Of 4 permanent club and personal layouts near me, 3 are 2 or more decks, only one is a single deck layout. None are in the basement of the building or house. at least, not in the sense of basement as being a room excavated at least partially below ground level.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinker Of 4 permanent club and personal layouts near me, 3 are 2 or more decks, only one is a single deck layout. None are in the basement of the building or house. at least, not in the sense of basement as being a room excavated at least partially below ground level. --Randy --Randy
The following thoughts come mind:
That is a pretty small sample to draw any conclusions from.
I have seen a lot of club layouts in my time, and only one was in a basement.
There are three multi deck layouts among my closest modeler friends around here, but many more of the layouts that am aware of nearby are single level.
There are likely many more of both close by that I am not aware of.
Sheldon
ATLANTIC CENTRALKevin, what about people who live in Okeechobee?
Okeechobee, Immokallee, Okahumpka, Chokaluskee, Clewiston, Labelle, Zolfo Springs etc... those are the farming areas in the South Center of the state.
The best people on earth live there.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
SeeYou190 ATLANTIC CENTRAL Kevin, what about people who live in Okeechobee? Okeechobee, Immokallee, Okahumpka, Chokaluskee, Clewiston, Labelle, Zolfo Springs etc... those are the farming areas in the South Center of the state. The best people on earth live there. -Kevin
ATLANTIC CENTRAL Kevin, what about people who live in Okeechobee?
My mother lives there.
Yes, that's a small sample size, the big list (of those that are willing to let strangers into their homes) comes out in November each year. But those are 4 I've actually been to visit (and one I was a member of as well), not just read about. There's a 5th I can think of, permanent, and it is single deck. So 3 out of 5. That 5th one is built into a former baggage car. And I'm not counting my own - would just cancel each other out, my previous layout was single deck, my new one is double deck. I've built at least 6 others (not counting the ones I helped my Dad with) but other than one small shelf layout and the 8x12 donut from a bunch of years ago, they were all pretty much just variations on island layouts - 4x8 HO, 3x6 N, and a couple of 2x4 N scale ones. All single deck. A never happened planned extension of the 8x12 donut would have had 2 decks, but the lower one was strictly staging.
I'm not counting the wide variety of portable layout I've seen at Timonium and other shows - I don't even remember how many there were at the National Train Show in Philly. Including one I am a member of in that class as well. I don't think I've ever seen a portable multi-deck layout, it's just not practical for transport.
SeeYou190 I am not "In The West", I live on the West Coast of Florida. Florida has five coastlines, and we all think the other four are inhabitted by weirdos. It is a Florida thing to specify what coast you are from. Now those "Central Staters" that live in Orlando... that is another story. Anyway, we do not have basements or attics, but believe it or not, double deck designs are not very common. Most layout are built in a 150 square foot or so spare bedroom, and getting a helix or no-lix in that space is a challenge.
I am not "In The West", I live on the West Coast of Florida. Florida has five coastlines, and we all think the other four are inhabitted by weirdos. It is a Florida thing to specify what coast you are from. Now those "Central Staters" that live in Orlando... that is another story.
Anyway, we do not have basements or attics, but believe it or not, double deck designs are not very common. Most layout are built in a 150 square foot or so spare bedroom, and getting a helix or no-lix in that space is a challenge.
apologies to the OP -
Kevin,
I hadn't thought about a single state having different coasts. Love your description. Something new everyday.
I have visited lots of layouts in California - somewhere around 100 (I've lost track over the years). Most of them were/are not finished. Of those layouts probably only about 20 or 30% were double deck.
I do operate with a bunch of guys locally and the layouts in the group are split between double deck and single deck. Those layouts are complete or nearly complete.
I recently saw some layouts in the Sacramento area that were in dedicated outbuildings or large garages. These things were huge. I wonder if they will get anywhere near completion in the owner's lifetime.
Those of us who use garages generally end up sheetrocking and insulating the garage to make it a better environment for the layout.
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
Sheldon,
Do you have any photos of that layout? Sounds like an interesting design.
trainnut1250 Sheldon, Do you have any photos of that layout? Sounds like an interesting design. Guy
Do you mean the old double deck layout that I did not like?
Sure, I have some photos when it was still in the various benchwork stages. Not sure they really show the concept very well:
If you look closely to the left in the 1st picture, you can see the top level of one peninsula across the aisle, and how it is lower than the upper level on the wall.
In the 4th picture, to the right you can see the bench work transition to the lower levels of the peninsula.
And in both the 1st and 2nd pictures, the lower shelf with the model boxes is the staging level.
Again, not sure if you can get much of sense of the thing from these photos. The further along I got, the less I liked it. I redesigned it once as a double decker to improve some stuff, than decided it had to go.
Then, before I could get very far ona new single deck plan, we decided to move.
So now I have this space and a new plan on the drawing board. Hope to publish the new plan soon, but work, family, selling the otherhouse, and the virus have kept me real busy.
I'm getting pretty anxious to get started. Looks like we might have the other house sold, that will be a big green lightfor a lot of stuff......
Thanks for taking the time to post the pictures. You're right in that they don't show a real clear view of what you describe, but I can glean enough from them to get the idea. The new space looks pretty good. Have fun planning the new layout.
trainnut1250 Sheldon, Thanks for taking the time to post the pictures. You're right in that they don't show a real clear view of what you describe, but I can glean enough from them to get the idea. The new space looks pretty good. Have fun planning the new layout. Guy
Yes, I should have taken more pictures.........
Hopefully I will be better at documenting the new layout.....
ATLANTIC CENTRALYes, I should have taken more pictures.........
You not only need to take the pictures, you need to keep the pictures.
I am very bothered with myself that I only have 1 picture of SGRR 1, and none of the Dream House layout. SGRR 3 can be seen in the background of many family snapshots, but I have no pictures that just show the layout. SGRR 4 has a couple of bad pictures in the old house, but none after it was moved and expanded. All the pictures taken of layout 5 were digital, and they were lost in a hard drive failure.
HOLD ON TO YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS!
Yes that is true that you need to hold onto the photos. On the flip, I have about half a terabyte of photos of the current layout (I don't delete the bad ones - creating a bit of a filing nightmare at times).
ATLANTIC CENTRAL trainnut1250 Sheldon, Thanks for taking the time to post the pictures. You're right in that they don't show a real clear view of what you describe, but I can glean enough from them to get the idea. The new space looks pretty good. Have fun planning the new layout. Guy Yes, I should have taken more pictures......... Hopefully I will be better at documenting the new layout..... Sheldon
I am always torn between building something and documenting building it. I find that sometimes its better to plow ahead and get it done rather than stopping to take pictures. Having said that, I do take lots of pictures (see above). Looking forward to seeing some pics of your progress.
AH, a wide open empty basement. I have utilities at one corner, laundry at the diagonally opposite corner, and a garage sucking up another 500 sq ft of potential basement. No way I can do what I want in a snigle deck.
As for all the digital pictures, this is why before a decent backup, I kept them on my own computer PLUS copied them to a server. Which back in those days was backed up on tape - I have no tape drive but I have a few of the old tapes still. These days, I copy them to my server which stores them on at least 2 different physical drives inside, plus the whole server is backed up to a cloud backup. Layout and construction pictures from the past couple of layouts also happen to live on the server with my web host, but that's only because I haven't come close to using all my storage space yet. Eventually I'll have to prune stuff there, but the originals are still on my server and in the cloud backup.
I'm more annoyed at the old photos that got lost in one of many moves, long before it was practical to scan them into digital form, so I no longer have any pictures of the layouts we used to put up in the family room over the holidays each year.
Yes, wide open basement. The limited utilities are all in one corner, boiler, water heater, well pump. And I can easily fit my workbench and a seperate waterfront ISL in that area.
Oops, I had not even mentioned the waterfront ISL until now.
The old layout had a branch to a waterfront scene, the new layout geography is a little father west, barely crossing one navigable river.
So to do the waterfront thing, I decided on a seperate ISL about 2' x 12'.
trainnut1250 I have about half a terabyte of photos of the current layout
I have over 800 pictures of the experimental layout segment I built. More than 100 times what I have of my actual layouts.
So sad.