A recent posting about liftouts inspired this.
While most layouts are rather conventional in many ways, but every now and then, due to the layout of the house/railroad room, some bizarre solutions are demanded. Liftouts are probably the simplest form of bizarre layout trick to make the most of the geography of the room.
I would like to see some images of layouts that were cleverly built around nearly impossible obstacles or in circumstances that would have probably stopped a casual MR from building at all.
I will start off with my shelf layout. I needed 100% of my finished upstairs loft for other things. So, I went airborne. In the attached image you can see the 2 foot wide layout in the eaves on each side of the roof peak. This demands a bench that the operator and one or two spectators can shuttle back and forth on. It works just fine and avoids using any floor space as there is about 6 foot 6 inches clearance under the layout from the floor.
As you can see, a work still in progress. These images are about 6 months old and a bit more has been done, but as you can see. Layout problem solved, zero floor space tied up.
Any others solving the seemingly unsolvable with unique, bizarre or whacked out solutions? I am convinced that where there are determined MRs there will be a layout!
Richard
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed
Needed more space to add a curve on my American Flyer layout.
Rich
Alton Junction
I don’t know if anyone would call this a Whacked Out layout, but it is a slightly whacked-off situation, because I have so much JUNK I can’t part with. Maybe I can part with some, for the sake of a layout.
Most of you might consider this a pretty good normal site. A “spare” bedroom.
One side has a floor-to-ceiling art cabinet mainly for flat drawing, 45 inches wide, 24 inches deep, with flat shelves spaced 6 inches between. There is room for blankets and fabric in the top and some tools and projection eqpt in the bottom, but the main and non-negotiable purpose is storing large art drawings laid flat. My wife built it for her art drawings and lets me use a couple shelves for poster-size layout plan. There is a closet which needs some access, and HER floor-to-ceiling bookshelf for fabric and patterns in the corner by the closet.
The rest of the room is crammed with MY stuff. Fifty years of Model Railroader magazine, 40 years of Santa Fe Modeler, photo, timetables... and my history study and history teaching material, in bookcases and jerry-built cabinets around 3 sides of the room. Books are heavy- they go in bookcases up against the walls.
So here is the deal. Layout sections go on TOP of the bookcases. Nothing unusual there. The bookcases are not near enough storage for the rest of my stuff- modeling tools, photo collections, paints, trains in boxes, etc.
So in front of the bookcases around 3 sides of the room is another LAYER of storage in rollaway cases and carts. Things lighter than books. Here are some of the first layout sections on top of the “back” bookcases- see how far back they are...
The sections on top of the bookcases, 9 to 14 inches deep will go around the room, except set back from the floor-to-ceiling art case. Layout comes ABOVE bottom pane of windows. That’s the first phase of the layout.
A later phase will go in FRONT of that into the center of the room.
Overall master “Plan D”
(Of course, already some modifications are planned..)
One side of the room is a duckunder/ rollaway. The track is at the 58 inch elevation above the floor. When layout is set up for operation, the idea is to duck under it.
When I need to move something substantial into the room- like another section of layout- the whole section can roll away. The rollaway section represents a 2-mile-long over-water causeway to my island seaport.
It has not been brought into the layout room yet, and is not running, but I partially scenicked it and posed a picture.
However, if I made the rollaway section long enough to clear the access for the corner closet, it would be too long to fit inside the inside of the layout as it will be when completed. So to open clearance, I made a portion of the scene at the island end of the causeway as a drop down. It roll away with the rollaway section without adding much to the length.
Meanwhile, I need to pull sections to work on undertable wiring before I make theim relatively inaccessible with the sections I am going to put in front of them. I set up a makeshift table in the middle of the room to hold sections while working. But everytime I needed a book from one of the bookshelves, it would always be where the work table blocked me from moving the rollaway front storage cart to get to the bookshelves behind. So I built a rollaround work table to hold the layout sections...
So this is just another spare-room layout, but still somewhat whackulous.
This was the kind of thing I was asking about! You have shown how to get it done when it, seemingly, can't be done. Fabulous work and enginuity! When model railroading is in the blood you WILL have a layout, regardless of all obstacles.
Regarding the American flyer "terror trackage", is that for real? I can't see that supporting the load, un supported.
narrow gauge nuclear This was the kind of thing I was asking about! You have shown how to get it done when it, seemingly, can't be done. Fabulous work and enginuity! When model railroading is in the blood you WILL have a layout, regardless of all obstacles. Regarding the American flyer "terror trackage", is that for real? I can't see that supporting the load, un supported. Richard
LOL
No.
Sometime ago, there was a Classic Toy Trains thread talking about goofy track arrangements, and several of us posted gag photos. I resurrected the photo for this thread.
My room is 15' x 24'. I had three doors, a large window, a fireplace and a large entrance opening into the room. It took me a long time to come up with benchwork that would get the most out of the room yet make access to the doors easy. I found the fireplace the most challenging problem, but got that figured out after some head scratching.
I am absolutely delighted with how it turned out, however I often wonder what some of the experts would have come up with if I had asked way back when I joined the forum.
Some pics. I am further along than these show, but you get the idea.
My wife suggested that the isle on the right was not wide enough. I told her it was door width and if they couldn't fit along there they couldn't get through the doors anyway. No more was said.
Here is looking the other way. The isle between the benches is narrow but opens up to where my Captains chair is in front of the fireplace. I stay in shape and can walk through easily. My best friend (seven years younger) had to squeeze through. He bought a recumbent like mine and now walks straight through like I do. Trains can be a good motivator.
This is the fireplace. It is angle iron with cement board inserted in it. As I did projects around the house I slopped the remnants of tile grout, tile thinset, cement and a few other things on it that were left over in the bucket at the end of the work.
Before the mantle was removed.
Note the cement roadbed.
Mantle removed, almost ready for that "Rocky Mountain Gray" paint.
Foam tunnel portal with tinfoil lining.
Work bench in one of the rooms.
Crew lounge with lazyboys.
I am lucky with the space I have, however an around the walls/peninsula situation would have been my first choice.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Inventiveness, in this case, allowed for maximum use of a room with obstacles while leaving all of them still functional. Some times things that seem to stand in our way can be turned into a useful and novel workaround. Nice work!