After taking down my Christmas layout I decided to make a small layout so I could continue to run my pre-war and smaller O-27 stuff. I had a table top that was used for my sons Playmobil trains and toys. Pretty small at 34" x 60". I remembered seeing a Bachmann HO set that came with a figure 8 of track that used all curves and 1 45 or 30 degree crossing. Playing around with some O-27 track I figured out that I could do the same thing with a 45 degree crossing and a bunch of curved track. An elevated trolley line would span across the 45 degree crossing with bumpers at each end.
The first step - Painting the board with green paint and a texture additive to give it some texture.
When that dried I coated it with acrylic flat varnish and sprinkled it with ground foam.
Accessories and trains added. Havent done the wiring yet.
Nice work! I've been thinking about doing a micro for my gauge 1 stuff....for portability sake.
underworld
..........Wayne..........
Thanks for the compliments guys. I'm starting to wire the layout with several insulated tracks to operate the gateman and crossing gates. I'm surprised at how well things run on all the tight curves. And with the trolley bumping back and forth theres lots of action.
I want to be able to assemble and disassemble the layout quickly and store it on end against a wall. The only track that will be permanent is the figure 8. It's going to be a challenge to wire it in a way so as to be able to hook things up quickly, and take it apart quickly. But thats the fun part about a little layout like this.
pbjwilson Have you ever seen this website???
http://carendt.us/
Lots of micro layouts!!!!! I've gotten a lot of ideas from it.
Yep, I know that one, it's really great what can be done on such small places. On dutch meetings and shows there are a lot of those mini layouts, mostly h0 or narrowgauge. A populair theme on very small layouts is a tram railway where only a single street is modelled with a tram stop. With a hidden loop in the buildings they even have continuous running, and are mostly automated. The drawback of most shelf layouts and the very small scales they use is the lack of dependability. On the most beautifull narrowtrack h0 gauge modules often a 0-5-0 intake is needed to get the trains to do what you want them to do.
The best thing I've seen so far is an English (what else could it be?) layout of about 9ft long and 2 ft wide, modelling a 1850 locoyard. Everything, the combination of widetrack and normal track systems, switches (not normal ones, but 3 or 4 spurs crossing at about the same point, with 2 different track gauges at once!) where built by hand, just as the crampton steam locomotives and rolling stock belonging to it. The layout was in 0 gauge, really awesome. The loco's where powered by Faulhaber motors (they don't have the drawback of magnetic force braking thew motor when not powered) and huge flywheels. He managed to keep the loco's crawling on 2 rail power without needing his hands to help.
For normal blokes like myself without hours of sparetime and a good working lathe, 3 rail still is the best option to guarantee good running.. May be a nice idea to build such a small layout for shows with 3 rail track and 0 gauge loco's.. Easy to transport and still some interesting ways to operate. (specially with proto1 engines, because they can uncouple without special tracks..)
underworld wrote: pbjwilson Have you ever seen this website???http://carendt.us/Lots of micro layouts!!!!! I've gotten a lot of ideas from it. underworld
Yes I know that one. Lots of good ideas there. I get a kick out of the "pizza" layouts.
Love that trolley. Great job. If I can clear the stuff off my 3 by 5 ft table left over from my N scale days, I could do something like this too for my beloved Birneys!
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
Hello Paul:
Great job! I love how much you fit into such a small space. I would think wiring would be pretty straight forward. Are you using the z 500 to power the figure 8? How will you power the elevated section?
Regards,
John O
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