Hello everyone. I was just looking back at the layouts I've built over the years. My first was only three feet long by two feet wide that I kept under my bed when not in use. This was followed by my second layout that was five feet long by three feet wide. Due to limited space, my current layout is six and a half feet long by three feet wide but with a lot of scenery and things going on to make up for its size. Is there anyone else out there with a small layout?.
I don't even count this in my list of layouts... but after I sold my "dream House", I rented a place in Cape Coral for 7 months. In that time I built a 24" by 48" fully scenicked N scale railroad with three manual turnouts.
.
It kept me busy, and it was fun.
I also built a counter top display layout for "Ricks Hobbies" in Lehigh Acres, FL in the mid 1990's. This was to showcase the offerings of "Fine N Scale" and others. This layout was only 20 inches by 36 inches! I wish I had pictures of either one of these.
Small layouts can be nice.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I have a small train layout that measures roughly 2x4 with a oval track with a siding. It has a scenic divider between desert and a business with a parking garage.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
Small spaces for N scale can give you some really great opportunities to focus on one customer/industry/facility, while still offering decent operations and creative staging.
If I were building say 2 foot by 4 foot in N, I'd be looking for a 50s-60s era, freight terminal with a focus on LCL freight, perhaps REA facility, and a few small industries adjacent to an off-layout passenger depot. Focused on smaller engines and few(er) cars populating the layout, with a heavy focus on scenery and the physical scenes themselves.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
Currently do not have a layout, just a collection of trains, cars, buildings, vegetation and other stuff. When I retire in 2019 or later, I'll pick up a hollow-core door and add some table legs to it, the banquet table type.
Perhaps have a village inside a loop. Off to the right have a main line track run parallel to the door edge and have some type of interchange between it and the loop. The loop would have a small station for passengers & cargo. If the main train receives no indication of passengers or cargo, it would stay on the main track bypassing the station and not stopping.
The village would not have street lights or sidewalks by the street. There would be a haunted house, a UFO landing site, several compost outhouses and a community water tower with blinking light on top. Villagers would travel via bicycles, golf carts & Segways (these items are quite small in N). Cars would be parked in central parking lot and a city bus would be available (perhaps twice weekly) for those wanting to get groceries or visit a doctor. Now to find people dressed as Native Americans in ceremonial clothing and people in renaissance clothing.
I have a small apartment and plan on throwing out books, video & music and other non-essentials. My other hobbies include sewing clothes & computer animation.
Back in 2000 I started building a small N scale using the Woodland Scenics kit. I used it as a learning opportunity, using foam, scenicing, etc. After many moves and years in bad storage, I just tore it down, saved a mountain/tunnel and am building a small (2' x 3') layout. My modeling time is limited, so this is giving me some satisfaction as I plan the larger HO layout.
Have fun with your trains
marksrailroadIs there anyone else out there with a small layout?.
Well,I'm working on a HO 1' x 12' ISL if that counts.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I thought of another one.
1940s-1960s 7 foot by 1 foot branch line with a station and ramp, stock yard, and a cement distributor. Probably an add-on turntable with two tracks.
It will have a country road with rows of corn and maybe three buildings for a town.
I made a small N scale layout on a hollow core door, approximately 2 x 7. It was featured in the September issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist.
http://cprailmmsub.blogspot.ca/2017/08/thompson-river-canyon-in-model-railroad.html
John Longhurst, Winnipeg
My first layout as well was 3 foot by 2 foot. I was only eight years old. I had those cheesy little white green and gray styrofoam tunnels.
I went back to the alley in the back of my house and got some sand and glued it down to the outside of my tracks and stained it with some of my dads stain and that was ballast.
That was the same layout I would see how fast my grandfather's gift of the bicentennial Seaboard Coast locomotive would go around the curves and fly off across the room.
Still have that Seaboard Coast. It don't work, but it still looks like what my grandfather gave me.
How small do you want to have it?
Some years ago, I built a mini-modular layout, with each module measuring not more than 6" by 12". The modulkes werte linked to each other only by Kato´s Unitrack rail joiners, which formed a sufficient bond as well as electrical connectivity.
Some pictures of the modules I built:
The individual modules could be set up on a table to form a layout. This took only a couple of minutes!
PukkaNow to find people dressed as Native Americans in ceremonial clothing and people in renaissance clothing.
Not sure from your post if you were serious or not... but just for the information...
Period miniatures of all sorts are available as "10mm scale wargaming miniatures". These are pretty much spot on for N scale. There are figures available for Ancient, Napoleanic, Victorian, Antebellum, and Old West periods of you look for them. Even civilian characters are available for many periods.
These figures will be bare metal, so you will need to be good with a small brush, but this will solve your search issues. Nn3 modelers have been using these as a resource for years.