Christmas Layout

[Tom1947]

I am looking for some ideas for a Christmas layout I have a 9 X 5 layout in storage but it is to large for the living room in the condo where we live now. I have AF trains both steam and deasel and lots or rolling stock. I was thinking about a 4 X 6 foot . Space is the big problem. I have been asked to put my trains up this year. Just cruising or shopping for some ideas.

[dougdagrump]

[#welcome]
Welcome aboard. You might try looking up http://thortrains.hypermart.net/ he has all kinds of track plans readily available. Everything from mega to mini and everything in between, from Z scale to G. Hope this helps.[:D]

[Anonymous]

Certainly you can put together a decent holiday display layout with Flyer S gauge on a 4x6. It doesn't need to have an elaborate track plan; just something that will permit you to keep one train running (while you're visiting with family and friends) and perhaps another standing by on a passing siding. Spend some time equipping the layout with some seasonal accessories and structures and making it fit the holiday theme, and you'll be good to go. Visitors love seeing trains running on a holiday layout, no matter what the scale, and no matter what the size of the layout.

I'm planning to do something similar with a small all-tinplate New Marx holiday layout. My plan is for every item on the pike to be lithographed tinplate--trains, accessories, structures, etc.

[pbjwilson]

Last year my Christmas layout was a figure 8 with one loop that ran under a piece of furniture. It took up very little space and added alot of interest. Here's a pic.



The tunnel in the upper let corner goes under a piece of furniture. click on the image to enlarge. Ooops, thats the upper right corner.

[fwright]

Question for PBJ Wilson: What sort of base or underlayment did you use for the Christmas layout in the picture? Nice looking layout. In the photo, it looks like you used a white sheet under the track for the snow effect. Is this correct? Is the sheet laid directly on the carpet (or floor), or did you have some plywood or similar platform under the sheet? If you used a sheet, did you have problems with oil stains and the like from your trains?

[pbjwilson]

fwright,
Just a piece of white fabric on top of the rug. I had to put a couple shims under the tracks where it runs onto the wood floor, no big deal. No stains or oil got through the fabric, as far as I know. I'm a floor runner and have had few problems with running right on my oriental rug. Great vintage look too!

[Anonymous]

This might be kinda out-of-this-world, but it never hurts to ask, right?

I've been away from mrr for about 30 years. The last 5 years or so I've been thinking about getting back into it, but I've never had the room for it.

Well, I've come to realize that if I'm EVER going to have a layout, it's going to have to be a Christmas one. Have it set up for those 6 weeks, and at least get to enjoy having a layout for a while each year.

Problem is, I'm been disabled since I was about 4, and don't have a lot of strength to be constructing tables and moving them around. And I need the layout to be up off the floor if I 'm going to be able to reach it and work with it. I also have this idea of the layout runnning along our front windows, so it will be viewable from the street. These two factors dictate that the layout will be 24 inches off the floor.

Other parts of our Christmas display wil be set up within the boundaries of the layout, like some small Christmas trees and other things my wife likes. So I'm thinking the layout would be a couple of loops, perhaps based on a figure-8.

The thing I'm not quite sure about is, could I construct a setup like this using aluminum trestles to support the structure of the layout? After the Christmas season, I could take the track apart in sections to store it until next year. Each track section would be built on aluminum sections that would rest on the trestles to lend support between the spans.

Does anyone more knowledgeable than myself have any thoughts on how this coould be done, and where I could get the resources to build this?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure about aluminum as a supporting framework, but that's just because I've never tried it. My recommendation would be to use a combination of wood and Extruded Polystyrene (Styrofoam) to buld a lightweight base for your trains. Most toy trains are not very heavy, and a lot of folks tend to build benchwork that an elephant could walk on. That's really overkill, and not at all necessary.

Perhaps you or your spouse have a relative, friend, or neighbor who enjoys carpentry work. My guess is that someone like that could construct some benchwork for you--either one piece or in sections--that could easily be stored away after the holidays, if that's what you intend to do.

Legs and supports made of 2x2 lumber, some 1x? for a finishing frame, and a relatively thin plywood base topped with a 2-inch-thick sheet(s) of Extruded Polystrene, will be more than strong enough to support even the heaviest O gauge trains (or just about any other scale). The legs can easily be made to be removable, or to fold.

Having your layout visible through the windows would be a neat idea, especially if you really dress the thing up in a holiday theme (and assuming security is not a major concern for you). I imagine you'll have quite a few neighbors stopping by to see the layout--a great way to share the holidays.

The materials you'll need for the supporting platform are not all that expensive--probably less expensive than aluminum components. Seems to me that all you really need is someone who is handly with the sawing and so forth to get you up and running, and I'll bet you know someone who would be glad to pitch in and help. You'll have to give him a turn at running the train, of course, but that's a sacrifice worth making.

Best of luck to you, and keep us informed of your progress. Get an early start, and make it a fun-filled holiday season.

[Anonymous]

Allan, thank you so much for your suggestions. Since it seems feasible to you, I will be looking into this further, first the layout design, then framework construction. We just moved to this area a year or so ago, so we don't know too many people, but now that you mention it, one friend I've made does home remodeling, so I'm sure he'll have some good input too. Thanks again for the ideas!

[Anonymous]

My pleasure, I'm sure! The most enjoyable part of the hobby, for me at least, is seeing others express a desire to get started themselves. You would be surprised how many holiday layouts--even ones set-up on the floor--find a way to blossom into something more permanent. Truth is, that's still how a majority of folks get started in this hobby.

You didn't mention what train(s) you plan to opertate on your layout. Depending on the overall size of the pike, my advice would be to start with a simple track configuration that will, of course, allow for continuous running of at least one train, with perhaps another one relegated to a siding until it's needed. There's no need to go overboard with something too complex because a simple layout can always be expanded later on.

My personal preference is for smaller O27-size trains for holiday layouts--especially if you want the trains themselves to have a holiday theme in terms of the locomotives and rolling stock. Lionel, MTH, and K-Line all offer Christmas train sets, and if you're on a tight budget, you can even consider the Christmas "BEEP" locomotive from RMT, which will set you back less that $50 or so. Add some Lionel or K-Line O27 cars decorated in a holiday theme (there are a ton of them available), and you'll be good to go.

However, you may already have a favorite train (or many of them) that will see service on your layout. That's fine, too!

As I noted in a previous post, I'm thinking that my holiday layout this year will have an all-tinplate theme so I can make use of at least a few of my Marx trains and a good number of appropriately sized tinplate accessories from MTH, Marx, and Lionel/American Flyer. That will give me something different and distinctive this time around, and it should be fun to build. I'm currently living in an apartment, so space is at a bit of a premium (as it apparently is in your situation). No problem, though, because I figure I can create something interesting and attractive in O27 on a 4x6 platform.

[Anonymous]

I'm proceeding with plans for this layout, using it as a distraction from the overwhelming heaviness of watching what hurricane Katrina has done to our country.

I've put together a graphic of the area of our home where I'm going to put up this layout each Christmas. Here's the picture (I hope!):

http://guzdziol.tripod.com/mrr.htm

The layout will be HO scale, I planning on using DCC so I can run two trains at once, in any way I like. I'd like to run a double level layout for each of two loops, so a total of 4 loops, 2 above and 2 below. I'm going with big loops like this to keep the radii large, since I'm modelling Union Pacific freight and passenger service from the early 1940's, with a Challenger (or Big Boy, if I can find one) for the freight, and the usual length pasenger cars.

I can't think of a way to incorporate figure-8's without reducing the radius of the turns. Any thoughts?

Any cool ideas on how to run the loops around the two levels?

Joe

[Anonymous]

For someone wanting to model N gauge, I sincerely recommend a series of inexpensive polyresin town buildings sold under the "Liberty Falls" theme. With almost fifteen years of ten buildings per line, two lines for sale, there is a considerable market for them and they're quite cheap--they sold for six dollars at Christmastime and except for a few premium pieces and rarities, they don't e-bay for a lot more today. When L-F was founded as a little mining village, the time-line put it in the late 1860s; the last year both lines were released about five years ago we were in the World War One era.

L-F was (perhaps still is) manufactured in China and marketed by a Northbrook, IL, firm that got them into department stores. Kind of like the old supermarket china sales, L-F released one building a week between about mid-October and the week before Christmas, a ten-week series that always culminated with a church. (That last year the series was released in both "A" and "B" lines, a synagogue was available as well: by then little Liberty Falls, fifty years old, had grown into a sophisticated manufacturing and resort destination. Really diverse buildings, and a solid understanding both of American vernacular architectural styles and social history--fascinating.) The "A" and "B" lines were handled by different dept. store chains in different regions and the "B" line was in no sense inferior.

But I digress: not only are the buildings cheap and adornments like pewter pedestrians and the like very available, the scale is wonderfully small! I found that mine works best with "N" gauge rolling stock; the town buildings' scale is a little larger than that, but with some forced perspective the railroad became a welcome occupant to Liberty Falls.

My shtick was to treat Liberty Falls as a movie set and updated it with the times--and beyond. The last year both lines came out I modeled "Liberty Falls" 1970. My dear Liberty Falls had become a veritable Pottersville, with a cop shooting a bank robber who "bled" into the snow the red strip from a pack of Salems. The dry-goods store had been torn down and a used car lot was in its place, using autos and trucks that were new in the 1950s (Micromachines: they're about half the size of Hot Wheels but not nearly so hot-rod oriented.) I didn't have an electrical connection that year, so my L-F was really just a tableau with a D&RGW caboose, a CRI&P boxcar and the departing tail end of a Zephyr, for which I used only the observation car from the Burlington Route. For snow I usually used white batting (the kind with sparkles looked great under blue light); the last year I used butcher paper with Iri***ype lace underneath to suggest a pattern. The rerailer was an RR crossing and cork strips served as the sidewalk. When the buildings are cheap, experimentation comes easy.

My local Carson, Pirie stopped carrying the line four Christamases ago, but if the line is still being released it's probably at most Dillard's and some Macy's. (Googling should be easy.)

Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated. I'm not trying to bend topic, just to show my experience in a small space.

Allen Smalling; [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Keep your Christmas layout simple and lightweight...that's the best advice I can give. Use luan board (the wood they make hollow doors with). Dense, smooth, very light...and about $10. for a 4x8 sheet. Underframe it with 1x2's. If you want it off the floor, use 2 saw-horses. A "curtain" along the front can be the rolled corrigated "brick" design cardboard sold in many stores before Christmas. Instead of saw-horses, I use 2 screw-on wood legs in the front, and the back is supported by a window ledge. All my scenics are removeable, with the track and a bridge remaining on the board. This has survived 19 seasons in a damp basement with no warping. Have fun! Joe

[Anonymous]

Joe (and Allan!),

Thanks for some really great suggestions. Now I feel like I've got a really good handle on how to proceed. I really feel encouraged and inspired by your replies. Thanks loads!

Joe

[Anonymous]

Well, I've made a lot of progress in the last few weeks. The layout will now be permanent, I found a track plan I like and I've modified it to fit my area. I still have a ways to go with it, but here's something to look at:

http://guzdziol.tripod.com/mrr.htm

As always, any suggestions y'all would like to make are more than welcome. One are where I'm afraid my ignorance is showing, is in my transitions from one level to another.

----------------------- UPDATE -----------------------------------------

I don't know if anyone looked at my layout plan (at the above link) since I posted it yesterday, but I found and resolved a major problem with the elevation levels. The plan is much simpler now (since it's more like the original Atlas HO-28 layout it was conceived from!) then how I had it.

Thanks to all, Joe

[Anonymous]

Our Christmas layout was carved from four 4x8 layers of stacked blue sheet styrafoam. Everything was then covered in a thick coat of White latex paint and dusted with flake snow.
It can be viewed here:

http://home.comcast.net/~graz6/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-MerchantID-132068-Publi***-makestatic-true-skip-15.html

A simple tunnel was built on the far left side adjacent to the cavity in which our Christmas Tree Stand resides. It uses Garagraves track with a pair of Lionel 022 switches providing a small passing route. All of the buildings are Wal Mart Christmas Village products.