminal East Belt double track for my Santa Fe double track through the city. The short connecting stub could possibly host a short interchange or transfer run in open staging. SANTA VACA-AVALON PARK- a neighborhood of upscale homes built in 1920s and 1930s in “romantic” styles- English cottage, half-timbered, Spanish, mediterranean, with an artsy “shopping village” that has retained most of its class into the 1950s setting of the layout. SANTA VACA-INDUSTRIAL PARK JUNCTION- a connection to a pair of industrial staging tracks hidden behind residential scenes, to simulate traffic going to local industries not actually modeled SANTA VACA-FARRIER AVENUE- a low-class neighborhood of tenements, houses close to condemnation, a housing project, and seedy commercial street. SANTA VACA-COMMERCE STREET switching district Produce terminal, general warehouses, cold storage warehouse Here the track passes underneath a block-square multi-story warehouse in a semi-underground “gallery” open on one side to a bayou, passes under a two-block long major street viaduct adjacent to the warehouse, and crosses the bayou... This is based on the SP tracks to under Houston Main Street viaduct. The block-square warehouse is now University of Houston Downtown Campus. This 1990 prototype photo was taken BEFORE the building on the viaduct became the northern terminus of Houston’s commuter light rail line. This is about the mid-point of my dream mainline, just short of the downtown passenger terminal. Also my limit of 4 pictures per post on TrainBoard. So I am going to stop here and possibly continue. (Although my university classes start tomorrow- who knows if I will be able to continue or not?)
PART TWO: MAINLINE MID-LAYOUT TO SOUTH END After running through 8 to 10 train lengths of urban double-track running past a major yard, industrial switching districts and residential neighborhoods, the layout would depict Santa Vaca passenger station, a facility with at least 3 through platform tracks and spurs for mail, express and cars added and dropped enroute. The depot building would be a Spanish mission design, loike that of Southern Pacific at San Antonio or Santa Fe at San Diego. (So many people who read this far will be familiar with these, so I post trhem here as links only to save upload for those who have already know them.) http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/542/spsanton.jpg http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/542/atsf_sdiego.jpg I envision the depot towards the front (viewer) side of the mainline, with a row of warehouse buildings and a spur in the street behind the station. (PRESIDIO STREET switching district0 The approach and passenger leads south of the station would pass over PLAZA SANTA VACA, an urban parklike space with monuments and with two block-apart downtown streets converging to an underpass under the track, similar to two-thirds of the Dealey Plaza triple-underpass in Dallas (JKF assassination site) Plaza Santa Vaca sketch: Just south, BELT JCT would have a wye where passenger trains could be turned, and the diverging leg of the wye would lead to an interchange yard for a terminal switching railroad that serves a port area “similar to Houston Ship Channel.” I call it SOUTH TEXAS URBAN BELT or STUB-- ‘cause it would a dead-end staging interchange for traffic that doesn’t really go anywhere. However, it would provide a place to send cars for unmodeled steel mill, 4 refineries, Ethyl antiknock compound plant, synthetic rubber plant, export cotton compress, export grain elevator, stockyards, meat plant. Huge amount of traffic, small space. BELT JUNCTION would be where the urban double-track line ends in single track south and STUB diverging. It might be possible to work in a reverse loop so the double track through the city could be run as an dogbone oval- Brownie to Belt Jct for continuous “show running” when not doing “realistic” operation. For about one train length south of Belt Junction, relatively new postwar-built suburbs would thin out, then the track would cross VARNERS BAYOU and pass a section about four feet long where, in my world, a rich Texan has built his copy of the gardens in Giverny, France where Claude Monet painted his impressionist water-lilly paintings. A low-relief model of Monet’s home would be against the background, gardens out in formal geometrical layout between the house and the single track... and the more free-form water-lilly pond and the famous “Japanese Bridge” downhill from the track. The actual site in France originally had a rail line running between the two sections of the garden. My wife is a Monet fan and visited Giverny, and I like it too. It would be probably the MOST unusual scene for a model railroad. If I never build the overall “dream” layout, I may want to build the Money garden scene some day as a OneTrack module. From “Tex” Monet’s garden, there ought to be at least two train lengths of single track before the next town. This would be coastal rice growing country, irrigated with rolling pipes several hundred feet long mounted on what look like wagon wheels every so many feet. And this would be a good place for that “road along the tracks” scene. Plain old country running in-between the odd attention getters. TIDELANDS would be a railroad point with a passing siding and a smaller-than-standard station, not much of a town, but it would have two or three setout spurs for a terminal switching railroad that services a number of refineries, only the edge of which would be modeled. Tidelands would also have a spur leading to the Naval Air Station Tidelands (Lighter than Air)- a blimp base to which helium cars are sent. Tidelands would be a combination of Texas City Junctions and Hitchcock on the prototype. I built a small self-contained layout for the blimp base trackage. link only: http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/554/LTAwtower.JPG (I have shown this image repeatedly so I post it here as a link only to save upload for those who have already seen it) From Tidelands, the line would run about a train length and a half along as estuary- swampy low lying land near the coast, before reaching BAY POINT. That’s my version of Virginia Point. On the prototype, the Santa Fe, Missouri Pacific and Southern Pacific converged here to take off across a two-mile-long causeway to Galveston Island. I would like to work in at least one “foreign” railroad to share the causeway. Virginia Point has raised stilt beach houses on low-lying land, a fishing pier/ bait shack and it used to have a railroad tower. I also envision Bay Point Inn, a rambling hotel built around 1901 which has become ramshackle by 1957, used only by serious fishermen and by couples looking for a place they won’t be seen by anyone who knows them. By 2009, I got as far as mocking up a very condensed version of Bay Point on less than a foot of length at the end of my causeway scene... I have previously posted my “two mile long causeway,” not yet running and the early stages of my port scenes at the Island Seaport of KARANKAWA- which is the subject of a layout in a 10 ½ foot square space by itself without the rest of the “dream layout.” A part that is still just a dream, the passenger terminal, here rendered from a 3d computer model. I made a small bit of progress on the port scene BEHIND the passenger station, shown January 2011 http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/548/mop5roof.jpg (I just showed this image this last weekend, so I post it here as a link only to save upload for those who have already seen it. Besides, I have reached trainboard’s limit of four pictures per post.)
PART THREE: PUTTING THE MAINLINE TOGETHER plus EAST TEXAS LINE As I wrote earlier, this “dream scheme” has developed over 30 years. I have laid out the pieces and made several attempts to draw them all out in one big plan, several times on paper and once as a 3-D computer “model.” I never worked it out even on paper to get everything in perfectly. I did get close a while back when someone on one of these boards asked what he could do in his space, a space about 16 feet by 28-- larger than I have ever had available but a bit smaller than what I think it would take to do “everything.” I had the freedom of just seeing what I could do, not having to work out everything for keeps. I think this sketch worked in about 70 percent of the mainline of the dream plan on a lower level. This workup leaves out the town of Neola replacing it with just a turnout and diverging track at Eastex Junction; leaves out the stretch of single track running and countryside between Norton and Brownie Jct.; leaves only about two train lengths of urban double track running between Brownie and the downtown passenger terminal, instead of the 6 or 8 of 10 train lengths which would be needed for a real running meet opposing passenger trains; leaves out 80 percent of the industrial switching and city and suburban scenes between Brownie and the passenger terminal; leaves out the wye at Belt Junction. It leaves IN so much that was is easier to list what it omitted. My current Island Seaport layout under construction is beginning to realize about 80 percent of the Karankawa, causeway and Bay Point portion of the “dream scheme.” (Island Seaport pics posted as links only to save upload for those who have already seen them repeatedly.) “Plan D” http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/552/KKplanD.JPG Causeway reaches the Island- amusement district mockup on early benchwork (2007) http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/553/BenchAmuse.JPG Port terminal yard with warehouses & ship background (to be used as open staging needed to condense layout from “dream” operating scheme) http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/552/DemTailHi.jpg Export elevator, dry cargo sheds, etc. (mockup, Dec 2010) http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/552/elevriga.jpg Shrimpboat harbor (mockup March2010) http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/552/ShrMock314.jpg I also mentioned that Parts 1 and 2 of my outline were for the Mainline, but I also wanted an East Texas secondary line into the Piney Woods. Some of the elements for this line were built on a 3 x 7 foot layout described in Model Railroader Feb85 p.106 and reprinted in the Kalmbach book Top Notch Railroad Plans. http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/552/JnPlan.JPG (East Texas layout plan and pictures posted as links only to save upload for those who have already seen them repeatedly.) The layout was built and operated 1982 to 2007 and dismantled. It was flawed by too-tight curves, plus I couldn’t keep it and build anything else. The “dream layout” elements actually built included a courthouse square small town in the Piney Woods, Johnston, http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/554/johnston.jpg a creosote treating plant http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/548/creotex.jpg a gravel pit, J. J. Stone Co. at Turkeyneck, Texas http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/548/JJStone.JPG a logging reload just off the mainline http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/554/log_reload.jpg and (not quite completed and not photographed) a major lumber mill on a shortline connection a short distance off the mainline, interchanging with the Santa Fe, and running a log tram over Santa Fe by trackage rights. All these elements appear in a version of my dream plan as the upper level of the 16 by 28 foot layout imagineered for “someone else’s space.” But the upper level plan also includes more of the wanted elements I never got to model- a junction for the lumber mill railroad separate from the town, more length of single-track running through the woods, a major classic-truss-bridge river crossing at Rio Viejo (Spanish for “Old Man River”), more staging tracks and a revese loop at the staging end. and a scene I saw in East Texas about 1960-- a swath of raw space over a hundred feet wide cut through the woods for a Interstate highway construction (Zachry on the plan). I would have liked to have the mainline layout AND the East Texas line so I could model and operate the flowing together of different streams of traffic. On the more limited layout actually under construction, I am keeping an echo of the larger dream with cars at Karankawa waybilled to and from industries and locations from the “big dream” represented by staging.
anything bigger than my 2x4-footer. you get bored really quick:tb-rolleyes:. I'd settle for a 4x8 but would like a 10x12 around-the-walls layout even better. But if my modelling was suddenly subsidized by the government and I was granted a three-car garage of opportunity, I would accurately model every town, industry, siding, spur, tree, bridge, tunnel, and fencepost on the SD&AE from Campo to El Centro, CA.
Quote from SD&AE modeler: "anything bigger than my 2x4-footer." I have seen a few of your photos. I believe you are the new champion of having a terrific railroad scene in an impossibly small space. I don't know about how much operation you squeeze in... And I understand you are less than 20 years old. You must be the MOZART of model railroading.
My dream layout is naturally the Western Pacific's Third Sub, from Oroville to Portola with staging yards for both ends and for trains coming to and from the Inside Gateway. I don't think I'd build it exactly as it was as I don't have that kind of skill, but a nice representation. And, I wanna finish it in my lifetime!
If I could do a "dream layout", I'd have a scale mile-for-mile version of the L&N Main Stem, maybe throw in my hometown Bardstown Branch that connected to it. Might throw in the yards at Nashville and Louisville on each end as visible staging, and add more staging as the Lebanon & Memphis branches.
like SD&AE modeler, I really don't want anything too huge. I want to model the Santa Fe's surfline from Oceanside to San Diego during the 70's. probably would be setup for 2 train solo operation. I would love to get a small section of the marine base at old town for switching in.
Thanks, Kenneth! I will be 17 in February, BTW. As for operating my 2x4, I have to admit that it is not anywhere near what I'd like. Yeah, there's a Standard Oil spur and a warehouse to spot a boxcar and some MOW storage, but my layout is nothing more than a siding and a spur. It's really like a diorama with trains chasing their tails. I'm still a big mainline-running guy, so for my next SD&AE layout I'd like a long run to focus on helper operations, but of course, this layout would only be possible if I had my own house and steady income, which is at least six to seven years off. So my current 2x4 will have to last me that time, though I may make a tiny 2x2-foot "pizza layout" in the next couple years to keep the hobby fresh and interesting, maybe even one to satisfy ... ...wait for it... ... my ever-tempting TTn3 misadventures. (For those that don't know, I once experimented with TTn3 Pacific Coast Railway stuff, even built a nice PCRy 2-8-0.) Here's a plan I drew up for a TTn3 steamer for one of my favorite railroads from my G-scaling days: C&S #71, which can be built from an N scale athearn/mdc 2-8-0.
from SD&AEmodeler: "I may make a tiny 2x2-foot "pizza layout" " My half-again-larger 2x3 foot super deluxe pizza layout with everything on it- interchange track and 3 other places to switch...
100 ft by 100 ft Pole barn with n gauge To let the imagination run so wild It would hurt thinking about it lol. that would be my dream layout. Kenny Ps And about 1,000,000,000 in cash lol
Couple of good friends & I trying to reproduce a section of the Tenessee Pass line,Minturn to the Pass DRGW/SP time frame. Exhibition based layout,have the trailer for it,just gotta build the enclosed section for it all as it will be used as storage as well. Frames are 3mtrsL x 500mmW x 500mmH,25mm x 50mm aluminium rhs,tig welded together for weight & strength.The whole thing should cover approx 12mtr x 9mtr foot print,but as a good friend helped me realise just recently,I need to take it abit at a time & not go the whole hog all at once......... Pic of frame & holding yard. Cant find pic of yard frames,post later.
My dream layout would be one of Alan McClleland's Virginian & Ohio layouts and Tony Koester's old Allegheny Midland put together in one big room. Seriously I am finally beginning on a dream layout, but it is in a 9'4" by 4' closet. I'll just be thrilled to have trains running!
