Hi everyone.
Today I destroyed my old layout. I built it last year and today I destroyed it. A sad but still positive thing. I've started construction on my next layout. Or more correctly I'm building the house right now that it's going to be in. So far the roof and one wall is up. I expect to be done in about a months time. The new room is larger, more twice the size and will be insulated and mice free(hopefully).
So was the old layout a waste of time and money! NO way. it's the best money I ever spent since the knowledge that I gained while making a lot of mistakes will transfer into money saved on the new layout. I think that everything from track to roadbed material might have set me back some 250$ in things I can not reuse but then knowledge, oh my, that's worth a LOT more then that.
I'm very enthusiastic about the new layout room, it will be 12*25 foot.
Magnus
Modeling the N&W freelanced at the height of their steam era in HO.
Daniel G.
Sounds like you have your head on right about things...
Good luck to you. Hope your next layout turns out the way you want it.
Tracklayer
Magnus--
Actually, that's one of the most exciting times OF the layout, looking at all that empty space and 'imagineering' what is going to happen when you start all over. I remember about seven years ago, after tearing out a layout that just DIDN'T work, and staring at all that empty space in my 'California Basement' (garage) and thinking--"This time, maybe I'll try and get it RIGHT!"
Result? Still a work in progress, but I'm not only happy with what I've accomplished so far, but also happy about what I can still do to improve it.
Yours will probably be spectacular!
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!
Hi guys thanks for the support. It is a marvellous time right now before construction and problems of the real world emerges. Right now everything is perfect! Just wait until that gets in contact with reality!
I'm tearing down my old woodshed and workshop to put the new room in instead. I'm just keeping the rood on top although a new interior roof will be installed. But 90% is being torn down and built up. But guess what I found today when clearing out the old workshop? A tombstone, a real genuine tombstone left in the dark by the previous owners. They left a lot of crap when they left 7 years ago but a tombstone! Who among us have ever found a tombstone left by the previous owners?
Anyways, I'm slaving away at my paradise and soon I will have my glorious train room, and 35 square meters is quite a lot to fill by one person alone. At least in my mind.
Lillen wrote:A tombstone, a real genuine tombstone left in the dark by the previous owners. They left a lot of crap when they left 7 years ago but a tombstone! Who among us have ever found a tombstone left by the previous owners?
A tombstone, a real genuine tombstone left in the dark by the previous owners. They left a lot of crap when they left 7 years ago but a tombstone! Who among us have ever found a tombstone left by the previous owners?
Well there's a small burial ground on my land but not inside the toolshed. How weird. do you think it was just stored there or is the last owner buried under it? LOL. Maybe you should incorporate it into the decoration to avoid a haunted train room.
Don't worry, you'll fill that 35 sq. meters with one great layout. My room is 56 sq meters (above the carriage house) with the layout occupying about 33 of it. No problem filling it. Just take your time with the track plan - you have a lot of potential in a space of that size.
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net
Lillen wrote: Or more correctly I'm building the house right now that it's going to be in. So far the roof and one wall is up.
Or more correctly I'm building the house right now that it's going to be in. So far the roof and one wall is up.
Magnus, just how is the roof being held up if you only have one wall ?
Good luck on your new home- and layout-building projects.
chateauricher wrote: Lillen wrote: Or more correctly I'm building the house right now that it's going to be in. So far the roof and one wall is up.Magnus, just how is the roof being held up if you only have one wall ? Good luck on your new home- and layout-building projects.
A good question. The answer? Their is a core timber structure that is already in place. The wall I'm referring to is that I've redone it completely and put on a new facade, like this:
The tombstone is freakish, it's from someone who died in 1946. I don't want that in my layout room!
Bapou wrote:I don't see a tombstone.
The tombstone was inside the house, not a part of the wall.
Lillen wrote: Bapou wrote:I don't see a tombstone. The tombstone was inside the house, not a part of the wall. Magnus
OK, I hope you dug it up.
I destroyed mine a year and a half ago. I had planned to jump right in on the next layout, but things kept getting in the way. I hope to have something working in the next month or so, but life is still being insistent.
I fear I was a tad premature. I hope your road is more direct.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
SpaceMouse wrote: I destroyed mine a year and a half ago. I had planned to jump right in on the next layout, but things kept getting in the way. I hope to have something working in the next month or so, but life is still being insistent.I fear I was a tad premature. I hope your road is more direct.
I sure hope that I'm done in two years, atleast with the basic and most elemental things. But as you say, life can take odd ways so it's hard to know. I had to destroy the old one before I could start the new one. I needed the old room to store the wood that I use for heat so I had to start somewhere.
Right now my biggest obstacle is the tons odd crap that the previous owners left. Today I filled an entire pallet with just iron waste. Probably not to far off from a ton! Very annoying.
Magnus, you may have a bit of value there in the metal stock. Phone around and see if someone will give you a few Kroner for your trouble of delivery. Might be worth ten minutes on the phone.
-Crandell
selector wrote: Magnus, you may have a bit of value there in the metal stock. Phone around and see if someone will give you a few Kroner for your trouble of delivery. Might be worth ten minutes on the phone.-Crandell
Crandell, I have considered that. Metal prices are way up. I'm not sure just how "clean" the metal have to be, some of it have pieces of plastic attached to it, some is aluminium, some copper and the majority of course, steel and iron.
But you are right, I will call around and ask. People have been stealing copper from churches around here lately just for the scrap metal price. There is just such a mass of crap!
johncolley wrote:Great! And in the meantime...this is a great oppotunity to check out Fremo and maybe build a module or two. You can have great fun at setups and meet lots of fellow model railroaders! Once hooked you may enjoy it so much you won't care to make the investment in a huge layout. jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA, USA
No modules for me. I'm sure a lot of people enjoy it but I live quite a bit out in the country so I want my own stuff. Plus I'm kind of a lone wolf when it comes to modelling. Going 300 miles to some module meet just isn't in the cards. My wife would kill me!
One of my best friends is coming over next week and we will be working non stop(or until our untrained bodies says NO) from Thursday til Sunday in an effort to have it all done. Since I will be going in and getting all the materials before hand I estimate that a whole lot will be done next week. At a minimum I expect all the exterior walls and the inside floors to be done. That is a minimum! With some luck I will be able to have most of it done by Sunday and bench work building could commence soon there after. One big problem right now is that the insulation I'm planning to use is out of stock, I can get it an other store but it's one dollar extra per square meter. And I need a lot of insulation so that ads up before all is said and done.
jecorbett wrote:Magnus, I am currently on my third layout, each bigger and better than the one before. I began with an island layout in a 10X11 spare bedroom. The next was a dogbone that occupied half my basment in an 11X28 section with a staging yard on the otherside of the dividing wall. My current layout is also a dogbone but goes completely around the outter walls of a 46X26 rectangular basement and the end loops are stacked. Lessons learned from the first two layouts have been put to good use. This time, I began with a clear concept of the freelanced road I wanted to create. The layout design is sound. The benchwork solid. The track work is much better. The structures and scenery also much better. Could it be better still? Of course, but hopefully this is the last one. I'm planning on getting carried out of what I believe is my last home (hopefully not too soon). You never know what life will throw at you and if I was ever forced to leave my current residence, my next layout would be a much smaller effort with more emphasis on craftsmanship. In any case, generally the more often we do things, the better we get at it. I'm sure you will find that to be true as well.
What you are describing is what I'm thinking. I made a lot of mistakes on the first layout. I simply didn't know of a lot of things I now know since I had to spend a lot of time fixing them. But I feel very confident going in for this my second large scale attempt. I did have a 4*8 as a kid and I did build one when I got back in to the hobby two years ago but the one I tore down was built last year and was roughly 9*12 feet. But why I feel so positive is that I did make that work. All those tiny errors which made it an unpleasant experience to begin with was solved before I dismantled it. I had to work hard to iron out those small defects but it was worth it since I now know what to avoid. At the end, despite being subjected to temperatures between -30 degrees Celsius and +30 degrees Celsius the track work was very good. I had no problem running steam engines with 15 of Walthers heavyweights behind them without derailing despite letting them run for perhaps two hours. But it took a lot of hard work to get there, which I expect again but this time I'm going to avoid the worst pitfalls, like turnouts in the middle of a hill and such folly. I'm also building my own turnouts and so on.
An update on the tombstone. It turned out to be the tombstone of my daughters kindergarten teachers grandmas father. She is swinging by tomorrow to pick it up. I really do not like tombstones except in HO scale on my layout.
Today I spent roughly ten minutes on the phone. Seems like I get 25 cents per kilo of scrap metal. If I have a ton, hard to know by the way, I make 250$ from this crap. Only problem is that I have to take it in while I'm doing other things since the profit get all eaten up by gas if I don't.