Has any body ever started out with 1 or 2 4x8 boards?

I started off with zero 4x8's, 48 years ago. A couple years later I had a ping pong table, which eventually had 4 different annexes. Today, I have about 70 sheets.

Went from 3x6 (1 sheet) to now 6x14.  Happened over 1 year (2012-2013).  I now try to work at that space alone.

 

It seems a 4X8 sheet of plywood was the traditional method to get started.  I think a great many folks started out that way.

Yes.  I've done it several times.  I my experience at least, eventually you decide to remove all that, plan the best layout in the space that you can possibly do, and build that. I have that now: might not be perfect, but its the best I can do.

 

4 x 8, one at a time.  I did a lot of that - - - and had a lot of fun doing it.

GREATDAY IN THE MORNING!!!!!I think your going to have some pretty long trains.Main what a set up man.

My very first O-27 layout I built in 1962 was 4 x 8.....as were a number I did later in different scales....my favorite a N scale where I could run 4 trains at once!

My father had the two leftmost table sections in this picture made in 1957 for my first christmas layout (a N&W 746 set). The surfaces are homasote. (I have them covered in paper to protect them).   I have used them as the heart of every layout I have built since.

 

 

A 4x8 is plenty...

 

 

...Until the mind starts to dream of a "few more feet" to the mainline...

 

 

...until you tear the old layout with new extension down and start over...(with a few different incarnations in a short time period)....

 

 

...until you realize, "maybe I'm over thinking this and trying to hard...I just want to watch the d*mn things run" and start over, (again!) and finally figure out that what you want isn't that hard to get. (Current layout here

Around 1979-80 I started in HO with a 4x8.  Later, around 1986 on my 5th or 6th HO layout, I moved into a spare bedroom and built 3 shelves around the walls with a 4x8 in the middle of the room.  Basically, room to enter and a 24 inch aisle around the 4x8 except on the wall it connected to the rest of the layout.

 

Then, my wife wanted the room...and she agreed that I could build a nice "storage building" in the back yard.  The exterior is 16ft x 20ft. Carpeted, window AC, baseboard electric heat.  Insulated, sheetrock taped and sanded, ceiling also dry walled with three 16ft long double florescent light fixtures.  Duck under entrance with NO breaks above the 53 inch high benchwork for windows or doors.  The basic benchwork is 1x4 open grid frame with solid plywood covered by Homasote.  There is a 10ft by 4ft peninsula down the middle of the room with a 30 inch shelf on the two long walls and the wall where the peninsula joins the shelf.  The other wall has an 18 inch shelf to leave room around the peninsula.  Aisle space is no less than 36 inches at the most narrow.  (I am a rotund fellow....)

 

So, yeah, the basic 4x8 got me started.  Personally I would NOT go that direction in O gauge if you plan any prototypical operation.  You will get a lot more railroad going around the walls with the center open for the operator than you will if you put the layout on an island and walk around the island to operate. 

 

Start with a sketch...semi to scale...of a 12ft x 10ft room.  Now draw a 4x8 in the center...or even a 4x16...think about those small "tight radius curves"...on a shelf layout around the wall, even if only 24 inches wide...you end up with around 72 square feet while you only get around 32 square feet.  And you have a longer run, a larger operating area and no squeeze around the ends and no tight curves.  You could even expand a bit in places where you will have some industry to 30 inches wide...you could assign one of the 10ft walls to be a staging yard with one thru track and 2 or 3 storage sidings, facing different directions to represent the East and West ends of that railroad (or North Sound if you prefer).  And ON your layout...one intense, urban switching area if that blows your skirt up....OR...two small rural towns that have 3 or 4 industries each.

 

Ubiquitous industries would certainly include a lumber yard, a bulk fuel dealer (fuel for agri businesses and gas stations), a feed store in one town and a feed mill in another.  Include a grain elevator in one town and a small warehouse for groceries...

 

Using simple to assemble OGR Ameritown structures and the former Cornerstone products now offered by Atlas along with MTH (a few nearly prototype structures) and don't forget Korber's wonderful grain elevators and the old Lionel wooden grain elevator. 

 

The MTH Granary and the Lionel wooden elevator and the former Cornerstone Suresweet Feed make a great scene for a feed mill, with the Korber elevator in a different town providing hoppers and box cars (depends on the era modeled) of grain to be milled into livestock feed.

 

One of the OGR warehouses such as Homestead Furniture as a small town warehouse and the Barrettsburg Tool and Die being just what the name implies or perhaps a small manufacturing facility. 

 

The Korber Pickle Factory with the roof top refrigeration would make a good grocery warehouse or even some kind of cannery.

 

The Atlas Jack's Lumber or Deep Rock Gas and Oil would be great for any era and any part of the country.

 

There are dozens of similar model kits that would be great for a semi prototypical operating format on a layout that was simply a room size oval with a little "hide in plain site" staging on one end of the room.

 

A WISE friend once told me that the advantage to larger scales is that the trains are longer...true, they may have less cars, but the train cannot be viewed "in one glance".  You have to look from left to right to see the locomotive and caboose...and the closer to your eye level, the more effort that takes.  (I advocate "slightly less than armpit height" so you can reach the cars on tracks against the back drop without hooking cars on the front of the layout with your shirt sleeve and causing another derailment.)

 

Even a 6 car train with a geep and caboose is around 8 feet long and few small layouts have that much room between the switches on passing and utility runaround tracks.

 

To recap:

 

Yes, I started with a 4x8 in HO.  Back as a child, I had a small 3 rail loop of track, no switches, one loco and 5 cars.

 

Today, I have an urban switching district that will fit in my 16x20 room.

 

 

First O Gauge Lionel trainset board was a 4'x8'x1/2" sheet of plywood that my father built for me in 1955. My family home had small rooms and this train layout was setup in a spare bedroom. May hours spent playing with this trainset and the AC Gilbert erector set.

 

I started out on one 4 x 8 in HO like Tony back in about 1968.  That was in my parents' basement.  At one time I had three of them and a shelf about 15 feet long on one wall.  We moved from that house 10 years ago.  I haven't had the room since.

 

we have joked that I need an out building, but it's cheaper to wait until the kids move out.  

You are correct.  Eventually, they do.

I am not so sure they "eventually move out".  They just get replaced with other uses for the room or other people.

 

Case in point:

 

We had temporary custody of a "grand niece" for a year when she was 12.  She had my youngest son's bedroom.  About 3 months after she moved in, my oldest son (around 30 at the time) moved back and lived at home for the entire school year while getting the final classes for his second BA.  (He now has 3 BA and just got his Masters in May this year. He is now trying to decide whether to move to Dallas and start on his PhD or teach a year or two.  Did I mention he is now 36?)

 

A few months after the grand niece was allowed to return home with her mother, my youngest son got married.  They lived in a 1 bedroom apartment and did not have room for all their wedding gifts, which then took up residence in....my youngest son's bedroom.

 

Around the mid 80s I was able to convince my wife to let me have the "guest room" for the trains, thus the 4x8 with the shelves around the wall of the 12x10 bedroom  (HO layout).  Around the late 90s, my wife informed me that she needed a place to do home tutoring and my dreams of the larger layout could be realized with a 16ft x 20ft "storage building".  It was built on site specifically for a train layout, thus the window was "just above the floor" so the window AC did not ruin the sky blue drywall.  The lighting was set to cover most of the room based on how I planned to build the layout...and plenty of wall outlets on multiple 20A circuits, along with 220VAC baseboard electric heaters.

 

Sounds like heaven.   So...truth in advertising.  The layout benchwork is in place and has been the home of about 4 layouts, 3 HO and 1 3 rail O.  And there has never been a train run on the layouts in the out building.  I get to a point and get "high centered" and do not move forward.  For about 3 years my current O gauge layout has been "pulled" so I could start the same layout over "right"...and then life and a new job got in the way...

 

My personal goal is to get it in back to the point it was 3 years ago before my 65th birthday in November.  And if necessary, I am quitting my job to accomplish this.

 

And now, back on topic:

 

But do not think that because the kids are close to finishing high school or college or just got married that they will not be back home....

Well, eventually they don't come home enough.  Mine don't visit as often as we'd like, but then, I can't complain: I didn't either when I was their age.  It's just how life works out when they get their own careers and kids, etc. 

I am well aware of the possibility of a child moving back home, some other relative moving in, like an elderly parent, or something else comes up to take up space.  I moved back into my parent's home twice, my dad offered when I got jobs closer to home, and I paid him room and board.  Even now, my younger brother who is 55, comes back home over the summer, he is a bachelor teacher.  Dad still likes it, because he saves up jobs for my brother to help him with, which takes a burden off me.  I have seen plenty of other examples among friends, neighbors, and relatives.  

All that said, I realize the added outbuilding may end up becoming a reality someday, or I will have to find a club or friend who will let me bring my trains to run on their layout.  At almost 58, I still have a few years left where work will get in the way of model railroading. 

 

Mark- Too bad Butler is almost 90 miles away, you would be welcome to make the trip to our seasonal layout in North Bloomfield & run trains to your hearts content... We are planning about 400' worth of main line separated into 3 different loops, in addition to a polar express layout.

Roger Pete,

 

Is that near Mosquito Lake?  I was on Mosquito Lake down near Cortland once as a teenager.  Yes, that is a bit far, but thank you!

 

Sounds like you have a good plan.  I even have a Polar Express train for the Polar Express track.

 

Yes, It was the easier that way and fit the garage well. Back in the early '80s had bought, I think a couple of Lionel Green southern engines. U boats and made a layout for the 2 boys. Worked, Now one is an O scale modeler. But that must how i got the bug as my dad in 1951 had a layout in his garage in Scottsdale. SF lionels. But I was 3 and it  must have made an impression as a yr later he left and here I am modeling O.

Nope, never had a 4x8 board.  I thought about starting that way, but then my plans get to big and I over think things and so quit planning.

started with three and expanded from there

Actually, the layout isn't really designed to run long trains. It is designed to run more trains. 12-17 cars will be the norm. One dual motor diesel can get that amount up the grades.