Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Actually suspended ceiling layouts are common as indoor G scale layouts. I have seen O scale layouts suspended in some restaurants too.
If all you want to do is look at your trains, putting your main line seven feet off the floor and modeling a line that hangs onto a cliff by its fingernails might make sense. This assumes that your tracklaying is perfect, and/or that you play center on your basketball team.
For a railroad that is to be operated like a prototype, with meets, passes, car spotting... the more common heights begin to explain themselves.
John Armstrong designed one layout that was essentially a climb up and over a summit designed to, "Clear a 68" tall wife traveling at full speed with a basket of wash." By starting from a slightly higher level and climbing longer/harder, it should be possible to clear a swinging 80" door.
In my case, since I want to simulate the operations of a full scale railroad and am built rather close to the deck, my base height for visible track is approximately my prototype's track gauge, 42 inches. Things do climb uphill from there, but reach summits far short of John Armstrong's and nowhere near the one you mentioned.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Trust me on this. You want your layout main surface near nipple height when you are standing, but also near front teeth height when you are seated. Use the chair you are likely to have at hand and try each position, standing and seated. Somewhere between the two is your ideal layout height.
The only fly in the ointment is going to come with the reach. If you have to reach more than about 26" while standing, you are likely to have to also have a stool or a platform on wheels so that you can manage things further back without knocking over telegraph poles, fences, flattening bushes and hedgerows, or knocking over a string of boxcars on the ready track closest to you. Elbows get in the way with long reaches and high layout surfaces.
A track line that runs above your head is going to be a pain in the neck - literally. You're going to make your visitors sore watching a train go all the way around a room at that height.
Instead, think of a removeable bridge in front of the door. You can get the same long run without all the other problems.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
OK - It is time for a test. Relax, it is easier than taking an out-patient blood test.
[1] Stand in front of a wall, any wall, with your arms stretched out in front of you with fingertips touching the wall
You have just answered these questions...
[2] Stack a cardboard box(s) at a height of no less than 30 inches above the floor (the average cabinet height from the floor), and make sure the stacked box(s) are the same distance out as you learned from stretching your fingertips to the wall. Now, with your legs brushing up against the boxes, lean over until your fingertips touch the wall at that height of 30 inches for 30-60 seconds.
Now you are ready to fine tune your Givens & Druthers (including the above thread's sage advice) such as layout height, layout width, lighting valance requirements, maximum track radius, whether you will have a nolix and spirals for track elevation gains, or what you need to target for with a helix and grade calculations, etc.
And, the test never demanded pulling an all nighter!
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
Great advice! Here's another one:
Sit on the floor, with your back as close to straight up as possible. Where's the top of your head? The lowest piece of horizonatal benchwork should be a couple of inches above this. If you're not comfortable in this position, by the way, try it on your knees. You will be spending significant amounts of time under the layout like this.
As is so many thing with this hobby, the answer depends on what you want to do. Over the head track works best if you want to stand/sit back and just watch the trains run unattended. Larger scales like G work best for this because at 10 ft or more away you can't see the small scales like HO. Restaurants do this for the amusement of customers and it has the added advantage of being out of reach of little fingers.
Raised floors and other cram it in track planning tricks require a significant dedication to the hobby in terms of time and money. They also may leave the room (or that part of it) unusable for anything else. Since this is your first layout, I would recommend that you do something a little more conventional and see how it goes. Most of us have found our interests/tastes in the hobby changing after we have actually built something and wind up doing a second (third, fourth, ...) layout as a result.
OTOH if this is your only option, then better to have a ceiling layout than none at all.
Enjoy
Paul
Our layout heigth, 30 inches above finished floor, was determined by my daughter's eye level. Not much of a family project if one third of the family can't even see it.
It gives a good overview when seated, but there are prices to pay.
Wiring the underside of the table requires a half sit-up, or one handed work while resting on an elbow.
Reaching across the table is very hard on a back that had three vertebra crushed in a construction accident.
Knowing where the hard points are in the benchwork allows me to lock one elbow and rest a palm on the table while working with the other hand. That triples or quadruples the amount of time I can work without straightening up.
Seated on the floor, eye-level for me is 3/4 inch above first level roadbed, exactly 6 feet in HO scale.
Think about the points raised here and in other posts, decide for yourself what heigth you want your layout, and learn to live with the inevitable compromises.
If I had to do it again right now, I'd probably raise the benchwork to 36 or 40 inches.
If I had to build it again, and my daughter was still as tall as she was when we started this one, I'd build it again at 30 inches, without question. Allowing my daughter to participate has been worth any and all negative benefits of a 30 inch benchwork heigth.
nyctrains wrote:I have been doing quite a bit of reading in preparation for building my first layout. One thing I have noticed is that layout height seems to vary a lot. But I don't think I have ever seen anyone put a mainline run just above the door casing in a room. That would make for a nice long run without having a bridge or duck-under, but I know that the viewing angle is not the best (perhaps a raised floor in the isles would correct that). Are there other reasons for not utilizing the space around the top of the room, or is it just considered not professional?
One thing to consider is that would only give you 12" or less to put in a backdrop, that would be "OK" but 18-24" or more would look better. I guess it would be easy to work on your under-the-table switch machines though.
I would suggest, if your layout area has a door, looking at doing a layout more around 42"-48" and using some sort of swinging or removeable section across the doorway so that when the layout isn't in use, the door isn't blocked. RMC had an article on that in the July 2007 issue.
jeffers_mz wrote:Our layout heigth, 30 inches above finished floor, was determined by my daughter's eye level. Not much of a family project if one third of the family can't even see it.....Allowing my daughter to participate has been worth any and all negative benefits of a 30 inch benchwork heigth.
Allowing my daughter to participate has been worth any and all negative benefits of a 30 inch benchwork heigth.
Best reason I have seen here.
Thank you to everybody who responded to my post seeking information about layout height. There were many helpful suggestions made, and I know that the main operations must take place at a height in the "normal" range. I will now proceed to plan a suitable layout for the room available.