Model Railroader's Rice Harbor Layout

My January 2014 issue of Model Railroader magazine arrived today, and the cover story is another MR project layout, "Rice Harbor".  For the most part, MR's project layouts generally don't appeal to me in the least bit, however this one struck a chord.  No doubt it's probably the beautiful harbor scene that's featured on the cover, but the addition of a few industries and a car float make it a particularly interesting layout with some hopefully operational potential.

And it can be configured for either an oval (continuous run) or L-shape (point-to-point) depending on your preference.  I actually think this latter part is a rather understated feature.  If a new model railroader were to build it in a true split design, it would really allow the exploration of continuous vs. point-to-point.

I'm not going to talk at length about the layout itself.  If this looks interesting to you go buy the magazine.  It's not that expensive.  The January issue only "introduces" the layout and we'll probably see the next 5 or 6 magazines have installments in the series I'm supposing.

What I was interested in is the cost.  After all, South Carolina in the 1930's isn't exactly my prime taste, but if I did happen to be interested in building the layout what would it cost me?  Or what would it cost you if you were looking for a fun entry into the hobby?  As an aside, I'm actually a bit disappointed that MR never mentions an approximate cost.  I suspect there would be some excuse about people may choose different levels of finish, etc, etc, but at a minimum having a basic concept of cost for essentials like benchwork, track, and electrical would be helpful.

In any case, I sat down this evening and did a bit of research to come up with a ballpark number.  The two biggest spending categories are track (the layout features a few curved turnouts and a 90 ft turntable), along with rolling stock.

There are a total of 14 turnouts and 12 structures.  These represent around 4 or 5 industries and about 20 unique car spots from what I can count.  I doubled the number of unique car spots to end up with an approximate quantity of how many rolling stock pieces would be needed to keep things interesting.  Note that at any one time all 40 would never be on the layout at once, but to keep things flowing and for variety sake that's what I'm thinking would be nice to have.  Obviously that number could be reduced early on for a cost savings, and the rolling stock collection built up over time.

Here are my numbers:

Benchwork     $100
Track     $725
Electrical    $50
Structures    $420   (assuming an average cost of $35/kit)
Locomotives (2)    $250
Rolling Stock (40)    $600
Scenery    $150
Misc Details     $100
Total   $2400

You could begin lean by only starting with 1 engine, a dozen cars, which would bring the layout cost down to under $1900.  This puts the cost-per-square foot of the layout at around $44 on the low side and $55 on the high side, depending on how fancy you want to get from the start.

In any case, I think this is a much more interesting layout than the average 4x8 and even at $2500 there would be a lot of operational potential and fun building opportunities on it.  I might just have to consider building one myself.  Maybe.

Probably not actually, but it's still an interesting thought.