Whole house layout questions.

if you dont mind me saying so i think you need to learn to walk before you try and run.

yes it is possible to double head and tripple head locomotives. particularly if you are using a digital control system. in america this is called consisting.

regarding the track metal, the rusting issue depends on allot of things. how often are you going to use it? are you fussed about the look of the yellower metal? how damp is the house? to make a climb up to a second floor you are either going to need a train lift (in which case there wont be any gradients) or a spiral in which case your trains are going to spend a long time going round and round quite possibly out of view. this i would find unacceptable but its your house and your layout.

I think you need to do allot more reading and allot more planning before you commit to anything.

you might also want to concider something allong the lines of a sky-trestle system. i think it looks daft on its own but it might be a way of having a mainline in one room and the loop in another.

http://www.locoboose.com/SkyTrestle/O-Scale.html

Peter

Eddieb,

That amount of money may buy you one locomotive in O-gauge...if your lucky.
Add to that the track work.
If you want a decent powered DCC controller that would be about £250 ($440) on it's own!

You asked about going around the walls of a room, in O-gauge I hope you have the door in the centre of the room and not near to one corner.

In your example, you have a wall, you said 10ft long? well the straight length of track would be about 6ft long you would need at least 2ft at each end to fit in the minimum radius curves possible in O-gauge, I think I'm being over optimistic with that as well, probably more like 3ft at each corner!
I have no idea what the minimum radius curve would be, but it just wouldn't be practical to have an O-gauge layout running around the walls, you could do it in OO-gauge which would mean you could still use the room, just about, if it's a really big room.
It would be more suited to N-gauge, unless you plan to run the track work above door height?

The picture shows how I tried it in OO-gauge the baseboards stick out into the room by 300mm, I still had to add corner baseboards as the curves were still too tight!
This was in a spare bedroom, my train room, and you couldn't really use it for anything else with this going around the walls!
The Sky-trestle system that Peter has posted the link to looks about the only real way of fitting an O-gauge loco in around the walls.
It says they do the 72inch or 6ft radius curve as the O-54.......54inches 4.5ft is too small to look good operationally

Good luck!

QUOTE (eddieb @ 4 Sep 2008, 16:33) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I will probably start the layout in just one room, then branch off into the next later on. It will be a project that takes a while to do. As far as a budget goes I would be willing to put $300-400 down to get it started and a few hundred a year after that till the whole house had train service.

In regards too the amperage of the power unit, as of now I only plan to run the train and 4-6 switch track peices, would it cause a problem to get something with more amperage than needed, to allow for future upgrades?
hello eddie

You need to think about what kind of stock you want to be running. with the very tight corners you need to be thinking about small loco's rather than big pacifics.

i'm afraid i have to agree with wiggy about the budget. i think you need to add a zero to your figures. saving money by purchasing second hand equipment may be a bit of an own goal in this case. because the track is going to be so high fromt he ground, reliability has to be very important. you dont want derailments happenng with the possibility of a £500 loco crashing to the ground.

you are correct about the controller. you can have as many amps as you like on the power supply. its a good plan to go a bit overkill n the power side of things. to start with i think you should be looking at about 8 amps to get you started. if you use a good system you can upgrade as and when you need to.

did you take a look at the sky trestle link i posted? have you thought about going LGB instead. it would have its advantages. and it would be easier to see at that height.

Peter

QUOTE LGB??? What is this new (to me) term?

Lehmann Gross Bahn. You have probably seen large model trains running back and forth in toy shop (or department stores at Christmas time) windows or on tracks hanging from the ceiling. The locomotives are usually small narrow gauge 0-4-0s. This is LGB. The 0-4-0s are the entry level products. There is a wide range of locomotives available, particularly models of the meter gauge Rhaetia Bahn (RhB) from eastern Switzerland. The trains run on 45mm gauge track and has the wide sleeper spacing characteristic of narrow gauge railways. 45mm also happens to the track gauge for Gauge 1, so LGB also make Gauge 1 scale model of standard gauge locomotives. In the past this has included a French P141 steam locomotive. It might seem to be an odd idea to mix large scale narrow gauge with smaller scale standard gauge but it works in a strange kind of way.

LGB is designed to used indoors and out, and not just for large gardens. LGB locomotives are designed to go round very tight radius curves, 2 foot minimum I think so even the smallest room can accommodate a circle of track.

Other companies make models to run on 45mm including some Big Boys from the US. I think you need a minimum of 5 foot radius to run these. I wouldn't fancy lifting one of these to a track running near the ceiling though. They are over four feet long.

The LGB company is currently reinventing itself after going "bust" in late 2006. I've forgotten who finally bought the assets but there's a long thread about it somewhere on the Forum.

In summary, LGB make large models of small cute locomotives and have often been seen running on railway track suspended 18 inches from the ceiling. Oh I nearly forgot they do a couple of "rack" locomotives which really do have the pinion to drag them up steep hills. Sounds like just what you need.

I have one LGB locomotive and four feet of track. I am seriously thinking of switching to Gauge 1. There's a rather fine model of Flying Scotsman available....

David

QUOTE (Colombo @ 16 Sep 2008, 17:52) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Eddie,

Model Railways are really very messy things to build in situ in the house.

You will have to live with debris from building work, sawdust, the smell of glue and paint and so on.

Modular construction is a good idea. Build them in a room set aside for the purpose, or in a shed or a garage, and then set them up wherever you want.

Colombo

Hi Eddie,

I like you thought about having a layout running around the house, what a grand idea I thought, would be great to see an express pass by at speed and dissapear into another room. Until, I looked further into it and found out just how much it would cost to do, getting the builders in to make the holes, track board, power etc. On a modest sized 3 bed house the cost was running into thousands, way above my budget and that was for the ground floor only in OO gauge.

Take the advice from the other posters on this thread and stick to a modular layout. I sort of have by building a portable one that when finished will be 32feet long by 12feet wide. Which will just about fit in my back garden when at full tilt. It will be much easier and as someone metioned earlier will not have all the agrevation of putting everything right if you come to sell the property at a later date.

Rayden

I was thinking about my layout tonight. Looking at it, built into a room above my garage - I am sure that it would add value to my house if I sold it with that bonus. A hobby room is a good pull for a guy looking to express himself. I may not sell though