If you’ve followed my previous 2 threads, you know I’ve been on the fence about using Atlas or ScaleTrax. To that end, I’ve been trying to find a place that had some ScaleTrax,. particularly FlexTrack, in stock. My first source was out of stock before I could get there, but I found another in Midlothian TX, just south of Dallas and we were able to visit last week on our way home from Georgia. The place was far from a store though, it was more of an afterthought in a large farm-like shed/barn out in the country. He did have the track and had a rather large 26x30-something layout using both Atlas and ScaleTrax, I didn’t even notice until he pointed it out. He was able to mate the 2 brands by simply raising the ScaleTrax 1/8” using what he called “putty”. He then finessed the joints using Atlas rail joiners. He has trains like the Blue Goose and Acela, that Blue Goose sure is a pretty thing.
He ran an A-B-A unit with 19 long passenger cars for me and I was amazed watching it creep along at 3 mph. I’ve run slow before, but with only 4-5 cars. The layout itself was quite nice, though he used a lot of old school style landscaping tricks, like shingle sand for ballast, scraped-off Woodland Scenics grass mats for roadways and faux grass, etc. He scraped the grass off the mats and sprinkled that around the layout on top of a glue base. He then cut the mat into strips and painted them to make roads. One thing that puzzled me was he said he spread transmission fluid on small 2”-4” sections of mainline track every 6’-10’ about every 6 months or so and then just ran his trains with no further cleaning of the mains. The layout is in a large room with no central air/heat. He did have some kind of small portable units that supposedly cooled the place on really warm days, but I got the impression he didn’t use them much. He also had a lot of powered accessories and 17 of the 19 cars had incandescent lights. When he just turned on the power with nothing moving, one side of the single Z-4000 was already drawing 5.5 amps, so it’s no wonder he tripped the circuit at times, though things ran fine while I was there. I looked underneath and saw that wiring wasn’t his forte, though it wasn’t completely terrible, just quite a few wires hanging loose making it difficult to move around fixing problems.
At any rate, seeing his layout made me think about moving my layout from part of a bedroom out into the garage. I like being outdoors and the summer heat doesn’t bother me. It’s dry here, so I’m not concerned about humidity, etc., and I can use smoke outside as much as I want. I haven’t been satisfied with how my horseshoe layout was going to fit in the bedroom with walls on 3 sides and O36/O45 curves. I also didn’t like how the setup was going to look after I outlined it on the floor with tape. I have a 3-car garage and am only using 1 slot for our Prius. I do have some power tools, but they don’t get that much use and are on wheels, so if I do get into a large project, I can always move them to the empty slot or cover the layout. As you can see in the attached photos, the 2-car section has 38.75” high cabinets with a 20” wide workbench top on the north wall and three 20”x36” shelving units on the east wall. The workbench doesn’t get much use other than for storing a few things, most work is done on a Work Mate with an expanded top insert or a portable table, but there is a water heater in the NE corner that I’ll need access to.
With that in mind, I drew up an around the room layout with 2 removable sections. Going this route will let me use O63/O72 curves for dual mainlines and O54 curves/turnouts for an oval that forms reversing loops. It also gives me space for a storage yard and some sidings. The workbench section will have to remain 20” wide for access to the storage cabinets and drawers underneath, but if I go this route, I plan to either expand the shelves or replace them altogether with 30” wide benchwork with storage underneath and above. The west side is 24” wide, so it could be expanded a bit inside, the perimeter is pretty much locked. But it will have a removable section and expanding it would reduce the space for the power tools. So I hesitate to do that beyond 30”, even though I could go to 60” and still have access on both sides. Expanding it to 30” though would let me add a town or something along that route.
As you’ll also see in the photos, my idea for the removable section on the west side is a wedge on wheels that would be hinged on the south corner. I’ve seen others who have done this sort of thing and I’d follow what they did, though I’d probably just duck under most of the time. Another option would be to build a tower where I could raise that section on a pulley system, but I’m not sure I’m that energetic.
The other removable section by the water heater would be a lift-out, possibly in 3 parts. For sure, the 40” bridge part will be a lift-out, but the ends might also be made to lift out to provide just a little extra room if needed. I thought about making it all one piece, but at around 78” long, I figured it would be too large/heavy.
So there you have it. This design gives me everything I’ve wanted; min O54 curves, elevated section, over/under, reversing loops, double-crossover, hidden siding, storage yard, passing sidings and room for spurs (if I expand some sections to 30”). It will also let me run longer trains, though I still plan to limit my engine stable to 2 steamers and 3 diesels. I’m not overly happy with the reversing loop oval, but it is better than the circle I started with and I couldn’t come up with any other configuration that would fit using O54 or wider curves. If I expand some sections to 30”, I might also look at moving/splitting the yard. I’ll be playing with those options as well as converting the design to SCARM.
Thanks in advance for any comments you care to make. And this time I’m open to just about any suggestion, except a change to the outside perimeter. Oh.....and moving to the garage is not a new idea, but taking up 2 slots is. I know there will be challenges with the tools, etc., but I’m actually willing to deal with those. I’ve enjoyed the design process to get to this point, but this is the first time I’ve felt I’m not compromising on design and am excited to see if I can make this work. I actually wanted a garden railroad (G-scale), but the cost and scope was too intimidating and O-scale is not designed for sunlight, etc. So call me crazy, but the garage was always my next choice, I just couldn’t see how to do it until now. From Feb to Dec, I spend much of my days on the patio or in the garage reading or fiddling, so a garage layout just feels right.
