Professional track planning $$$ ???

[gvdobler]

The track planning thread brought up a question.

Does anyone know how much the big names charge and what do they include for their fee, to design a layout of say 500-800 square feet in HO.

Jon - Las Vegas

[Anonymous]

I personally don't have a clue what current professionals might charge, but do have some indirect experience. A friend of mine had a very large O scale layout designed by the late great John Armstrong. I was amazed at how complete the plans were - elevations at all points, centers of track curves, local place names, etc. I asked my friend how much he paid for the plans and he told me $500.00. This was probably 15 years ago and may or may not have any relevance to today's prices.

My friend never did get to use the track plan, as they later had some water in the basement of their home. To fix it properly would have meant digging up the foundation on the side of the house that their pool was located, so they did not bother. He later had a separate building made to house his layout.

Bob Boudreau

[jrbernier]

Good topic! I have a friend with a John Armstrong custom design track plan for his basement. Never bothered to ask him how much he paid for it(maybe 10 years ago, and it is in the track planning annual from several years back). I know the late owner of Champ Decals(Rich Meyer) had John design his 'O' scale Great Northern layout as well.
I suspect the current crop of custom layout builders might qoute you a price for just the track plan/drawings if you did not want it custom built. The nice thing about Armstrong's designs were that they actually were designed for operation!

Jim Bernier

[IRONROOSTER]

IIRC John Armstrong once wrote that the price of the custom design was about the price of a brass locomotive.
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

I'm kinda happy to see this thread! My expirence with "professional" designs hasn't been to favorable. Most don't want to do the design without a layout build as well. One fellow even told me that I'd never be able to build the layout as well as he could...I think he must have missed the hobby aspect of model railroading.

I have a small room (9.5'x10') that i have had a terrible time trying to come up with a trackplan that would keep me interested in it, but still have the room fairly accessible for other family members. If anyone out there hears of someone will to still do design work please post it!