Im new to these forums, and i could use some 4x8 plans on HO scale, woodland/ mountain theme. if anyone could give me some scenery tips too, that would be great.
thanks
Indiana_Railman wrote: Im new to these forums, and i could use some 4x8 plans on HO scale, woodland/ mountain theme. if anyone could give me some scenery tips too, that would be great.thanks
That's kinda like saying I have a thousand bucks. How should I spend it?
Read the beginner's guide in my signature below. That will give us a place to start talking.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Well Hullo there and !! I would not just look at Space Mouses excellent pages, but also spend some time forum searching/crawling. There is literal gold mine of info here, you just need to look for it!
Dave Loman
My site: The Rusty Spike
"It's a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your 2 cents in.... hey, someone's making a penny!"
claymore1977 wrote: Well Hullo there and !! I would not just look at Space Mouses excellent pages, but also spend some time forum searching/crawling. There is literal gold mine of info here, you just need to look for it!
Upon re-reading, I guess I was a little abrupt. Sorry about that.
Welcome.
thanks for the advice
For a 4x8 to be successful in the long term, you have to define your interests and vision pretty tightly. There just isn't much room for anything else in HO. Begin by thinking small.
- Thinking small with choice of era. Real world locomotives and cars have gotten progressively bigger over time. The only exception was during the beginning of dieselization - the early diesels were smaller (shorter) than the steam locomotives they replaced. The standard 18" radius doesn't do well with rolling stock over 50ft long, and smaller is better. In the 1870s, freight cars were around 26ft long; they grew to 40ft in the 1930s; and 50ft in the late '50s and early '60s. Today's freight cars can be 89ft long, and these will NOT go around 18" radius curves in HO scale. So earlier eras are more compatible with an HO 4x8, and the earlier, the smaller.
- Thinking small with prototype. Branch and short lines operated older and smaller equipment, especially locomotives.
- Thinking small with train length. To avoid being on both end curves at once, and to fit the likely passing tracks, train length is limited to 56" or less. This is 5 or less 40ft cars plus engine and caboose. Can you be happy with such short trains? If not, you will need double track, or be limited to a longer single train running through interesting scenery - but not performing any switching. Chances are if you like bigger, or modern equipment, or long trains you will not be happy with a 4x8 for long.
- Thinking small with limited amount of rolling stock. 3 locomotives and about 20 cars is all you can practically use on an HO 4x8. Anything more has to be stored elsewhere and rotated to/from the layout. Making these few pieces fit in with your era, prototype, region, operating scheme, and industries becomes much more important than on a large layout where there is more room for a few "outliers".
- Thinking small by abandoning mainstream 20th century passenger operations. Full scale 80ft passenger cars won't go around your curves, and take up too much space anyway. If you must model passenger service, use 19th century prototypes or rail cars such as RDCs and 1930s home brews like the "Galloping Goose".
- Think about adding extensions. Adding a 2x6 or similar extension off an end or a side enhances the operating potential of a 4x8 far beyond what the square footage increase would suggest.
- Define your preferred operational role. Are you an "engineer" or a "rail fan"? There are plenty of modelers in both categories, and a lot of us enjoy both. But the reality of an HO 4x8 is that it can only accommodate one of the two roles very well. If you want to watch your trains going up and down grades in mountainous scenery, you can have that. But you won't have room to also add level runarounds and spurs that make switching operations practical.
my thoughts on 4x8 design, your choices
Fred W
What Fred says.
I find that you really have to plan to get good results from a 4 x 8--well any layout actually. But when you have space restriction, you need to think outside the box.
The major problem I see with most designers of 4x8's is that the loop makes the scene fold back on itself. Most people take this as a given and they build one location. Railroads are from here to there not here to here to here to here, over and over.
A good way around this is to split your sheet in half with a divider and create two scenes. Then when you leave one scene you arrive at the other. Each scene has it's own operations, and the other is it's destination. One side becomes staging for the other so to speak. The train that left, when it returns, is different than when it left.
The same effect can be achieved though scenery. In my original Rock Ridge and Train City, when operating Train City, Rock Ridge looked like a forested mountain. When operating Rock Ridge, Train City looked like a town in a valley in the distance. This is even though they were less than a foot apart.
So what everyone is saying is know what you want and think it through.
You might take a look at the Gateway Division's project layouts http://www.gatewaynmra.org/project.htm which are 4x6, 4x7, 4x8 to get some idea of what a small HO model railroad looks like.
Enjoy
Paul