Fold away layout

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone. I wanted to share some pictures of my layout. It's grown a little bigger from 4x8 to 5x10. It's also now hung on the wall and can be folded up and locked. I'm going to put rail rax on the wall to store and display the trains and I also want to paint a nice city or mountain scene on the wall too. I built the origional table and my dad had the idea of hanging it on the wall. So he did most of the enlarging and hanging. :) I do have the legs and can detach the layout from the wall if I want to take it somewhere. It's very large so that might not happen...ever.

Anyway, it's fun to keep sharing the hobby with my dad that we loved when I was growing up.
Tell me what you think. Ideas are welcome.

[cnw1995]

This is great - very creative. My first layout was a three-by-five ft. fold-away except I used folding-table legs and slid the entire creation behind the couch when not in use.

[kpolak]

Very nice!

My orders were to have a folding layout too!  I haven't stopped messing with things to get it folded up, or to finish creating the frame to fold it into.

Kurt

[envfocus]

I like the idea alot.  Two questions:  First, could you post a picture with the table in the upright, locked position?  Second, how heavy is the layout coming down?  Thanks for sharing.  It looks great.

[traindaddy1]

Great idea!    About forty years ago, we tried the same idea with an HO layout.

Only one real problem.........It came down over my bed.  I had to crawl into and out of the bed somewhat like the pictures of sailors' bunks in subs. often.

Like to see your progress.  All the best.

[Anonymous]

I like the idea alot.  Two questions:  First, could you post a picture with the table in the upright, locked position?  Second, how heavy is the layout coming down?  Thanks for sharing.  It looks great.

Whoops, I thought I had posted one of it up and down. It should be fixed now. It's not terribly heavy right now but of course I don't have any real track plan or scenery on it. I can lower it with one arm with no trouble. The hardest part is manuvering the step stool while I raise or lower it as it's higher than I am tall.

[lckiii]

I love it.  How are you going to handle scenery etc.  Will buildings be manually placed and emoved or permantly attached?

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately yes, they'll have to be temporarily placed. Someday I'll have a train room where I can make a nice layout right? Actually, I was reading about the layout in the attic in an old edition of CTT. That really looks fun and I've got a very tall pitch to my roof that I could actually do something like that.

This layout will probably be very scenic with lots of low profile scenery. Roads, fields, lake? I think these would do well. I really do want to put a mountain on there too. Anyone have tips on making one that can be removed?

[trainmasterz]

If your looking for an easy temporary mountain, use foam board, blue, pink, whatever color, get 1 4x8 sheet and cut it into arc shaped segments about 2-4" wide.  You can make it in 4 quadrants so that you can store em in a box up on a shelf on the wall there.

[cnw1995]

In my folding-layout experience, I went with a 'Midwest' sort of flat-plains look, painted the table brown, sprinkled ground-foam, screwed-down track, drilled holes for trees, telegraph poles and pre-set buildings and took everything off before folding it away. It was quite liberating to rearrange some things whenever I set it up again.

[dougdagrump]

You can still have some buildings on the layout. Just do the scenery around them being sure to leave a very specific footprint and assign it a specific ID that ties the space and building to each other. Install your building lighting on the layout with a hole in the building to sit over the light. Quick and easy, off & on.

[Anonymous]

I never thought about the lighting. Thanks for the idea. Since I'm still just starting on decorating it, right now I'm trying to figure out what to lay down on the plywood. I've read somewhere to use green fabric then spray it with bleach to make the dry patches. There's also the green grass paper. What have you guys started with?

[Anonymous]

In my folding-layout experience, I went with a 'Midwest' sort of flat-plains look, painted the table brown, sprinkled ground-foam, screwed-down track, drilled holes for trees, telegraph poles and pre-set buildings and took everything off before folding it away. It was quite liberating to rearrange some things whenever I set it up again.

Was this with your Thomas layout? I like the looks of it. I'll have to take a closer look to the pictures you've posted. I bought some of the dark grey foam roadbed to mount my supersnap track on top of. I'd like to ballast the track but I'm afraid I'll mess up the track if I want to sell it at a later time. Any ideas on this dilema guys?

[RR Redneck]

That is freakin cool.

[choo choo daddy]

That's very nice, I like it- but what about if you add buildings?

[Anonymous]

Weeeelllll, I'll just have to remove them....

[dougdagrump]

That's very nice, I like it- but what about if you add buildings?

You can still have some buildings on the layout. Just do the scenery around them being sure to leave a very specific footprint and assign it a specific ID that ties the space and building to each other. Install your building lighting on the layout with a hole in the building to sit over the light. Quick and easy, off & on.

Cut & paste from a few responses up.

[Boyd]

Now if they could make magnetraction on all wheels  strong enough to keep the train on the tracks when it is folded up,, that would save a lot of work.

[pbjwilson]

Heres a simple solution for layouts where buildings and accessories are removed for storage.

Run your wires under the table to two srews, for simple lited buildings etc. Attach wire leads to the building or accessories connections. Crimp a solderless connetor onto the end of the leads. When you install the building on the layout connect the leads to the srews.

Example - these screws have wires attached under the table going to the transformer.

Heres the hardeware I use. The acorn nuts look better and are easier to work than the two nuts as shown in the above picture.

On the layout. The acorn nuts that hold the street light to the table also hold the wires for the light itself. Also if you look close you can see the nuts for the crossing gate.

Hope this helps.

[thatboy37]

nice work here. keep it up. cant wait to see more pics as you work on your layout. this is actually a pretty good idea for a layout. fold away and out of the way. i bet your wifey loves the idea of you not taking up alot of space especially when it is folded away. great job again. it's amazing to see all the different ideas guys/gals can come up with for a layout.

 

 

 

[darianj]

Very Nice!

[daan]

I once had a small booklet with tips in it about getting rid of your layout when it is not in use. The fold-out was one of them, but is leaves no space for scenery. Another one was one which hang down from the ceiling with cables and one in a cupboard, where the wall side of the layout was lowered by a cable to the front down-end of the cupboard and from there on the layout could be folded just like yours. That had the depth of the cupboard to use for scenery.

But you and your dad did a great job making your folding layout!

[envfocus]

Here's a "prewar" idea:  for each area you could build a scene on a separate piece of fiberboard like the one shown below.  Then just lift off each scene when you go to close it and hang it on the outside of the closed layout.  Maybe just do this for an area where you want taller buildings.  For lowering the unit without having to stand on a stool, couldn't you just make a "pull down" from a wooden rod, similar to ones used for pulling down attic ladders.  I really like the idea and your setup.  Thanks for sharing.....RJ

[Anonymous]

It's not spring loaded so I couldn't use a pull rod. Good idea though! Thanks!

[Anonymous]

very nice idea. if you go to this link I have pics of the one I designed for my family room. it is 14" deep when folded so I can leave scenery and towers attached when folded. when the unit is closed you can open the doors for access to the underside of the layout and store all of your train boxes.   

 

http://www.woodenboxco.50megs.com/photo_1.html

[cruikshank]

Great idea and very nice job.  I imagine the foldup is to make room for the car.  One idea for ease in up and down  folding for the layout is on the top left and right outside corners of the wall frame work put a pully.  Then put a screweye on the layout front side left and right corners.  Run a cable from the screweye, up through the pully to a counter weight. Using old window weights, or bags of shot or sand, to balance the weight so that the layout when complete, it will lower and go back up with ease.  Then have a pin to lock it into place, or a small shelf for the shot bag to hold the bag, when the layout is in the down position.  I'm sure someone could expand on this and come up with something even better.

      For the scenery, mount your buildings, and grass, dirt, tree etc on pieces of foamcore cut to size to fit key areas of the layout.  They can sit flat on the layout when it's in the down position, and you cold store them by attaching them to the under side of the layout when it's up. possibly with small pieces of Velcro.  Just some ideas to think about.  You've got a great start.   Dave