"The Man Cave" (aka Train Room)

To complete my overview of my process to build a layout (see this post...WARNING: I'm an amateur and just trying to have fun...the clinic on L-girder construction can be found elsewhere! :-) ), here - at last - is where all the action happens: My garage! I'm fortunate enough at this point in life to have a home (and a wife who supports!) where I am able to carve out the 3rd stall in our 3 car garage for my 'train room'. My father-in-law helped me build a wall to separate the 'train room' from the cars and other stuff, which means its a relatively nice space for the trains. We don't live in the driest climate here in the Pacific Northwest, but winters are moderate and a couple of space heaters help to keep the garage warm and the local electric utility in the black through the winter. Like a lot of folks, I dream of a basement or other 'real' space, but I've actually come to enjoy the 'solitude' and peace that comes with having a place to do 'train stuff' away from the home (plus, I can leave my junk out on things I'm working on and not worry about any complaints about the mess!)

N Scale Layout construction overview

Now that most of the scenery and all the major construction is complete, I thought I would create one post that sort of summarized, in an appropriate chronological order, the steps I took to build and create my N Scale layout.

1. The Plan. As everyone who has ever contemplated building a layout has confronted, there are many questions and decisions to be made about your layout plan, all of which are constrained by the physical space you have to build a layout and whether or not the layout will need to be somewhat portable, temporary, or permanent. The below posts share some of my experiences with my first layout, which was essentially two ovals with a couple of sidings. The third post talks about the new plan, of which most posts on this blog are focused on.
•My current track plan and the software I used.
•My original, single 'hollow core' door N Scale layout
•Thoughts and perspective on my first layout, and what I wanted to improve. Maybe some similar things your are thinking about, and how my thinking evolved.
•The expansion from a single hollow core door to a 'double door' layout.


2. Where to put the layout. This is really about the physical constraints or the location where your layout will be located. My layout is located in an extra stall in my garage, but the plan and solution for the table -which needed to be both semi-portable and adjustable to adapt to the sloping elevation of a garage floor- are as suitable for an indoor room or basement layout. Mostly, this is about the benchwork I created to support and keep level a hollow core door layout using two doors.

3. Putting the layout foundation together. Once you have a plan (and the track to create that plan), and a suitably level 'table area' to start your layout, its time to start adding all that track and scenery.
•My approach, based on some less than desirable past experiences, keeps the track away from all the messy glue and landscaping material and takes advantage of the Unitrack track system by Kato to ensure flawless track operations.
•I also provide some general thoughts on my Kato Unitrack experience here, which might be helpful in your planning process.
•Some thoughts on the connectors used in the Kato Unitrack track system here if you are thinking of finding similar connectors to make the other electrical connections on your layout similarly 'plug and play' as the Kato connectors.

4. Scenery. I found the scenery process for this layout one of the most enjoyable parts of it, which surprised me. The reason for this was I removed all the track (mostly) from the layout for this process (see this post if you missed my strategy on this) which allowed me to go to town using all sorts of techniques without worrying about gumming up pricey switches!
• Adding rocks. If your plan considers some sort of mountainsides, the time to add rocks is before any grass or foliage is applied. My approach was the standard 'Woodland Scenics' process.
• Adding grass. I 'discovered' a method of applying the standard grass flocking material that was much more satisfying than other methods. The quick explanation is combining white glue and acrylic paints, then sprinkle on your flocking material. You get a good base color and solidly adhered flocking material without having to spray a ton of dilated glue mixture everywhere.
• Adding foliage. "Foliage" is a type of meshed ground cover that is more commonly used in layout scenery in Europe, but using the above technique I found great results with this type of product.
• Miscellaneous. Do you have need for a bridge that does not have any sort of commercially available solution? Build your own!

5. Put the track down and run trains! Again, since I did all the scenery without the track on the layout, this was the fun part!

Benchwork Plan

Before there was any scenery....before there was any track...before there were any lights, there was....the BENCHWORK (or TABLE or FRAME, etc...)!!!! Clearly (to me), one of the least interesting (in my opinion) but necessary, critical, life-sustaining (I kid!) and ultimately, impactful aspects of the hobby is what you run your trains on! Hey, we're all grown ups now, and we deserve a place where we don't have to put our 'toys' away every time we're done playing!

The reality is that I expect most of us modelers are a long way from getting a 'dream room' where we can build exactly what we want to our hearts content. This was my challenge. So before the present layout got built, it was fairly obvious that this was going to be a 'garage layout'. These other human beings that live with me have selfishly procured the nicest parts of the home for their own needs. Ahhh well.....

In addition to being in the garage, I also wanted a layout that was fairly portable and would be relatively easy to transport if we were to move in the next couple of years. I have painful experiences with this, before I got into N Scale, I had an O scale layout that was a 'permanent' L-girder sort of construct in the garage. Of course, a potential move a couple of years ago required the demolition of several years of work. Never again! (and we never did end up moving! Arg!)

One of the first questions I had to resolve was how to make this (portable) layout level? Beyond the basic requirements of sturdiness, height, size, etc... a garage presents a particular challenge not found in the house in terms of making it level (well, most houses anyway, are somewhat level). Most garage floors have a slope to them so that water and dirt carried in from outside goes back out to the driveway. While the grade is not noticeable when humans (like us) are standing on it or walking on it; at N Scale those little ore cars will go racing down the layout like its the Indy 500. An 'off the shelf' workbench or shelving unit would require some rudimentary, and probably not very good, modifications, but would also limit what I could do in terms of dimensions and so forth.

Another factor influencing my plan, was my intention to use a hollow door as the table top. I knew that L-girder was out (too much work and not portable) and the inexpensive, lightweight attributes of the hallowed hollow door approach have some nice benefits (and some drawbacks, which I will save for another post).

With those challenges in mind, I set out on my 'plan' (less a plan than an evolution of various random and half-baked ideas).

For my original N scale layout, which was just a single 36" x 80" hollow-core door, a simple wooden saw horse picked up for $20 at the local hardware store sufficed for the support. The sawhorse was an adequate solution, though far from ideal as the layout was too low to the floor at about 26" (most modelers and magazines talk about layout height and that a layout is 'nicest' at 'eye level', which I think is generally true. Looking down from too high up makes you feel like you're flying over the layout. Which sounds cool, but isn't). A single door is also convenient as its VERY portable due to its low weight and rigidity.

However, after a few months I decided that I wanted more track, more scenery, more, more, MORE!!! (you get the idea!)... and the single door was just not going to cut it. I decided to move up to a 'double door' (end to end) arrangement with my 'v.2' layout.

This presented a portability challenge, and adding more saw horses would not provide the necessary stability and rigidity to hold two doors end to end at the right level.

So, I came up with a plan that was loosely based on some framing ideas for some cheap, do-it-yourself type of work benches I found online.

The plan is basically 3 identical frames built out of 2"x4" lumber. Both the vertical and horizontal lengths are 36". The two end frames are placed on opposite ends of the two doors, and the 3rd frame supports the 'connection' point where the two doors come to together (this center one has the 2x4 laid on its side to provide as much area as possible to support the weight of the board and secure the two doors to the frame).


A big influence in the design of the plan (I use the word 'design' here loosely!) was a solution I found to answer the challenge of my sloping garage floor, and the need to have both a stable and secure footing that would allow me to easily level each 'frame' to ensure the layout surface was level from one end to another. I found this article on using old hockey pucks as leveling devices, which had me move the bottom, horizontal, load bearing supports all the way to 'ground level'. These adjustable, 'hockey puck' feet have worked terrifically, and the ~2" slope in the garage from one end of the layout to the other is adequately compensated for with these adjustable, hockey puck feet. I also have to say they look great! The shiny bolt hardware and the big, black, rubber puck look kind of cool (and very 'industrial strength!).

The frame design also has two short 14" pieces which rest on the bottom board and are attached with 2 3/4" screws to the 'risers' or vertical supports. These provide a ledge for additional bracing or for shelving (you'll notice my pictures feature lots of miscellaneous garage storage 'things' stored under the layout on the far side). I added in another shelf about 10" below the layout where all my 'controllers' are able to rest (not shown in the Google Sketch Up plans, but visible in the photos. See all those messy wires? They lead to my 'control panel' shelf).

The biggest challenge was connecting the doors to the risers/supports. Hollow core doors are cheap for a reason...there's not a lot of material that can reliably be used for bolting or attaching to the supports. The strongest areas of the doors are the side edges where the hinges would normally go. This actually turned out to be a benefit. I simply attached 2x2 boards to the long lengths of the doors and used these to drill holes for the nut and bolts to attached to the vertical riser/2x4 supports. Why was this a 'benefit'? Well, I was able to add a full 3 inches to the width of my layout!


All in all, I've been very happy with the design. Its rigid, adjustable, portable, and very sturdy. The height is right (for both me, and those other people in the house that like to play with the cars on the layout and try to push the trains like they're Thomas the Tank...Noooo!!!) Given the strength and design of the frames, I also have an option of adding some width (which I plan on doing) to extend areas of the layout beyond the current 39" dimensions.

Oh yes, and I have the carpentry skills of a mollusk, so this was an easy and 'idiot-proof' project.

A rigid sub-base

A material that I became acquainted with through my Dad's use of it for creating indoor signage, is "Sintra", which is 1/8" thick, black plastic sheet material. I get it in large sheets from Tap Plastics, and then cut out the area to be used to fit on top of my styrofoam structures.

You can see the black plastic glued to the top of my styrofoam areas:


Obviously, having a rigid foundation is nice to ensure a nice, level and firm sub-roadbed. The disadvantage of this material is that it does seem to conduct track noise a bit more than other materials, but its something I can live with.

I also use this material to construct some of the custom bridges/overpasses shown below.

The good and bad of my first N Scale layout

The City



As opposed to my O Gauge layout, which took 3 years to get to a state of completion, my N Scale 'layout on a door' took less than 3 months! However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I think I like the process of 'building the layout' almost as much as running the trains (at least some parts of it) and the rather limited operations of this first N Scale layout needed to be addressed. Some parts of 'version 1' will be carried through to my expanded 'version 2', such as the 'downtown' or city area.

The above photo shows a 'birds eye view' of the 'downtown' / city end of the layout. As you can see, operations were basically two very simple loops with the city on one end, and elevated tracks going over an industrial area on the other end. The city has several buildings from Kato and Tomix, which are obviously based on Japanese prototypes, such as the blue and green buildings in the below photo. I like the modern look of these buildings on the layout and I must say, the packaging and construction of these buildings is really great.


Sitting next to each other on the end of the city area are two buildings that I really enjoyed for different reasons. The large church is the Vollmer 7760 Cathedral, which I think turned out really nice. I wanted a building with a very 'gothic' look to it and the Vollmer cathedral works nicely. I also placed a small white LED in the steps in the front of the cathedral to give the tall spire some 'up lighting' and to further highlight the models shape and detail.

The building next to it may be recognizable to most people, its pretty much a standard Model Power 'ready-built' movie theater with a bit of customization. Rather than using the basic plastic signage that came with the Model Power movie theater, I thought I would add some light and animation with one of Miller Engineering's theater marquee lights.


In addition to the animated sign, the building was repainted (as a lot of the structures on my layout are prone to!) and multiple LED lights were added. I still have some touch up and detail to do to the theater, but overall I am quite pleased. The hardest part was bending the plastic 'marquee' so that it would match up with both ends of the building. The instructions for these things say specifically NOT to do that, so maybe I got lucky! It does work, so I'm not complaining!

New N Scale Layout plans

As mentioned in my last post, this layout is basically doubling the size of my first layout by adding a separate 80" x 36" hollow core door. The goals I had in mind when deciding I need to expand the first layout are:

1. At least one, very long, track run that would provide some interesting running and break up the monotony of the first lauouts two concentric loops. This was done by having the main line extend down to the bottom level and ten back up again.
2. Expand storage space, add a 'fiddle yard' on the lower level.
3. Expand and maintain separate line for my son, but connect with main line at fiddle yard area, thus creating a junction between the 'upper' and lower' lines.
4. Based on my learning experience from the first layout, improve on scenery, buildings, lighting, electrical, and ensure flawless uni-track connections!

UPDATED! Improved and more accurate version of the "Layout Version 2" track plane at this post.

Layout Version 1 (N Scale)

Last year I built and completed an N Scale layout on a 36" by 80" hollow core door. My previous experience with O Gauge was a great introduction to layout building as its quite amazing how quickly and inexpensively building a cool, interesting N Scale layout can be --- when you consider the cost of doing it in O Scale vs N, the time and money difference is amazing!



The layout was basically composed of a small lower level loop (this was created from some leftover Minitrix track) that was primarily the 'branch line' for my son. The second level, at about 2" elevation, was where I had two basic ovals, an extended siding, and several storage tracks. All of the track on the upper level was Kato Unitrack, which I chose based on its ease of use and no need to do any BALLASTING!



I really enjoyed putting together a layout that, as much as possible, allowed me to build a 'little world' with buildings, lights, and (as much as I can make possible) seamless, error-free, train operating!



Unfortunately, once I ran out of interesting scenery, building and other type of projects on this layout, I found that two ovals were kind of boring and, to make matters worse, I was running out of space on my pitifully inadequate sidings to store my quickly accumulating inventory of Tomix and Kato buildings and Trix and Fleischmann trains!!!

So, it was back to the drawing board, and the project I am now in the midst of "Layout Version 2" which is essentially a doubling of the original layout by adding yet another 36" x 80" board onto the end!

So "LV1" is finished, but out of its ashes comes "LV2"!!!