(UPDATED) The 48 Club *** Announcing Division 59 Membership ***

@Odenville Bill posted:

My layout is 7x7.   Is there a club for me?

Bill

Hi Bill- the 48 Club is for layouts up to 32 sq ft. Division 59 for up to 45 sq ft.

At 7x7 you are just over the limit at 49 sq ft.

As I recall, the original idea was the layout was to be no larger than could be built with a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood. The Division 59 was created to accommodate all the ping pong table layouts - another traditional method of layout building.  Since there are no sheets of plywood which measure 7x7 then it likely is made from multiple sheets of plywood.  Although a single sheet ripped lengthwise into 1x7 and 1x6 sections and arranged into a square would qualify under the 48 Club.  Likewise if there were a 1x4 opening in the center of the 7x7 that would then be in the 45 ft^2 and qualify.   My two cents.

Jeff, I agree totally!  It is the actual square footage of layout table top, no matter how it is arranged.  That is how my 11x8 Blackwater Canyon Line and 11x11 Ceiling Central RR come in just under 59 as I recall at the time I measured.  Both have open operating areas in the center.  Of course I qualified for the 48 with my 4x7 Christmas Layout that is leaning against a wall during the summer.

Letts go back to @Odenville Bill's layout.  Bill, do you have any area in your 7x7 that is open, that is doesn't have layout tabletop?

@Mark Boyce posted:

Jeff, I agree totally!  It is the actual square footage of layout table top, no matter how it is arranged.   ...snip...

My "qualification" is a 4x8 ripped in half length-wise yielding two 2x8s for an O scale overhead-operated trolley line. Here is a photo of the loop at one end:

Note that a two-car train of fifty-foot cars would negotiate the loop.

EDIT: I never really figured out the true radius but I estimate between nine or ten inches.

Its about total square footage of the bench work. Square, triangle, octagon. Or my favorite, RHOMBUS!!!....doesn't matter. As long as its equal to or less than 32 or 45 square feet of available track space.  We deduct for "holes"....😎😎

Bob

Mark,

I do have a 3'x3' hole for me and the controls. 

Bill

@Odenville Bill posted:

Mark,

I do have a 3'x3' hole for me and the controls.

Bill

Bill,

How about the "Lucky 7 Hole In One" club?

There have to be other forum members who qualify as well. 

John

Bill,

I believe you qualify for the 59 division,

7x7=49 sf

3x3=9 sf

so your layout = 40 sf of track space which is under the 45 sf limit!

Bill, I agree with Darrell.  Division 59.

Me too.

Hopefully Jerry will see this and update the roster.

Hey all, finally got the kinks worked out of my ability to access the forum, owe a big thanks to Alan for all his help. Being away from the 48 Club for so long and having extra time on my hands I've kinda went rogue and have been using SCARM to enlarge my old layouts carcass from a 10x6 to a 12x12 L shaped monster.

Still going to keep it at 3 levels but this is as far as I've been able to get, writers block as it were.

I am preparing for the sticker shock for when I start getting plywood and 2x4s and what not but thanks to my job I have also been able to accumulate a lot of 1/4, 1/2, 3/4  and 1 inch MDF and Baltic birch pieces for the project (we actually have a 60 ply baltic birch they use for table legs here, it's about 2" thick").

The door top layout is still in the planning stages, not sure how I want to go with the legs, folding metal and a skirt so I can easily transport it or fixed wood with some sort of decorative beading and fluting painted a gloss cream to give it a more vintage look.

ODENVILLE BILL, Darrel is correct, you qualify for Division 59 as do you also GG1GUYY  so welcome aboard. I have to update our membership rolls so if anyone is missing let me know and I'll add you.

Founding Members
1. BaltimoreTrainWorks
2. Amfleet25124
Charter Members
1. RSJB18
2. Conductor Earl
3. bptBill
4. CA John
5. Walt Rapp
6. M. Mitchell Marmel
7. OKHIKER
8. Coca Cola Guy
9. Nucci
10. Rich Wiemann
11. CSXJOE
12. graz
13. Melvin P
14. Mrhobby052
15. Khayden93
16. palallin
17. John E K
18. Miggy
19. pdxtrains
20. SouthernFan56
21. randr
22. Will
23. Dave Warburton
24. GG1Guyy
25. Diverging Clear
26. Penn Flyer
27. Coach Joe
29. JohnnieWalker
30. Robert S. Butler
31.Mark Boyce
32. Jon Stachowicz
33. Madockawando
34. ScoutingDad
35. Darrell
36. PRRMP54
37. Mallard4468
38. PRR Mark
39. Berkshirelover726
40. NIKHIL
41. Ryan Mc
42. Plankowner110
43. justakid
44. Pre-War Steve
45. WP
46. Fatman
47. Artie-DL&W
48. Brewman 1973

Honorary Members
1. Harry Miller ... My grandfather
2. Jerry Makowiecki ... My dad
3. Thor Sheil
4. Alan Arnold
5. Allen Miller
6. Rich Melvin
7. Ed Boyle
8. Jim Barrett
9. Putnam Division

Century Club Members
1. BYIENGST
2. Whit M
3. GMan-24
4. Engineer Bob
5. lehighline
6. Eric in Houston
7. Scott R
8. Craftech
9. Brian Defazio
10. John SW
11. Bogart
12. Punkrockpub
13. Evan Miller
14. Dennis Holler
15. Greg Kwolek

Division 59 Members
1. DaveP
2. GG1GUYY
3. Lyinel
4. Odenville Bill

So the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated and hopefully there are no more surprises and hiccups.

Jerry

WHO IS THIS GUY!!!!!!

Welcome back Jerry. Good to hear you were only having internet issues (as opposed to health).

I'm not sure if the new layout will qualify tho.....

Bob

Jerry, welcome back!  I’m glad you got things worked out to access the forum again!  

Welcome back Jerry!  We missed you.

John

@RSJB18 posted:

I'm not sure if the new layout will qualify tho.....

Bob

Not a chance! I'm still working on a small one but I have so much stuff and a big empty basement  and a "GO BIG OR GO HOME" mentality that I just can't turn down the challenge!

Jerry

Well it's time to post this weeks layout design, haven't done one in awhile so it's not my best work but it is different.

I started by taking your basic, run of the mill, average sheet of plywood and cutting it into three sections, one 36"x48", one 12"x48" and one 48"x48" and assembling them in the above lopsided dogbone configuration. I think this design allow you to have a rural to town, rural to city, town to town or town to city set up and giving your trains the illusion of actually travelling a bit to get there. If you need more space or don't have all the necessary track you could always eliminate one of the loops on the right.

Given its 7'x11' footprint if placed in the center of the room it would allow your scenery skills a large pallet instead of the constraints most small layouts have like being in a corner or against the wall. One idea would be a wooded area or mountain with a tunnel in the 12"x48" section to further sperate the two loops and give the illusion of distance between the two.

The trackage for this weeks layout is as follows:

18 - O31 curves

6 - 10" straights

4 - O31 1/2 curves

3 - 5" straights

3 - 2" straights

2 - 3.4" straights

1 - 2.5" straight

1 - 6.25" straight

1 - 8.125" straight

1 - RCS track

3 - O22 LH switch tracks

1 - O22 RH switch track

I have come across a large supply of the old Life-Like mountain paper (the stuff with the mica flakes on it and in unopened boxes) and am currently in "negotiations" with the owner for a good price. That stuff was always on layouts when I was a kid so I'm kinda jacked at the prospect!

On the Club bling front the good news is that VistaPrint has dropped their recent policy of minimum orders to the previous one of being able to order single hats and shirts so I may finally get a few made and just may wear them to York this Fall. The coffee mug front is not so good, I can get mugs made but I neither want or need 72 coffee mugs, especially at $8 a pop! I have found one place that might but their site is a nightmare to navigate so I don't know how well that will pan out.

Well, it's getting late and my wife is making crabcakes and I have cold beer in the fridge and the patio is calling.

Jerry

Jerry,

Would you mind posting the SCARM file for us to play with.  I really like this idea of yours.

Chuck

Here you go Chuck. Hope this helps out.

It never occurred to include the SCARM files for the layout designs but moving forward I'll be sure to do that.

Jerry

Here's an overview of my January 2022  Four and Eight (actually Four and Six)  layout

...and here's a detailed closeup of the trackside action

Excellent cover Photograph, Robert!

Jerry,

Thanks; I took your SCARM file and played around with it a little bit tonight.  I wasn't planning to work very hard, so not all tracks meet/join, but you'll get my idea below.  And, now my mind is just racing.  What if you cut the 4 x 8 into 2 4 x 4s and join (staggered similarly to your first diagram) them with a separate 2x4 piece of plywood.  Now you have an unusual 8 x 11 layout.  Continuing (and stepping up to the 5x9 Club level), what if you stagger two 5 x 4.5 pieces cut from a 5 x 9 sheet and join them with a 2 foot wide strip in a staggered fashion.  Got to stop now or I will not sleep tonight.

Chuck

Scored the Life-Like old school mountain paper I was looking at, got a pretty good deal on it too!

I now have 23 boxes and/or rolls of the stuff and will definitely be using it on the rebuild of my big layout and on the smaller replica of my grandfathers Christmas garden. Now to find those pesky Skyline kits!

Jerry

Building on the weirdness of last weeks layout design I decided to cut a sheet of plywood in half and offset the pieces by 24 inches coming up with something of a bowtie kind of look:

After I had come up with this I wasn't happy with that little .8" piece of track on the right side and the somewhat rough S curve trackage so I fidgeted round with it a bit and replaced that with the trackage in yellow below:

I had a hard time coming up with the exact placement and cuts for the 2 O36 Menards curves and the straights but SCARM came up with a rough 7.45" for each curve (your results may vary) so if you attempt this you'll probably have to go old school and trial and error the fit.

Track List:

16 - O31 curves

5 - O31 half curves

1 - O72 curve

2 - O36 (Menards) curves cut to size

1 - 10" straight (2 if you use the yellow design)

4 - 5 1/2" straights

1 - 6.8" straight

1 - 6.75" straight

1 - 2.7" straight

1 - .8" straight

1 - 4.3" straight (if going with yellow design)

1 - RCS section

1 - Pair O22 switches

And as usual like any track plan I've already poked around to "improve" the design, it would be nice to be able to build these just to see them in the flesh and really be able to critique them but that might get expensive.

Well that's it for today, got to go ice my knee, took a bit of a tumble fishing, bad enough it was hot with no shade and they really weren't biting makes it just that much more irritating.

Jerry

Been working on ideas for the layouts we have that would let folks know that you were in the 48 Club and came up with billboard inserts. Not sure about the size of the openings on the Lionel billboards. I've seen online that they have a 5"x 2.5" opening but until I dig one of mine out I'm not positive about that plus there are several other styles/manufacturers out there so your mileage may vary.

I was thinking the billboard frame would be gloss black in keeping with the clubs primary color. I'm also not sure how well these will look on other computers out there, I know going from one graphics package to another to tweak these the colors seemed to shift a bit or seemed a bit blurry or were hard to see some of the lines.

Jerry

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for doing this.  They all look great.  I especially like the two on the right.

John

I like the two on the right but without any lines or borders.

Miller Engineering has a roll-your-own kit.....

https://microstru.com/collecti...351-custom-billboard

I like the two on the right also.

Bob

I too like the two on the right! 

I'm guessing this is the way to sign up for the club, so here's a brief video of my table. It's a 4x6 with a 4x4 and 1 1/2-inch extensions. I had the table since 2016, if I remember correctly, and after making a few temporary setups,  I started putting some effort into it a couple of years ago:

Hey all, sorry for the late post but I was up online most of the night watching all the Artemis pre-launch stuff on YouTube, got 3 hours of sleep got up early to watch the launch and NOTHING plus burned a vacation day to do it. I was reliving my younger days of watching the moon landings but without Walter Kronkite and Jules Bergman it just didn't have the same feel.

Then to add insult to injury I decided to turn it into a day of fishing and got skunked on that front.

Anyways, one of the projects currently on my table is to covert an old Plasticville gas station into my version of an iconic Baltimore institution, Blue Point Crabs!

It is in an old gas station building  and I'm going for a version closer to the version from my childhood where the register/office area was the store proper and the 2 garage bays were where they had the stacks of bushels of crabs and the steamers. Anyone from Baltimore who remembers the old place will be happy to know I won't be replicating the smell!

On to club business!

carnerd3000 I'm not sure of your exact dimensions, I get the 4x6 but what does the 4x4 and 1 1/2 inch extension mean? From the vid it doesn't look too much bigger than a 4x6. I think once we establish that we'll know where to plug you in in here.

This weeks layout while using just one sheet of plywood give you a layout with a much larger footprint than 32 square feet.

The sheet is cut as follows:

And is assembled as:

This gives you this weeks layout:

This allows for multiple routes and includes a siding that allows you to dump coal, barrels, logs or fling milk cans all over creation and the two other RCS track allows you to uncouple and move cars into the siding no matter which direction you're traveling or to add extra unloading facilities.

Track list:

12 - O31 curves

5 - 1/2 O31 curves

17 - 10" straights

7 - 5.5" straights

3 - RCS tracks

3 - RH O22 switches

2 - LH O22 switches

1 - 45 degree crossing

1 - 8.2" straight

3 - 5.35" straights

1 - 2.45" straight

1 - 2.125" straight

Another version I came up with was this one:

This one eliminates the two switches at the top and gives you a long double mainline but keeps the switching capabilities.

Track list for this version:

14 - O31 curves

5 - 1/2 O31 curves

22 - 10" straights

7 - 5.5" straights

3 - RCS tracks

2 - RH O22 switches

1 - LH O22 switches

1 - 45 degree crossing

1 - 8.2" straight

1 - 8.125" straight

3 - 5.35" straights

1 - 4" straight

1 - 2.125" straight

I do have an idea for a Halloween inspired layout design but I still have some major carpentry bugs to work out to make it work with a sheet of plywood, I may have to go with a Division 59 design.

Well I have to go find 1:48 bushel baskets and a small plastic crab to adorn my crab house!

Jerry

I like the second track plan for the reasons you stated.

I like the first one Jerry. I would change the siding configuration though.

You could add a switch to the inner track on the top left for another siding with an operating accessory.

-OR-

extend the siding at the bottom by adding a switch and creating two spurs up the left side. A building like Menards Morton Salt with a drive through spur would work too.

Bob

When we last met I was working on an idea for a Halloween themed layout, didn't work out like I had hoped. After several days of figuring out the carpentry issues I finally was able to come up with 3 possible ideas for a layout design, unfortunately I didn't think the reversing loops thru well enough and after tweaking and fidgeting with it I realized that once the train went thru the reverse it was stuck on that one path and no way to change direction.

So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I sat down and tried again and came up with something just as interesting, if I do say so myself!

The carpentry work will involve cutting three pieces of plywood as follows:

and assembling them this way to give you a layout just shy of the 4x8 rule:

And throwing on some track gives us this weeks design!

You will notice that I've added a different color to the fitter sections to better show where they are located on the track plan to make things a little bit easier for anyone attempting this one. Given the narrowness of the layout I opted to go with O-27 track, it seems to be a better fit for a Halloween inspired design to me  plus  much of the Halloween rolling stock and motive power out there tends to be on the smaller size anyways.

Track list:

18 - O27 curves

6 - O27 half curves

11 - O27 straights

1 - O27 45 degree crossing

3 - RH O27 switches

3 - LH O27 switches

Fitters (all straights):

1 -9"

2 - 7.9"

2 - 7.4"

2 - 7.3"

1 - 6.4"

1 - 5.9"

1 - 4.9"

1 - 3.8"

1 - 3.6"

1 - 2.2"

1 - 2"

I didn't include any operating track sections, I'll leave that up to anyone who build it to place where they see fit given the fact all areas can easily be reached on this design given its 32" width.

In keeping with the Halloween inspiration, I have elected to name a couple areas on the this one...

I took my inspiration from these iconic figures for the names:

Turning it longways gives you a nice long layout twelve feet perfect for setting it up for the enjoyment of trick or treaters if you decide to have it outside on the big night for everyone to enjoy.

And while I usually go with a green base this one just screams out for fall colors or maybe something a bit more dramatic and in keeping with the theme:

I don't know if they make black ground cover (they do make black flocking material that should work) but that would look so cool with fall colors accenting it and Dept. 56 has a number of Halloween items that would really fit in nicely with this! And don't forget to check the local Walmart and Target for thier brands of similar offerings

I know we're a good bit aways from Halloween but I figured it's the un-official start of fall now and this will give anyone who attempts this almost two months to work on it.

Well now that I've finally been able to put this one to bed (as they say in the newspaper business) I'm gonna do like any good newspaper editor and pour myself a strong one and relax, this one has been quite trying to say the least but it did come together in the end better than I had hoped.

Jerry

That’s definitely a cool design .👍

Very cool Jerry. It could double as a Christmas layout too. Widen one of the ends and the tree could fit inside the loop.

Bob

Been giving serious consideration to building the Halloween layout. Just for laughs I went online to see what Halloween ceramic buildings where available and came across these two:

   Munsters house and family

Addams Family House

The only drawback I see to pulling this off in a couple months would be the cost, these two alone would run close to $300 so maybe a project for the year for next Halloween.

I also tweaked the design a bit to make it a bit more winding allowing for more vignettes:

I checked out Woofland Scenics and while they don't have any black groundcover they do have a Dark Conifer that might be doable. They also have quite a number of fall colors available so there is a usable pallet to work with.

And you can't leave out everyones favorite dead guys, The Walking Dead figures and playsets, would give me a reason to get a few more!

Jerry

Here is this weeks layout design, I know I missed last week but had a ton of end of summer things to get out of the way, close the pool, stack firewood, dig taters, press some cider now all I need to do is wait for the leaves to fall. But now it's train season and I'm really looking forward to it this year. With Covid and being layed off and getting a new job the past couple years have been a real winner and it's nice to be getting back to normal. I won't be able to hit York this year but I will be going to my first Allentown meet and if anyone of you are going to be there you might see me sporting some sort of 48 Club gear, not sure if it will be a hat or a jacket but I'll have something.

This week we'll be going back to O gauge in an L shaped layout.

The construction is fairly straight forward as opposed to the last one, cut a 38x48 off the end of a sheet and place it on the right side of the layout (or left depending on your room situation).

The trackage is as follows:

11 - O31 curves

4 - O36 Menards curves (these are the dark gray ones in the diagram)

8 - 10" straights

1 - 5 1/2" straight

2 - RCS sections

1 - 6.8" straight

1 - 6.3" straight

1 - 6.25" straight

1 - 5.8" straight

1 - 3.6" straight

1 - 3.5" straight

1 - 3.25" straight

4 - LH O22 switches

1 - RH O22 switch

Again as always one can delete parts to fit with the track they have or level of complexity, in fact it can be stripped down to a single loop of rack, perfect for a beginner or as a Christmas garden.

I've also been tinkering around with more club car designs, this time freight cars and would like some input, what kind of load would a 48 Club flat car be seen carrying? A bus, limo, some sort of art-deco statue (maybe Prometheus) ?

Well, I'll let you guys ponder a bit, we're doing pit beef tonight and it looks like it's ready.

Jerry

@baltimoretrainworks posted:

I've also been tinkering around with more club car designs, this time freight cars and would like some input, what kind of load would a 48 Club flat car be seen carrying? A bus, limo, some sort of art-deco statue (maybe Prometheus) ?

Well, I'll let you guys ponder a bit, we're doing pit beef tonight and it looks like it's ready.

Jerry

Plywood of course!

Bob

Jerry, nice plans!  You have been busy!

Does this qualify for the 59 club? It's an old 2 piece ping pong table