On High Level Layout Planning

My blog is a testament that I've been no stranger to rushing into layouts without planning them all the way through.  When I wrote about lessons learned from the last layout, one of the lessons I mentioned was...

A layout's theme is much less important than the time and money on hand.

What I meant by that is, it's very easy to get swept away in the romance of the scenery or feeling of a certain railroad, and to build up in one's mind that anything less would somehow result in an uninteresting or boring layout.  Part of the reason I built the modern shelf layout last year was that I wanted to take something which I felt was the most boring, the modern era, and see if it turned out to be boring from a modeling stand point.  The answer was, not really.  The locomotives and rolling stock were still neat to operate and watch slowly crawling along the track.

Regarding my upcoming finished basement, I want to avoid as much as possible falling into this trap; the trap of thinking that only the most romantic of railroad ideas will do.  I'm sure you've noticed I've been building PBL's Sn3 kits lately.  Those kits are fantastic.  I really like PBL and Sn3.  Is Sn3 a possibility for a basement layout?  Yes, but it's not a slam dunk.

If I had to guess, I'd say we'd maybe be in our house for maybe another 5 years.  When you're not retired, I feel it's rather difficult to plan for anything much farther out than 5 years.  It might turn out we are here for more or less.  However, 5 years seems reasonable.  Given that, I've set a goal regarding the basement layout:  Whatever layout I build needs to be "mostly" done in 2.5 years.  By mostly done I mean 75% of the rolling stock is present and in finished condition, 100% of structures roughed in with 75% of them finished, and 100% of the base scenery roughed in.

With time as the main driver, I identified the three big things that time must be spent on for a layout:

1. Research and planning
2. Building infrastructure (benchwork, track, wiring, etc.)
3. Building rolling stock / structures

Research and planning are where I suspect a lot of people steal time from, however I am convinced (through my own mistakes) that research and planning are the key element to a successful layout, so they cannot be skipped.  For everyone, time is always fixed, so the real question is, what percentage of the time available is spent on these three?

The challenges I see with Sn3, or most narrow gauge scales for that matter, is that

1. Research is harder as narrow gauge tended to be more obscure
2. Almost everything must be built, either by kit or scratchbuilt

"Almost everything must be built" can't be taken lightly.  I recently wrote a post about determining the number of cars needed for a railroad.  If I was to attempt to build an Sn3 layout to fill the 10x19 room I have, I would need around 50 cars.  At my current rate of building them, that would be over 4 years of constant car building to get to that number, leaving no time for anything else.  That's not realistic and would break my goal of 2.5 years.

Freelancing vs. proto-lancing vs. prototype modeling also come in here.  When prototype modeling, there are some fantastic books out there that document real railroads extensively.  An investment of $100-200 in a few books and DVDs can literally solve the "research and planning" part, with maybe a month or so of reading to get up to speed.  On the other extreme, freelancing requires quite a bit of time and understanding to get all the pieces involved and make sure it's all plausible.

Lastly, there is the issue of layout complexity.  Things like multi-decks, hidden staging, curved fascias, valances, helixes, and even grade changes all add to the complexity of building things.  A single-level midwest or industrial switching layout, for example, with no grade changes is far simpler to build than a colorado narrow gauge layout with rising and falling mountains and valleys or a long mainline railroad with helixes and two decks.

Given all that, I took the handful of layout concepts I had, and put them to the test.  I've ordered these in order of "know the most about" to "know the least about".

Concept #1: Bass Lake

A proto-lanced Sn3 layout based on the Nevada County Narrow Gauge and Lake Tahoe Railroad.  All rolling stock would be kit built, locomotives would be re-geared/re-motored brass, all structures would be scratchtbuilt.  This would need to be a small layout by pure necessity of not being able to build enough rolling stock/structures, making the size something in the range of a 2 ft. deep shelf by 14 to 16 ft. long.

Concept #2: Bush Terminal

The urban grittiness of Bush Terminal in NYC with it's thick industry and unique car floats has always been interesting to me.  Though I haven't extensively researched it, with a 1950's era I suspect a good portion of rolling stock in HO could be available in RTR or near RTR.  Locomotives could either be off-the-shelf first generation diesels or re-geared brass locomotives of specific prototypes.  Given the lack of grade, this could probably be a decent sized shelf layout consisting of two shelves separated by an aisle.  The complexity would be in the increased amount of track required.

Concept #3:  Traction Freight

The unique overhead wires and trolley poles or pantographs make traction a breed of it's own.  While most traction was used for passenger traffic, there were a few interesting traction freight operations around the country, including a couple noteworthy ones:  Pacific Electric, Southshore Line, Illinois Terminal Railway, and Sacramento Northern.  Whatever the line, this layout would be built as an industrial switcher in the ala "Lance Mindheim " style.  There would be little to no grade with possible an unsceniced staging.

This layout could be built one of two ways, either a mid-sized HO layout or a small Proto:48 shelf layout.  Proto 48?  Yeah, why not?  Traction and O scale have a long history and doing all the overhead wiring and such would just look fantastic in O scale.  Rolling stock would likely have to be kit built, thus making this on the smaller side, perhaps even smaller than the Sn3 option.

Alternately this could be built in the "minimalism" style with a single "main line" track and several spurs shooting off to industries along the way, perhaps even in a "domino" style.

???

Concept #4: Steam Era Shortline

This is the "compromise" layout.  The layout of "I want something like Bass Lake in Sn3 but can't spend the time building everything".  There is a decent enough selection of steam era cars in HO and I'm sure there are interesting prototype steam engines in HO as well, whether in plastic/diecast or brass.  Many steam shortlines have all the same charm as their narrow gauge counter parts, just with a slightly wider gauge so little might be lost in this regard.

There is likely some layout complexity here, with possible grades, bridges and the like.

Returning to what I started this blog post with, a layout's theme is much less important than the time and money available.  I have a decision to make:  how large of a layout do I want?  Depending on what size layout I want to shoot for, it will most likely dictate my theme.

I believe the themes ordered according to layout size would be:

• Bush Terminal (10x19, dual shelf with aisle)
• Steam Era Shortline (curving mid-size)
• Bass Lake (long shelf)
• Traction Freight (small shelf)

Hmmm... decisions, decisions.  I think the next order of business is to investigate the rolling stock availability for both Bush Terminal and Steam Era Shortline, and actually see what is available.