The Last Layout

 In any new project like this, there are always other stakeholders who need to be on board with what we do and can often help with great ideas. That's what's going on now!  Negotiations are well under way with my wife and she's really helped me along by stepping back and looking at the project as a whole as well as specific individual things. First item is the environment.  My dream was to have a new "room" with finished walls and ceiling where you'd be sucked into the railroad environment as soon as you walked in.  That would have needed sheetrock, electrical changes, paint and a very tall backdrop that helped you feel you wee actually "in the layout".  I did realize that the dream was under threat when I couldn't get anyone to do the sheet-rocking.  What I didn't do was step all the way away from the dream and create a railroad room rather than something that could become habitable without a lot of change if I ever stopped railroading.  Thi

I have the layout room cleared now to the point where I could start benchwork for the new layout but I'm scared to start. Why?  I've been changing the design for  the   track layout, benchwork and electronic control constantly the past two or three weeks.  I've been "drilling down" into more detail on all of them and finding  that   either I can make improvements or I need to make corrections. I do have a little more clearing to do. I have one final piece of bench work and some wall boards to take down but that'll only take me an hour or so plus another hour to clean up.  I've decided not to sheetrock the room but to use lightweight plywood and paint it - way less costly and easier.  In a month, I haven't even managed to get someone to quote on the sheetrock so I don't hold much hope I'd get it done for a reasonable price.  Besides, I don't really want to wait and I can't do the sheetrock myself. There is some framing to be done but Mik

In this post, I'll deal with how I plan to control the trains and the lighting on the layout itself. I'm putting a lot of thinking into the electronics for the layout.  In the past, I've been very casual about wiring.  I've run bus wires underneath the last 4 layouts for train power and accessories but have pretty much left lighting to chance or used the same circuit as for the accessories.  This time, I'm going to plan better and have wiring that is properly designed and documented and is something I'll be proud to show people. I have both Lionel and MTH locomotives and I want to continue being able to make that choice.  A basic CAB1 will control the Lionel locos; an MTH Explorer will control three of the MTH locos - t his is a small layout after all.  In later phases, I may add one or more ASCs for TMCC to control track switches.  If I find the MTH explorer too limiting, I can always upgrade to a full-function TIU.  It will be possible to have three operators

In my last post, the focus was on the track plan.  Of course, the track plan is a primary driver in the satisfaction I'll get from running trains.  There are many other things that will affect that in a less major way, though.  I'll deal with current thinking on a couple of them here and get to the others later. The railroad room itself To date, the railroad room, as it's known in our house, is unfinished.  Much of the rest of the basement was finished already by the builder before we moved in 25 years ago. In the railroad room, the ceiling is bare rafters with the plumbing and wiring exposed; the walls are bare studs with fiberglass in between and thin poly-sheeting stapled over it.  Where I wanted display shelves, I tacked up some sheets of Luan plywood and screwed the shelves in front of them.  They're unpainted.  I have a semblance of a backdrop made of white-painted 1/4" hardboard below the Luan plywood to a height of about two feet. Electrical supply is a non

I started the notion of a new layout back in the fall of 2020 after months cooped  up by the pandemic and needing an outlet for my non-work energy.  I first thought of returning to HO but quickly rejected it because it's too small and fiddly for my aging hands and I've become used to the simplicity of AC vs. the DC/DCC combination used for HO.  I started out looking for O-Scale switching layouts on the internet.   If you search for "switching" or "shelf" layouts on the internet,  you won't go far without bumping into Inglenook and Timesaver, classic designs from the 60s for switching puzzles.  I've always been fascinated by John Allen's Timesaver puzzle and wanted to incorporate it into a layout.  (Note there are prototype enthusiasts who believe this is a bad idea since it would never be implemented in real life - the switching is way too complex). There's a diagram below of the original Timesaver.  Fortunately, I have enough space that I co

I'm going to interrupt the history here to start my account of building the new layout.  I'm getting behind on my posts while I'm distracted by documenting history and that's not a good thing! Preparations for the new layout began in earnest starting in early November, 2020.  I followed three separate workstreams in parallel: Selling most of my Lionel Postwar collection Dismantling the Postwar layout. Planning the new layout Selling my Lionel Postwar rolling stock and accessories Son Zachary had been influencing me to move to Lionel Postwar  from Railking  equipment and had been buying his own trains from shows for about a year when in 2015 I decided to join him. I'll say more about how great that was in a later post.  Needless to say, with both of us into Postwar, our collections grew pretty rapidly. By November of 2020, my inventory had grown to over 270 pieces of rolling stock and accessories.  Zachary owned the track having made a deal with me when we converted

My first couple of layouts were just toys for me and a hoped-for way to engage with my sons.  They were used only casually - built, operated for a while and then left alone till it was time to move house.  I've tried to pull lessons-learned from each of my layouts so as I move forward, I don't make the same mistakes again. As I read through, afterward though, most of these lessons could have been avoided if I had only read and researched more.  The design and operating mistakes seem very elementary now as I look back. I need to be able to run at least one train continuously.  That first layout in the garage in the 70s was a simple point-to-point because I had no room for anything else.  Homes in that part of England have no basements and since the roof timbers are supporting concrete tiles, the attic wasn't an option. We didn't have a spare bedroom either with two kids in a three bedroom house.  So the garage was it.  I soon learned that I go bored just switching - oh

  How we got here This is the story of the final model railroad I expect to build.  It will be the 7th of my "career", spanning 45 years.  This first post tells the history of that career from the first days in England until now.  Most of this blog will be about the final layout but it gives me an opportunity to share some of my experiences and thinking about model railroads over my whole history.  I've learned a lot but never got close to finishing a layout.  It's taught me what I like and what I want, though. But I'm still a rookie and I'll need to learn a lot more if I'm to meet my goals with this layout.   More about that later.  First, some history! Layout 1 - GWR This is the little locomotive that started it all for me in England in 1975.  Its a Great Western Railway 0-6-0 Saddle Tank engine ,  It may be one of the most popular "N" scale locomotives in the UK.  The GWR was the romantic  dream of young railfan kids in the UK in the late 20t