We are. With the arrival of the 10th Anniversary Gold Edition PE set last November, we had outgrown our Christmas layout that was set up to handle 0-31. As soon as the 2014 Christmas season was complete, we dismantled the old layout. I learned a long time ago that good planning up front before you cut any lumber usually works best. I strongly believe you should start with a vision of what your layout will represent and then build a strong plan around this. In our case, since the two versions of the Polar Express sets will be the centerpiece, we wanted to build a Christmas layout representative of the Polar Express story within the space limitations we have.
We have Christmas related inventory that includes fifty D56 North Pole buildings with many North Pole accessories, street lights, pathways, and of course the scale PE train sets. This is a good start for what is needed. We also wanted to incorporate 0-72 curves this time so there would be no future track limitations.
Our next step was to determine in the room we will use as to how much space would work best for the benchwork without making it uncomfortable by cramming too much into the layout. We came up with the size of 7 1/2 ft. by 25 ft. Once this was determined, we transferred our vision of what the layout would look like onto a tablet. Elizabeth and I fine tuned this initial plan and the next step was to place rosin paper on the floor to represent the proposed benchwork. Using the tablet plan, we laid the track on the rosin paper to make sure it would work as planned. It actually fit perfectly to our plan without any adjustments to it. The two of us, on our hands and knees, traced the tack plan onto the rosin paper. Once this was established, we arranged the D56 buildings where they would best fit into the plan, traced them as well, and then went onto trace other key design elements. The result is an accurate plan as to where everything we want to include is identified onto the rosin paper.
What's next, get some lumber and build the benchwork. We have many custom details to be create to make our version of the North Pole and Polar Express special and we know this will take some time. Good thing that I have a very creative person by my side who has come up with many wonderful ideas. The reason we can get a head start now is this space does not interfere with our normal household activities. Besides, with the winter weather, there is not a better time for inside activities such as this.
How about you. Many of you have posted that you were really motivated to improve your next Christmas layout because of all of the wonderful photos that were posted to the 2014 Christmas Photo Album. So have you incorporated that desire and started to design a your 2015 Christmas layout. Please tell us something about your plans. When will you start construction? Some will say it is rushing the season, and they are probably correct, but for us, and maybe some of you, if it is possible we would rather get this done sooner, rather than later. It should be interesting to learn what your plans are.
To get your thinking started, below are a couple of photos of the room we are using and the rosin paper taped onto the floor (before the tracings).
Update January 22nd:
The thought occurred to me that this Thread could be an ongoing resource for Forum members to post photos and reports on their progress for their 2015 Christmas layouts. So I changed the Thread title toi reflect this.
Looking forward to it!
