I finally broke ground on my new house construction up here in East TN near Sweetwater. I sold my house down near Sanford Florida last November and moved up to an apartment in Lenoir City in late November while I wait for my house to be built/completed.
The house will have an unfinished walkout basement with about 1275 sq ft allocated to potential model railroad layout. I have not designed the layout yet so I'm not exactly sure how large it will be. I have done some doodling, but so far nothing too interesting has evolved.
The house should be complete in about 9 months. Hopefully. :)
Here are some excavation and basement wall installation photos.
The Van Hoose Envirocast walls were installed in about 5 hours from the time the crane showed up.
The walls are 10 ft tall, minus the ~4" slab heigth will result in 9'8" tall ceiling in the basement.
The next step is to dig foundation pads for the 3 support columns in the basement, install the under slab plumbing, and then pour the basement slab. Then they can install the 24" tall floor truss system.
Onewolf,
Great looking new house! You've got a great opportunity most of us never get -- the ability to plan a train layout room from scratch. (Tell the electrician you want about two thousand outlets in the layout room!
I hope you can continue this thread to let us see how the house and the layout room progresses.
York1 John
Glad to see you back, was following your last build and then you just kinda disapeared if I remember right ?
York1 Onewolf, Great looking new house! You've got a great opportunity most of us never get -- the ability to plan a train layout room from scratch. (Tell the electrician you want about two thousand outlets in the layout room! I hope you can continue this thread to let us see how the house and the layout room progresses.
The previous Ogden & Cache Valley I took about 8 years off/on designing the layout and when I was satisfied with the layout I designed the room to fit the layout, and then I designed the detached garage/workshop to fit the room.
This time the layout space is constrained by the available unfinished basement space.
I will keep the thread updated, but it's going to take at least 9 months for the house to be completed and basically inhabitable.
rrebell Glad to see you back, was following your last build and then you just kinda disapeared if I remember right ?
I lost the ability to login using my old credentials and spent 2-3 months trying (unsuccessfully) to get someone from trains.com to assist with my credential issue. Eventually I gave up and created new credentials by which point I was in "moving to TN" mode and theorizing the disassembly of O & CV Part I.
Page 14 here I go from construction to deconstruction mode: https://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/244850.aspx?page=14
Welcome back!
I was watching your previous layout build thread with interest. It was always very informative with excellent pictures to illustrate what was going on. Thanks for starting again for us.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I second York1's suggestion.
Put outlets EVERYWHERE !
Rust...... It's a good thing !
The previous layout was in a 28 x 32 room and each wall had 3 duplex outlets. That was more than enough. I tended use a 20ft extension cord connected to the center outlet which allowed me to cover about 1/2 the layout area with plugging/unplugging.
Far more important was having specfic outlets wired to a wall switch that allowed me to power up/down the entire layout (minus room lighting) with a single switch.
Slow progress, but slow progress is better than no progress.
The space allocated for layout. There will be one support column in this area between the current two temp support columns.
Looking back to the other side of the basement. The room on the left will my model/clean workshop. The alcove on the right will be used as layout space or as a 'crew lounge' area.
The house is now dried in and drywall hanging is almost complete. They are currently finishing up hanging drywall in the basement. The space in the basement allocated to the train layout will not be finished (drywalled) initially.
After I am moved into the house and I have a layout design I am confident that will work I will install electrical/lights/drywall in the train layout room. At this point I have drawn dozens of basic designs but so far modifying my previous layout design to work in the new space is the leading candidate (although I was hoping to have 'just' a 2 level layout).
Here's the very early redesign of the previous layout to work in the new layout space.
Note: There is 105" of clearance under the main 16x6 support beam and 116" of clearance from the slab/floor to the bottom of the floor trusses (ceiling height).
Because of the 16x6 support beam I lowered the center platform floor from 30" to 25". This provides 80" clearance under the beam. I also lowered the default track level elevations from the prior layout 42/62/82 to 40/60/80. This means the upper level relative elevation is 80-25=55" (instead of 82-30=52").
The run from the lower return loop to the upper return loop on the prior layout was 5307" (442 ft). On the new layout design that run is 6452" (537 ft).
Initial design. I still need to add service/industry tracks, backdrops, etc.
Lower Level
Middle Level
Upper level
Good to see you back with updates!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983