Ahhhh,
Now we all see laid bare the true costs of building a pike!
Step 1 - bribe the spouse....
Been there, done that. Finishing up the new bathroom and kitchen before I can take the tools down to the basement!
LOL!
Bryan
How about a 2m x 20m building? Use one meter for the aisle space and the other for the layout. You could have the world's most prototypical layout.
- Harry
wichmannb wrote: Magnus,One of the best layout plans I've found for the size / shape you are interested in can be found in the MR Information Station Article "Room Sized Model Railroads, Vol. 2". Page 28 has the "Western Maryland RR" and it really puts a lot of mainline as well as a few yards into the space with a mushroom type double decker layout (no helix). You have a little more space than this plan calls for, so you could lessen the grades a little. I sure wish I could put this in my basement, but unfortunately my space is just a little too narrow!I envy your opportunity to build your space to suit!Anyway - thought you would like to take a look at that layout plan. I would post it here, but our friends at MR have made it quite clear on the first page of the downloaded document that they would frown upon that! I may be wrong on this point, but the MR article may be in the December 2004 issue if you have access to that. "Climbing Mountains on the Western Maryland" Good luck!Bryan
Magnus,
One of the best layout plans I've found for the size / shape you are interested in can be found in the MR Information Station Article "Room Sized Model Railroads, Vol. 2". Page 28 has the "Western Maryland RR" and it really puts a lot of mainline as well as a few yards into the space with a mushroom type double decker layout (no helix). You have a little more space than this plan calls for, so you could lessen the grades a little. I sure wish I could put this in my basement, but unfortunately my space is just a little too narrow!
I envy your opportunity to build your space to suit!
Anyway - thought you would like to take a look at that layout plan. I would post it here, but our friends at MR have made it quite clear on the first page of the downloaded document that they would frown upon that!
I may be wrong on this point, but the MR article may be in the December 2004 issue if you have access to that. "Climbing Mountains on the Western Maryland"
Good luck!
Thanks for the sugestion. No helix sounds fine. I hate Helixes.
I have an update on my situation. Today, I was a smart man. I went and booked a three nigh stay at a very nice hotel up in the mountains for me and my wife.(Without the kids) After telling her that I asked here very kindly if I could use out small workshop and woodshed to build the layout room if I then build another woodshed. Woodsheds are easy to build and a lot cheaper then a train room since they have to be constructed to let lots of air in to the building to dry the wood.
Now, this leaves me with an already completed foundation, structure and roof. All I need to do is to fix this space with insulation, make the walls "normal" and then I'm done. Electricity is already installed with it's own power supply which is very heavy duty since it have been used to power large machines.
This room is about 14*22 feet. So I will ad an extra building to it so that it becomes roughly 14*30 feet. I have to measure more exactly since this is just a rough estimate. But it do help tremendously in cutting costs used in construction.
Magnus
One more thought (to more directly answer your question)
My available space is about 11'x25' and I have found the 11' width to be a very limiting factor in the designs that will fit in this space. It is almost too wide for a simple around the walls layout because it "wastes" the center of the room as you say. However it is not quite wide enough to stuff a peninsula into or twisting walk-in style layout without having the aisles too narrow.
I have laid out many plans in CAD (up to #18 right now before I start) and from that experince my advice to you would be to have a rectangular room with the narrow side at least 15' wide. Hence, my advice falls more towards the 5*8m arrangement.
ndbprr wrote:I think that first of all you need to think about what value it would add or detract from a future sale of your house. Once you have determined what shape would add to your value you can start to design the railroad.
The building will neither ad or detract very much if anything to the house value. I live in a rural area and houses are cheap and weird buildings are expected.
It can ad a little, it can not lessen the value. But any added value have to be considered very small. Also, the basic building will be very spartan, it will be constructed for this purpose and this purpose alone. No windows will be built. But I will design it so their is space built so that windows could be added afterwards.
steinjr wrote: I think a 5x8 meter (14x24 feet) room will be better than a 3x14 meter (9x42 foot) room in most ways. More flexible - also for non-railroad use, if you move out. Lower heating costs - wall length for a 5x8 meter is 26 meters, wall length for a 3x14 meter 34 meters - so wall surface area for the 5x8 meter layout is only 75% of the wall area of the 3x14 building - lower heating cost (and less area lost to wall thickness). Can get you about 20 feet longer mainline run on each level. Looks like a win-win-win to me.
I think a 5x8 meter (14x24 feet) room will be better than a 3x14 meter (9x42 foot) room in most ways.
More flexible - also for non-railroad use, if you move out. Lower heating costs - wall length for a 5x8 meter is 26 meters, wall length for a 3x14 meter 34 meters - so wall surface area for the 5x8 meter layout is only 75% of the wall area of the 3x14 building - lower heating cost (and less area lost to wall thickness). Can get you about 20 feet longer mainline run on each level. Looks like a win-win-win to me.
I think you are right. This is also what I have measured out in the backyard and what I have estimated costs for. I'm considering adding a small bum to it, a 2*2 ad on to the house where I could have a Helix.
I will probably go for the 4,8 * 8 meter version. It's the cheapest and as you say, more versatile for anyone else and who knows, I might get bored, it's hard to tell about the future.
Lillen wrote: Right now I'm thinking that the ultimate room as far as no "wasted" space is the longest possible room with no peninsula.
Right now I'm thinking that the ultimate room as far as no "wasted" space is the longest possible room with no peninsula.
Depends on the aisle widths. The only "wasted" space is where you have aisles you won't be using.
If you take a room 9 feet wide x 42 feet wide, and have two feet of bench work on all sides, you have 5x38 feet aisles - ie 190 square feet aisles.
If you have a room 14x24 feet, and have 2 feet benchwork, 2 feet aisles, 6 feet benchwork, 2 feet aisles, 2 feet benchwork in the crosssection, you have 2x22 + 2x22 + 9x2 feet = 106 square feet aisle.
Edit: If you have a room 14x24 feet, and have 2 feet benchwork, 3 feet aisles, 4 feet benchwork, 3 feet aisles, 2 feet benchwork in the crosssection (away from the narrowest part), you have 3x22 + 3x22 + 9x3 feet = 159 square feet aisle space.
But you are the one who are going to pay for and build this thing. You have to decide what you want.
Smile, Stein
Hi guys, thanks for all the advice.
To ad some points. I will not have a bathroom or any such facilities there. The 40 sqm are for the layout room and nothing else. Walls will be roughly 20 cm wide. Heating will be situated under the bench work and will not take up any space. Their will be no air conditioning units to worry about.
Right now I'm thinking that the ultimate room as far as no "wasted" space is the longest possible room with no peninsula. But this might get boring, it's also more expensive since the walls will have a larger area and the house will loose a lot more heat during winther. So as good as that might be a more square house is better for practical purposes.
The 5*8 is good because of the size lumber comes in. A more specific size would be 480 cm. That is a standard size that is easily available, which of course translates to lower costs and less work. Which is a good thing I might ad. I'm not swimming in cash so I need to build this as cheap as I can.
I could do it by cutting the 4,8m in two to parts, that is what I plan to do with the walls. The advantage of building it so narrow is that I could put it on the back of a truck and transport it to a new location if I built the house in a modular form. But that is not exactly a priority but still something that I keep in mind.
Then there is the almost square shape of 6,5*6 meters. That would allow for a peninsula that comes back and folds like a mushroom giving me plenty of mainline.
My plan is to have a good sized yard at one en and staging on the other. Some industries and a few mines perhaps in between but the majority would be landscape.
Pick an aisle width and a benchwork width. One "aisle" will be an aisle puls 2 benches.
So if you have 1 m aisles and .75 m benches, then one "aisle" is 2.50 m. Make the narrow building dimension some multiple of that dimension (for example 5x8). That will insure you can get an around the walls with a center peninsula layout (you may have to squeeze the outside benchwork and narrow the aisle aroung the end of the peninsula in HO or larger).
The other way to do it is to figure John Armstrong's squares. So a 36" radius square would end up about 1m.
When you are figuing your building, remember that the 40 sq m is probably the OUTSIDE dimensions so the wall thickness will be subtracted from that.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I would suggest multiplying all your measures by 3 to get the size (roughly) in feet - most posters here seem to think in feet, rather than meters.
36" (3 feet) radius curves - you need minimum 6 feet across for a turnback loop.
3x14 meters would be roughly 9 x 42 feet. This clearly would make a train house with easy benchwork and a single fairly wide aisle down the middle, ie:
side wall - 2 feet deep benchwork - 5 foot aisles - 2 feet deep benchwork - side wall
Linear run length of track would be roughly 9+9+42+42 = 102 feet. Per level.
On the other hand, if you want benchwork on both long walls and a long peninsula up the middle of the long aisle and 2 foot (24") aisles at the point where you have a turnback loop on the peninsula, you will a width of 2 feet wall shelf + 2feet aisle + 6 feet turnback loop + 2 feet aisle + 2 feet wall shelf, for a width of 14 feet (about 5 meters).
Hmm - 14 foot wide. That about 26 feet for the long walls, to stay within a 40 square meter (360 square foot) footprint for the building.
Run length in such a building: 14+14+26+26+22+22 feet = 122 feet (leave 2 feet for aisle and 2 feet for layout along the wall off the 26 feet length of the building to calculate length of peninsula).
That six feet set aside for the width of a central peninsula can be undulating too. But so can the wall layouts in a 3x14 meter (9 x 42 feet) room, so that's not a big point either way.
I would have gone with the 5x8 meters (15 x 24 foot) building footprint. It gives you 40 feet extra of run length for a two level layout. Worth having.
What about a L-shaped building? This would increase your wall perimeter distance.
Then again, have you thrown in plans for the heating/cooling equipment? On a 5x8 if you max out your layout at 1m deep (using 1m for simplicity) on all walls AND allow .75m for aisle/walkway on all sides you now have 1.5mx4.5m of "dead space" for locating your heating/cooling equipment, work bench, bathroom, STORAGE AREA, and whatever else.
Hi,
EDIT(multply meters by roughly three to get feet. Walls will be 20 cm thick, this is layout only, no bathroom, no workshop, just pure layout)
My effort to purchase the house next door to me ended in a failure. The guy wanted a price perhaps 10 to 20 times above the market value so no deal. Instead the house will be left to rot in to the ground. Sad, but this makes me renew the old plan, to ad a specific train house on my own property.
The rules where I live allows me to ad a structure up to 40 square meters without any permits. So this is what I'm going for. Now my question is this. How would I make the best use of this amount of space. What I'm after is the best measurements for the house to pace an HO doubledecker in.
I have considered a 5*8 meter house but I end up wasting a lot of space in the middle that I can not make good use of. So what would be ideal? Minimum curves are 36". Perhaps a 3 meter by 13 would allow better options. What would your sugestions be?