New Guy..Be gentle

If you travel all the time, its hard to have a model railroad.  I know because I did that at one time.  If you have a place for it, why not start with designing a layout.  Show us a drawing of the space that you have and tell us some of the goals that you have for the layout.

Bill (K9)

Welcome aboard! Stand by for a lot of worthwhile suggestions. Glad you are here asking some questions I should have asked years ago! You must have some Marx to benefit from the 027!

Train ON!

Jim K

WELCOME CECIL!!!!  You are only a hop-skip and jump away from me.  Let me know if you are going to be in New Orleans and you have time to stop by... we can shoot the breeze... and, run some trains.   Shoot me an email anytime... it's in my profile.

Welcome aboard!

Peter

Welcome to the forum. There is no right way or wrong way to participate in this hobby. Do what makes you happy. Don't get in a hurry.

There are a lot of trains shows around the country all year long. Shows would be good to check out and build your collection while your out on the road RVing.

My wife is from Biloxi, so we are down that way several times a year. I haven't been to the train museum yet. Maybe one day we'll stop in to see what it's all about. I used to stop by Orange Grove hobby shop when I was down in Gulfport. It was a nice little shop. Sadly no longer in business.

Good luck with your new hobby.

Welcome to the hobby Cecil! Let us know if you need anything! You can e-mail us at e-zcatch@verizon.net.

Hello Cecil!  I too am a ham and have been for 56 years, but in the last couple decades my interest has gone to trains primarily as the ham hobby has morphed into something I don't particularly care for.  There are a lot of good small 027 layout plans online  that might fill your bill.  I have been working on a portable 30X63 inch size I adapted from an online plan, all 027 with 1022 manual turnouts that fits on our RV's dinette table.   There are a lot of good post war and later locos and cars out there economically priced.  I am going to say a word that to a lot is heresy, but you might pick up the latest copy of Greenbergs Lionel Price Guide, just to help you decide if a price is close to reasonable, and while yard sales and flea markets are good, also check online places like Mercari and Etsy, sometimes you get lucky and find great deals.  The TrainTender and Trainz online are also great resources for repair parts if you find something that is nice but missing a piece.  I recently have gone to the darkside with an N gauge layout in the works on the same size board, 30X60 inch, so I can detail it a bit more and get more options, all because my wife wants to take longer trips, so another project to while away the time away from home.

Welcome aboard! I never thought about the idea for a layout in an RV but it sounds like it might be an interesting challenge! Like OGAUGENUT said toss us the size you're thinking about and see what kind of ideas we can come up with. A lot of us who've been in the hobby a while have seen just about all the issues a layout can present you with and we've come up with novel ways around it.

Jerry

First off, welcome, Cecil! It's never too late to play with new toys!

Second, we personally have a fair amount of overlap: years ago, I was into ham radio (K3SKV), and have in the past several years gotten back into postwar model trains, mostly Marx and O-27 track. Like you, I have no interest in "collecting", but rather running the trains and building the most realistic layout I can (given the inherent limitations of three-rail tubular track!). I even have a ZW as my main power source!

With that said, I'd say you have two options trying to shoehorn your layout into an RV:

- You might want to consider the RV equivalent to the around-the-ceiling layouts some build. IOW, if your RV is anything like any I've ever seen or been in, there's not a lot of open horizontal space to use for toy trains. There *might* be some space you can find above the built-in furniture and outside the space needed to move around, and if so, you might be able to squeeze in a side by side track or two and loop the layout inside the perimeter of the RV.

- Absent a permanent space, you might be able to come up with a sectional (or even folding) design that can be stowed away and broken out and set up relatively quickly, perhaps even something suspended from the ceiling and lowered and run when desired. One construction method you might consider is to use two inch thick extruded polystyrene (the pink/blue/green stuff) used for insulation and available at any of the hardware supply places. It's fairly rigid even without supports, and can be temporarily placed on and over the RV's existing furniture. Your landscaping options might be somewhat limited by the need to make it all durable enough to be regularly stowed away, but other than just fitting the track together each time, that may be your best option.

In any event, good luck, and welcome to the hobby!

Welcome aboard Cecil!

Hi, Cecil... 

I predict you're going to make a lot of friends and be a very popular member based on your introduction, background, and druthers-in-life! 

Since your RVing interests snared my attention this morning, I have a few starting thoughts.

First, if you've never been to the semi-annual TCA York (PA) meets...typically April and October each year...you might want to a) become a TCA member, and b) attend the York meets as well as those in your local TCA division throughout the rest of the year.  The meets at York have LOTS of room and provisions for RV folks right on the fair grounds.  And, if you're goal is to have an RV layout on board, you'll be sure to have a lot of after-hours attention/partying/help/questions/etc./etc..

Second, if I were you, to kick things off regarding your interest in an on-board RV layout, I'd start a new thread on the forum focusing on the RV itself...photos (inside and out), druthers for the layout (size, features/accessories/trains/etc, storage limitations, other riders/pets, blah, blah...IOW, something for us to 'chew' on.  I'm sure we'll have questions/suggestions along the way.  Like, are you towing?...car?...storage trailer?...or, averse to doing so in the future?

Wife and I and our 2 Goldens were RVers for about 10 years.  In fact, since my wife is as much into the hobby as I, and our current focus is in the O3R end of the hobby, the semi-annual York meets were a huge reason for our 'hitting the road'.   (Spending some time escaping Michigan winters travelling to Florida was the other enticement!!).  Our last RV, a class A, had a nice electric drop-down single bed in the front driver/passenger area that was never used for sleeping, but BEGGED for a small layout.  For this purpose I hung onto a modest collection of N-scale stuff from earlier years, but never took the time to build that layout!  It was always a conversational dream, though.  (Aging's effect on eyesight and manual dexterity were more encouraging to forego future N-scale thoughts/efforts, and focus on O3R!  Nonetheless, the possibilities of bringing the hobby along with the transportation was part of the RV fun...in thoughts/dreams, anyway!!!)

Re your request..."Be gentle".  I think most of us are...or we'd like to think we are!!!  But, hang tough!...A lot of us are also of the 'geezer' class (4 months to octogenarianship, here), and, well, 'we' have our moments...exacerbated by elections, stupidity, impatience, warm fruity beer, menus using foreign languages to describe boring food, ...etc., etc., blah, blah.  IOW, reasons to think about happier days...and looking forward to 'going home!'

KD

Welcome to a wonderful forum and hobby! Sounds like you might be in for a modular type layout that can be put out and taken up easily in manageable pieces.

Mike

Welcome to the forum. I was stationed at Keesler AFB in 1950. I'm sure Biloxi  has changed a lot since then. Good luck with your layout.

Welcome Cecil...its a great hobby and open to about any interpretation that makes you happy.  Below is a picture that I was given of a layout (Not mine - this picture was sent to me by another forum member several years ago and I cannot remember his name so if you are still "out there" and recognize this picture, thank you) that is 4 x 4 and is obviously sitting on a (dinning room?) table.  Note that the builder has left off structures and trains, all of which can be removed for storage and kept in a box when not in use.  The track (which is fastened down) and base board can then be easily stored flat or on edge.  This layout appears to use remote control switches but manual ones could easily be substituted and would make it even simpler and even perhaps more fun.  Its 3 rail so can run any of the typical 0/027 gauge "toy" trains like Lionel, Marx, MTH, K-line etc (not American Flyer which uses a different gauge track).  Those brands cover most of the 0/027 that you are likely to encounter in the flea markets etc.  Power is supplied by a simple AC transformer that hooks to the track with 2 wires, also easily detached for storage.  AC train transformers come in a wide variety of power levels and are quite common and relatively inexpensive especially at the lower power levels which is all that this layout would need.  My advice, even if you are running older trains, buy a newer transformer they are inexpensive and more safe than the older ones especially if the old ones are "used".

Good Luck and happy hunting for those trains.

Don

I’m afraid I might have been a bit confusing in my original post. I’m planning for a layout at my home.  No plans to build anything in the RV.  Wife wouldn’t have that…besides space is at a premium.

We are in the RV about 4 months out of the year on average. Our kids and grand kids are quite far away from where we currently live.  So the RV closes the distance.

Thanks to all who have responded!

Cecil

@Tubenut posted:

I’m planning for a layout at my home.

Let's see if we can start to narrow this down.  Have you decided where in the house you would like the layout to be?  If yes, what are the dimensions of that space?  Could you provide a photo or diagram of the space?

Although I agree with @Dennis-LaRock that a photo or diagram of the space would be of great value to providing help, I would also ask that you think about what you want out of your layout.  Do you want to run prototypical long freight / passenger trains (this just about requires large radius curves and long straights), do want to have fun making up trains hence would opt for a large freight yard and could use small switch engines, do you hope to ralistically "operate" or do you (mostly like me) just like to see the trains run?  This kind of question is at least as important as how much space is available since a layout taking up the usable space but failing to provide you the activity you want is more or less useless.

Don

@Dennis-LaRock posted:

Let's see if we can start to narrow this down.  Have you decided where in the house you would like the layout to be?  If yes, what are the dimensions of that space?  Could you provide a photo or diagram of the space?

Current home, no space. Only enough room to test locomotives:  future space…a large basement!  So I’m planning/buying for the large basement.

Perhaps a Door -Sized Switching Layout   It could be even smaller than the one shown... it would certainly get you up and running in a hurry.

You could shorten and narrow this as well...

Finally, you can't get much smaller than this... Test Benches/Stands

Here is Gunrunners...

All you need are some Scraps of Wood and some O-Gauge Rollers... and, you are running trains!