Mine's in a two-car garage ("California Basement"). A kind of modified 24x24' "G" shape that turns back on itself on two levels. It's just a big, fancy "Dogbone". I've still got some of the garage left over for expansion--mainly a proposed staging yard.
The weather here in the Central Valley is supposed to be seasonably 'mild', but my major drawback is vacuuming pollen during the spring and fall. Other than that, the layout is pretty trouble-free.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Try the spare bedroom. It will be out of everybody's way, and will allow for expansion.
~G4
19 Years old, modeling the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and Cascade Railroad of Western Washington in 1927 in 6X6 feet.
Currently we have two layouts....but the discussion is going on now for a more favorable spot for the indoor layout. HO in the basement. Workbench is there too. However, it is not a finished basement, house is 9 years old. Small layout, which my plan was to do a simple circular plan that would allow me to review my skills that has been unused for a number of years, and allow simple experimentation with new technologies and techniques that I needed to learn. That venture has been successful.
Now, discussion is going on to allow one of 4 upstairs bedrooms to be used for trains. Current thought is shelf style, round the room (probably twice), combination point to point with circular continuous running. More to follow....
Issues of the basement are: clutter, storage, wish it was neater for when guests want to visit, doggies won't go to the basement (so they stand at the top of the stairs and cry that "daddy" is down there and they can't be with him), away from the rest of the house.
The other layout is in the yard G scale around the patio. One for the fall, winter and spring, one for the summer.
tony314 Mines in the basement sitting there gathering dust. Due to money problems I won't be doing anything for a long while. Got my engines boxed up so they don't gather dust. It really bites. No train running for me. :(
Mines in the basement sitting there gathering dust. Due to money problems I won't be doing anything for a long while. Got my engines boxed up so they don't gather dust. It really bites. No train running for me. :(
Tony, remember I am off on Wednesdays and Thursdays and you know where I live.
Mine is in my garage kind of G Shaped 8 X 18 X 13 X 8.5 feet.
Have heat and A/C. I plan on tearing it down this summer and start on this plan.
Main lines will be 150 feet and trunk line around 120.
Ken
I hate Rust
Mine is in CANADA.....................
Really it is in the basement in a 13' x 17' room under the sunken living room with about a seven foot ceiling.
Johnboy out.............................
from Saskatchewan, in the Great White North..
We have met the enemy, and he is us............ (Pogo)
My layout is in the basement, together with heating. Approx. 16x 23 feet, about 370 square feet including aisles.
But now I have a second room for my narrow gauge layout. When our youngest son moved out my wife told me, better a railroad than another storeroom. I took this chance. :-)
But I can also say my layout is in my imagilnation: My History of Westport Terminal RR starts "Once upon ..."
For the narrow gauge I have still to write this.
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
I have a small collection of Micro-layouts in G and O living in the garage, and a really really small HOn30 layout living on my work bench
Have fun with your trains
My layout is being built in a “spare” room with some restrictions and limitations.
Several sections have been moved in.
A little further along...
There is one open staging yard which must be completed and trouble-shot before I can add the section that will go in front of it.
Some sections are out in the garage. The parts in the house are not ready to connect.
And some parts of the layout exist only as renderings of 3D digital mathematical models.
When I bought my home 15 years ago, I converted the attic room that was used as two kids bedrooms into a 22' x 9' train room and office. I added new Insolation and new dry wall, along with new wall plugs.
Content removed due to a completely frak'ed up and incompetent Kalmbach customer service.
In the 'Train Room' , in the basement.
The layout is 5'x16' which started life as a 4'x8' based on Linn Westcotts book HO Railroad that Grows, and it has. It is transportable, and is actually two 5'x8' sections, hinged in the center with casters on one long side and fold up legs. It can be laid on its side, folded in half, and rolled out the door as a 2'x8'x5' unit. The workbench is an old roll top desk also with casters, and a base cabinet/test track also has casters.
I live and work at a Boy Scout camp and when I retire and leave the layout will go with me. It is about the size of a car and would easily fit in a garage if the next home doesn't have room indoors. I read many posts about how inefficiently an island layout utilizes the space, but for my needs it is ideal. Track on the two sections connect only at the back of the layout and when the secnery is completed it should loose most of that roundy-roundy look. And the grandkids love it.
Dave
From Mt Pleasant, Utah, the home of the Hill Valley and Thistle Railroad where the Buffalo still roam and a Droid runs the trains
I have no garage thus the lawnmower is chained down on the front porch. And the mechanics tool chest is in the kitchen. One bedroom is used as a studio/office, one I sleep in, one for the railroad and one for the shop. Trying to figure out which wall to cut through to make the layout bigger. Wife? She is like the garage....
Modeling a railroad hypothetically set in time.
Hi All
Here's where my layout is located. It's a 4' X 16" with a dog leg to the right forming a J
The airplane , Oil Co signns, and the Marlboro clock remain in place.
Happy Railroading
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
Mine is still in a tree somewhere...
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
BerkshireSteam....it made me wonder, "where does everyone else put there's? I have heard of other layouts, like one of my options, being located in a spare bedroom. I have also heard of them being built in an attic room, in the basement, in the garage, and heck even in a large shed specifically built to house the layout with electricity and full HVAC. So, I ask, where is yours?
I have heard of other layouts, like one of my options, being located in a spare bedroom. I have also heard of them being built in an attic room, in the basement, in the garage, and heck even in a large shed specifically built to house the layout with electricity and full HVAC.
So, I ask, where is yours?
But before that I did not have any room in the house so "my" layout was the club "layout".
But it's future intended home was the gymnasium, I guess puts me into the large shed category. The catch is that after we cleaned it up, we really like it as a gym.... so trains might get moved to a large shed.
This is the "before cleanup" pictureOutside
My "layout" is in a former liquor store! The module club I belong to has set up in a vacant shop in a local shopping center. I have 18' of HO scale main-line modules, plus a loop back behind them to a small yard used for staging and operations. If I ever get my own place again, I will definately want a garage to finish up and build a layout in (basements here are usually underwater half the time).
John
If everybody is thinking alike, then nobody is really thinking.
http://photobucket.com/tandarailroad/
I'm in the same situation as Galaxy. Small 2 bedroom apartment without any shelf space and the possibility of having kids in the next few years. So the decision was made to make it a shortline that will be small and portable (hence the railroad name).
It's going to be a 66 inch by 45 inch tabletop loop of track on 3 22 x 45 inch sections. It will have 18 inch radius curves, but that's okay since I like small 4 axle locomotives and short line Incentive Per Diem cars.
__________________________________________________________________
Mike Kieran
Port Able Railway
I just do what the majority of the voices in my head vote on.
My wife got the urge to add a garage to our house. I thought for about 30 microseconds and suggested that we build a two-story garage with a train room above the cars. When it was done, it turned out "too nice," so the train room became a "family room." I got part of it for my layout, which was fine, because it forced me to think a bit smaller and actually complete the 5x12 foot layout which I now refer to as Phase 1. Now that our daughter is in college and there's a smaller TV in the sunroom that my wife actually prefers, I've been given permission to expand the layout, so Phase 2 is well underway.
Carpet, heating and air conditioning are nice, while the "crew lounge" still has the larger TV.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
My last layout resides at the local landfill. Should I hit either the Powerball or MegaMillions this week my next one will reside in its own dedicated building. Barring that it will continue to reside in my imagination for awhile.
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
My wife has the 90'x120' pole barn for her horse arena. I have a 25'x17' former garage as a train room. I had my contractor son-in-law take out the garage door and build a wall that looks like a garage door on the outside. He insulated the walls, installed switched electrical circuits, a lighting circuit, a new electric water heater and tapped into the forced air heating and cooling system. After I coved the corners and painted the walls, ceiling and floor, it is bright, clean and just a very enjoyable place to work. The concrete floor is a little hard on the feet (and the knees, when crawling under the benchwork), however I've found that a couple of strategically placed exercise mats are a good temporary solution while I'm still in the messy construction stages. Later I intend to install carpet. We have a rediculously large master bedroom and the wife lets me keep my workbench and piano in one corner.
My Heartland Division of the CB&Q is a fictional division of the Burlington Route. It is located in my 64' long layout room in the lower level of our house. The lower level could also be called a walkout basement, and the house is on a hillside.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Mine is in my "two car" garage. Actually it is more like a car and half..ok it would hold two Smart cars..ok maybe not.. it has part of the stairs taking up space.. maybe it is more like two MG midgets garage.. Actually the space between my layout and the stairs area is just the perfect height for the WS tunnel portals is not part of my mountain.
Mine is in a spare bedroom. I have a basement, but my house was built in 1895 and the basement is like a dungeon. The cost to try and make it a livable space is more than what I want to spend for a hobby. The spare room is nice with carpeting and a temperature that varies little throughout the year.
Eric
I have a spot in the basement about 10x13. It's still in the planning stage. I plan to make it a double decker to make the most of my space.
Problem: one tiny bachelor apartment. Solution? Well, I was up in the air about what to do, until I realized that this was the answer - a ceiling train! Basically a shelf, 6 inches wide, 13.4" from the ceiling, with dioramas in the corners.
[View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0]
[View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0][View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0][View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0]
Mine's in that space called the dining room on the floor plan. No one uses dining rooms these days anyhow. The only problem is that also has become SWMBO's sewing/quilting/pillow making/art/pet/&everythingelse room.
Chuck, have you thought about either an electric water heater or an outside tankless? Might be a small price to pay to get HVAC into the train room.
Two car garage. I have lived here 18 years. The cars have never been in here.
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
In here (second floor). I built it to recreate a historic blacksmith shop on my property. A pretty expensive train room but it does also hold my truck, tools and other projects . 30 x 16 feet, insulated and heated.
My first three layouts were in an unfinished attic. This time I did it right.
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net