I've posted some progress photos of my layout beginning with the empty room to today. The link is at the bottom of this post. As you'll see if you visit, I'm no expert for sure... but I'm having a heck of a lot of fun. I started building in July of this year, so have made quite a lot of progress in a short time.
I'm a "Railfan" not operations oriented guy, so as you'll see I've crammed lots of track into the room at the expense of realism, and wide aisles, but with the benefit of lots of trains. Hope it's fun for you to look at!
Nice work. Good feel for scenery. Like me, it appears you like to see the trains run through "your" world.
Nice presentation in photobucket. Thanks for sharing.
Amazing. I started my layout about 1 year ago also. It is my first one. I am humbled by looking at your layout. All that work. And great work I should add. Where did you get the time? Well I'll keep your layout in mind as I continue on mine. Great work. Also it was a fantastic idea to photograph work as it progressed.
Tom
Wow, nice selection of photos. You've really been busy on this. I've been going for a year and a half now, and you're way further along than I am.
Done too soon? Well, after I'm "finished" with my layout, I'm going to selectively substitute buildings, vehicles and trains to put my railroad back 30 or 40 years.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
hmm
thats some big track
looks like o gauge
in that photo!!!
wow you realy got some work done there
and I see quit a bit of money spent ...
but I looks great
K
Hard to believe you did all that in such a short time !
In Photo 27, "Lit Control Panel", you say that the yard area is very cluttered visually. I tend to agree and have this suggestion : Would you consider using bi-coloured LEDs instead ? You would halve the number of lights and clean up the look while having the same functionality of the red-green indicators. Instead of a red LED and a green LED for each turn-out, you'd have only one. That should make the yard area far less confusing for you.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Thanks, everyone for the nice comments. Lots of folks asking where I found the time: I'm a self-employed software developer (my main piece of software is a music scheduler for the the radio industry), and I work out of my home... so lately when the phone's not ringing I'm in the layout room. Sometimes I'm even doing tech support on the headset while I'm working on the layout. Plus I've obviously been quite obsessed with the whole thing.
By the way, thanks too, that no one busted me for the un-proto-typical-ness of it (I already knew that). I'm just here for fun -- not really that big on modeling a particular railroad name or era or industry... maybe sometime in the future that will matter more to me.
Mr. Beasley -- when I say I'm "done too soon" I know I'm far from done... but I am kinda done with the parts that are most fun to me: design, benchwork, roadbed & track, wiring. The scenery stuff is less satisfying for me. I need to add some electronic projects, I guess.
Timothy -- thanks for the thought on red/green LEDs. I may re-do the control panel at some point and that would clean up the yard section a lot. I built the control panel on a stand alone console with a 4-foot cable to it with the console on wheels so I could move it around. In actual use, that all turns out to be quite useless, so I may re-do it.
Thanks again, all!
Trevor,
You're right. It's a bucket load of money. And, of course, I do have it all catalogued in my Yard Office software so I do know how much I've spent, but I'm too embarrassed to mention the figure in public.
I didn't spend it all in three months, though. The layout I'm showing is my new one. I started building in N scale two years ago, and quickly grew tired of its "smallness." So I sold what I had on e-bay and built an HO Layout over the subsequent year and a half. For me, HO is much, much more satisfying.
As I built and spent time here at trains.com, I was learning so much that I finally got to the point that I wanted to start over and try to do a better job using what I've learned here. So this summer I bit the bullet and tore down my trains to begin what is pictured at the link below. I now have essentially no derailments.
From this forum, I've learned:
Well, that just scratches the surface. But learning all that made me want to start over... and I'm so pleased with the fact that I did.
Oh, and advice I haven't been able to follow (yet?):