Metro layouts

[Anonymous]

After many years of planning, wishing, hoping for a place to build a nice layout I have finally got a place. The home that my wife and I purchased this summer has a finished attic in it that is absolutely perfect for an HO layout. It is a Tee shaped attic that has close to 100 running feet of wall space and plenty of area for peninsula's. And what is even better is that outside of the finished portion is plenty of room for staging/storage/wiring/maintenance. So all that being said, the prototype that I am going to model is huge and I've read some posts here and other places that almost were discouraging but...I am going to model the rail system in/around downtown Ft. Worth, Texas. Being involved in civil engineering for all of my working life, the idea of modeling the infrastructure system around Ft. Worth is very appealing to me. I mean it's not everyday you see 4 or 5 level interstate flyover intersectoins in an attic. And the fact that, as I look at the aerial photo's of the downtown and outlying areas I see just about every aspect of railroading, minus the steep grades of the rocky mountains makes this even more appealing to me. All that being said, who of you out there has worked on a metropolitan layout and can tell me that I'm crazy before I get into this beast? Actually I know I'm crazy so if you could just skip to the things that you enjoyed about your metro layout and the challenges that you faced that would be plenty for now...after you get to know me better you can comment on the craziness factor. In the mean time I look forward to hearing your takes on metro layouts. Thanks - Roy

[CNJ831]

Well, Roy, a section of my layout represents downtown urban scenery. It's around 3x12 feet and suitable, large, structures alone (about 40-50 of them) have run into well in excess of a $1000 to date. I'd say a fully urban layout of the size you are contemplating would run a small fortune and would, although fun to build, probably take decades to get to the semi-finished (worth viewing by others) stage.

If you are open to suggestions, I'd recommend modeling downtown Ft. Worth only as a portion of the layout and highly compressed at that. Let the rest of the layout be more typical of rural Texas and you'll have the chance for a really impressive layout in your lifetime.[:D]

CNJ831

[jecorbett]

The key words here are selective compression. It is a compromise that virtually every modeler has to learn to accept. Even with a relatively large space such as yours, there is no way you are going to be able to model everything in a large metropolitan area. Your 100 feet of wall space equates to less than 2 scale miles, and that is with a linear railroad without much depth. That will only allow you to model a slice of a big city rail system. I am not familiar with the Ft. Worth area but I assume there are several major rail lines crisscrossing. I would settle on a few key features, such as junctions or interchange yards. Even then it is unlikely you can model those features in scale without shortening the trackage to manageable size. Also remember that staging yards can be used to represent several different unmodeled points of origin from which trains will appear on the modeled portion of your layout.

I don't want to discourage you because it sounds like you have a great space to build an outstanding model railroad but sooner or later we all have to take a swig of that reality tonic and realize we can't fit everything into our layouts that we would like.

[challenger3802]

Leaving some of the buildings out and putting a building sites in their place might be a novel idea. Fully kitted out with all the paraphenalia of a building site (Dump trucks, cranes, temporary workmens mess, bricks, cement mixers, etc.), could be quite a interest point.

Ian

[earlfrye]

There are a lot of very good layouts in the FW area. If I were you I would visit some of the clubs in the area and ask a lot of questions. I know some of these layouts model town sections. Also look at maps and decide what you want to include. Check to see if you have room to include all you want in the area you have.

[DigitalGriffin]

I'm facing similar dilimas with my 30'x30' basement space. I want to model an urban scene of a rather fairly large city.

You have several problems:

1. The maximum depth of your city is ~5 feet. This is providing you have access to both sides of the layout.

2. Even though I'm using the Walthers catalog as a guide, I'm quickly discovering there is actually a somewhat small selection of similar housing and city models that look well together on a layout without getting into an excess of industry. Be prepared to scratch build a lot of your buildings. Also be prepared to spend a small fortune. This month along I spent $1500 in model buildings and facilities not including actual trains.

3. There's an excellent book by MRR for modeling cities and their structures. You might want to grab a copy.

4. A single building with detailing, interior, and individual room lighting can take me up to 50+ hours. So hundreds of buildings will take me forever. (But that's one of the great things about this hobby)

[CNJ831]

QUOTE: Originally posted by DigitalGriffin

I'm facing similar dilimas with my 30'x30' basement space. I want to model an urban scene of a rather fairly large city.

You have several problems:
1. -
2. Even though I'm using the Walthers catalog as a guide, I'm quickly discovering there is actually a somewhat small selection of similar housing and city models that look well together on a layout without getting into an excess of industry. Be prepared to scratch build a lot of your buildings. Also be prepared to spend a small fortune. This month along I spent $1500 in model buildings and facilities not including actual trains.

3. There's an excellent book by MRR for modeling cities and their structures. You might want to grab a copy.
4. -

Digi - I'll second that cost comment but I find that building a major cityscene is mostly a matter of creative modeling (kitbashing), rather than much scratchbulding. One should never look to building Walthers, Bachmann Spectrum, DPM, or City Classics structures as their makers intended. You can add and subtract multiple floors, stack buildings, or "open up" a structure kit so that most or all the walls face one direction, even extensive kit-mingling! In the latter case, creating several ins and outs, bump outs, or additions to the building's face results in a structure virtually unrecognizable when compared to the original kit. I wish I had a digital camera and website to illustrate my own efforts for readers of this thread.

Incidentally, for anyone thinking seriously about building a true, downtown, urban scene with large structures, I suggest purchasing copies of the Sep. 2000 and Jan. 2001 issues of Model Railroading. Therein, Art Fahie describes what structures he kitbashed to build his large city of Amherst. I consider it one of the most impressive cityscenes ever to appear in the hobby press. Also check out his layout on the Bar Mills Scale Models website. While its in N scale, most of the structures involved are available in both N and HO (if you can recognize them without using Model Railroading as a guide!).

CNJ831