Model railroad layouts plans

Peter’s been in touch with his suspended train track:

“Hi Alistair.

Starting a new venture with HO scale trains. Had plenty of room in NJ basement for the O gauge, but when I moved to FL, alas, no basement. So, I had to sell all of my O gauge trains.

Having seller’s remorse, I decided to go with HO having a smaller footprint but the problem was where to put it? What room could I use to have a 12′ x 8′ layout?

The garage of course, but the motorcycle and car needed housing also.

Solution: Build a platform and raise it to the ceiling when not needed. I built a 12′ x 8 foot frame out of aluminum to keep the weight down instead of using wood.

The base used was 2″ Styrofoam 4′ x 8′ sheets. Glued them to the aluminum and painted them green to start.

I used a 110v electric winch and pulleys to raise and lower the platform. Bolted to the concrete side wall and used twisted cable rated at 600 lbs. to make sure the load would be carried.

However, the winch lifting this light a load moved very fast and would hit the garage floor with a vigorous thump moving the cars and accessories all over the place. I needed to slow it down.

Solution: Hydraulic shocks. But car shocks were designed for heavy weight. Found the answer at Ace hardware; bicycle pumps. Removing the handles, I attached them upside down to the 4 legs of the table.

I inserted a valve system that I could adjust to limit the amount of air being released thus slowing the touchdown. It now takes about 57 seconds to travel the final 6 inches or so and saving the location of the trains components.

Now starting to lay tracks and building a subway system in the center.

I easily cut out access points in the styro to get to the middle of the layout when needed. Will plan a farm or something that can be easily moved from under the table without disturbing the diorama. Pictures will be sent as I continue further.

Peter”

A big thanks to Peter for sharing his suspended train track – there’s been quite a few over the years:

Joe’s suspended train layout

Paco’s ceiling train track

Now on to Hall of Fame member, Rob:

“Hi Al,

I have a new style tree for your audience today. It is more of a deciduous design this time.

I put the foliage on in a different way so the structure of the tree is more visible.

I am fairly pleased with the result. Because it was the first one built this way it took a bit longer than really needed.

It looks pretty good on the layout overhanging the road.

Rob”

(You can see Rob’s last post on making trees for your layout here.)

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you pick the hobby back up, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Greg from Florida has been in touch – he’s been having fun with his lionel O gauge layout:

“Hi Al!

I love the pics, tips and videos. I have been watching for years.

It has been a while since I did a YouTube video of my trains. You posted my last one titled, “Dads Trains 2015 Director’s Cut”.

We did that video before we sold the house and moved to our new house.

We moved in 2016 and it took until 2020 to plan and collect the materials to start the new layout.

My wife and Daughter bought me AnyRail to plan the layout on the computer. With the ease of creating plans on the computer I must have done a dozen plans before settling on one.

Just before the lock down of 2020, I had the bench work built in pieces in my garage. I was planning on clearing my office space and installing it on Spring Break. Then I would have the rest of the year to get some trains running. Then lock down came and I built the whole thing in about 4 weeks working 8 and 10 hours a day on it.

The new video journal is in two parts. I have found watching videos that four to five minutes into a video I start skipping forward to the end. So I wanted to keep my videos at around four minutes.

Part 1 is the build. Part 2 is trains running.

The room is my office and music room. It is 9 x 11. Most of the track is Lionel. The remodeled upper level is Menards track.

The desk is on wheels so I can lay my monitor down and push the desk under the bench work to get to the back corners of the layout.

Everything is on wheels so I can move stuff out from under the bench work when I need to use it and back.

The control center rolls in and out across the entrance to the room.

A lift out for the trains slides under the bench work for storage when not in use.

The empty train boxes are stored in Rubbermaid tubs under the bench work.

This is my second “shelf” layout so I improved several things. I created long spans with 2×4’s to make it easier to store things under the bench work.

I pre-drilled holes in the bench work out in the garage for the wiring to keep the mess down in the house. I ran the bus wire loops around the layout before I installed the top plywood.

I made all the connections from the controls to the bus wires on the back of the rolling control center so I wouldn’t have to lay on my back under the layout.

My son, Alan, and I had such great fun making these videos. I had fun building the layout. My daughter had fun making the brick and rock face for the subway and tunnels. My nine year old granddaughter enjoys adding lego people and running the trains with me.

And isn’t that what this hobby is about?

This video is just having some fun watching the trains with some great music and some fun editing. It was filmed with a cheap version of a gopro knock off.

The video and music editing was done with a free version of Microsoft Movie Maker.

The POV clips were done by mounting a small flashlight to a flat car with some small blocks of wood to mount the camera on top of the flashlight. Then we pushed the flat car in front of the engine.

You will see it worked great except for one time. We left that fail in the video because we laughed so hard when it happened. Ah, the magic of movie making.

I hope my Lionel O gauge gives folks who think they don’t have room for 3 rail trains some good ideas.

I would be honored if you find them post worthy.

Enjoy,

Greg from Florida, USA”

A big thanks to Greg for sharing his Lionel O Gauge – we’ve had a run of Lionel trains recently.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And please don’t forget the Beginner’s Guide is here if you want to get going on your own model railroad adventure.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

Doug’s sent in some pics of his Lionel train layout.

Some of you will remember Doug from his Lionel train set post.

Well, quite a few comments on that post asked, “Where are the trains?”

So Rob’s sent in some pics of his trains running.

It does look lihe he’s having a lot of fun:

“Al

Having read the wonderful comments I thought perhaps I could answer the few who seemed to be missing out on my trains them selves as my grandsons had been using the table to run their own units, I had not thought to put any of mine on the tracks to take pictures.

So now I have taken pictures of each that I own, hooked up to a few cars to my Lionel train layout to make it look better.

Douglas”

A huge big thanks to Douglas for sharing his Lionel train layout pics.

Here’s his first Lionel layout post if you missed it.

As you’ll see, he has quite a collection going on.

There something about Lionel trains that captures the imagination – it seems that the older they are, the better they are. But I think you could say that about lots of things.

That’s all for this post!

As always, the the Beginner’s Guide is here if you want get going on your very own layout.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.