Hello everyone! After about a year of lurking on the OGR forums I decided to take the plunge and post a topic. After 45 years in Engineering at an Aerospace and Defense contractor, I was laid off last month. But don't feel bad for me. I was going to retire soon so I actually benefited from being let go. I now have the time to spend with my trains. My wife and I are empty nesters and live in Southern California. I have a small layout in one of the spare bedrooms. I purchased a 3X9 Mianne benchwork (actual tabletop is 38" X 110"). I have a fairly good selection of Lionel 027 and Super O track as well as some MTH Realtrax. The 36" diameter of the Super O means I can't use it in this arrangement. After several iterations I came up with this:
The outer oval is MTH and the inner figure 8 is 027. I like the look of the Realtrax and would like to use it. I have some more 027 switches but they need a good cleaning and checkout before I use them. I'm OK with the tight radius curves and the fact that I can't move between the loops. There are hard walls on three sides of the layout so increasing the 38" dimension would mean I would no longer be able to reach the back wall. Tabletop height is 34" so I can reach everything now, except for inside the tunnels which are still under construction. I would like to model a mining operation on the mountain and use the two spurs for moving ore, tailings, etc. I'm looking for some comments or feedback. I have only seen a few layouts in this size range on the forum.
John
