The Last 4 Months

I've been doing a lot of modeling and reading but not blogging lately.  In fact, it's been almost 4 months since my last post.  Instead of writing a 20-page blog post about what's been going on, I plan to do smaller posts over the next few weeks to cover some of my projects.

During late January I began reading Lance Mindheim's two blogs.  I also purchased and read two of Lance's books, "How to Build a Switching Layout" and "How to Operate A Modern Era Switching Layout".  Being a primarily narrow gauge modeller, all of this reading was well and outside the scope of what I typically would be reading.

However, I think being exposed to other areas of the hobby that one does not frequent can always be the source of new ideas and inspiration.  What drew me to Lance's writing was his almost obsession with simplicity and his vast knowledge of intricate operations.

Regarding the simplicity part, Lance offered a few approaches that were just dead simple.  So simple in fact, that I decided to try them.  I built a small shelf layout 12 ft. by 15 inches.  It's unscenicked but completely functional.

The layout is built on two closet doors, 15" wide, and supported by a 2-rail shelf system from the local hardware store.  The ease of which this went together was quite amazing.

The upper valance is supported by, you guessed it, two closet doors, 18" wide, again supported by the same shelf system.  The valance itself is simply 1/4" masonite, painted dark gray, and affixed using industrial strength velcro.  I went with velcro as it allows me to detach it if I need to work on something and it's in my way.

The entire layout is 12 feet long and composed of a single turnout.  A single turnout?  Yes, just one.  Lance's theory on layout design is that operational interest isn't controlled by the number of turnouts, but the number of unique car spots.  On my layout the single turnout leads to a siding which has 5 unique car spots -- 3 are for warehouse doors and 2 are for tanks.  This would be a configuration that might be found at a food manufacturer, where the doors receive raw ingredients like rice or flour, and the tanks receive vegetable oil or something similar.

I spent about 30 to 40 minutes every night for 2 weeks operating this layout.  For such a simple thing it's rather interesting.  The availability of super-detailed cars in HO scale for relatively affordable prices is also amazing.  As the layout is set in the late 1990's it was a chance for me to catch up on what's happening with railroading now'a'days.

Having at least something to show guests as to an operating railroad is also nice.  And that one turnout that's on the layout -- yeah, it's powered by a tortoise switch machine which just adds a fun little touch.

Overall the layout took about 4 days to build and in total cost around $400, not including the DCC system I already had.

The biggest surprise to the layout has actually come from my wife.  She hadn't seen the layout much and one evening I bought her down to the basement to see it in person.  After explaining the different parts of the layout and the train, I gave her the DCC controls and let her play the role of engineer while I played the role of conductor.  We did a simple 15 minute operating session.

And now for the big surprise.  A week after this took place she said to me, "When are you going to add buildings to the layout?  It was fun to drive the train but it would be funner if there were buildings."

Now there's something I wasn't expecting...