Beverly's and Chris's Slab Door Layout

I was showing our small collection of buildings to a neighbour origianlly from Bosnia.
She said she saw train stations like the Rodach station when she was in Germany. Very cool

Well, a lot has happened since late last week. We first decided where to put our layout, then built the base for it....

after measuring several locations on the main floor of our townhouse, we decided to move a few things out of the way behind the dining room table for the layout:


A bird's eye view is always an interesting way to look at anything to see how the world looks. The black rectangle is where we imagined the layout to go:


A couple of days later, after measuring and discussing our plans, the European style grid base was built out of 1"x3"s.:


By Sunday afternoon, the base had been built and put on a pair of sawhorses, then the 29.5" x 80" sheet of 3/8" plywood was placed on top. The Kibri buildings are shown scattered about the plywood:


Almost a full tube of glue was used to create these buildings. I imagine that the last bit will be used when I add the details to the train station:


Yesterday, the partially built Neuschwanstein Castle arrived from a private German eBay seller. This building is in excellent condition but needs a good paint job and hopefully some windows, which Marklin does not supply(!), before displaying. Oh, and it also needs a whole lot of landscaping. Here it is behind my other completed kits:


Now that we have the castle, it'll be easier to decide where the tracks go for the three trains we'll be running on the layout. A Google search for "Neuschwanstein Castle" gives us plenty of photos to look at. I love that the castle is in a mountainous region. I have almost 300 evergreen trees to alter for use on this layout. I imagine I'll make at least 100 deciduous trees to compliment the evergreens. The images of the final layout are beautiful. But there are a lot of basic things to be done before I start landscaping, so off I go

Happy journey. Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

Your making nice progress. Don't rush it and have fun.

I am having the most wonderful time finishing the last two kits. It's cool and misty here today. Hopefully we'll get more badly needed rain again.

The following are all links to Neuschwanstein Castle...

Stunning photo of the front of the castle with mountains all around.

TripAdvisor 135 photos of the castle - use the forward arrows to see them all!

Google Maps - type in Neuschwanstein Castle Germany for a look at where it is in south eastern Germany.

Wikipedia page on the castle with photos.

A bit of castle history.

This area is going to so much fun to model! I'm going to need a few more trees, though to get it looking as lush as in the photos. Here is what (almost) 200 evergreens look lke. We scattered them last evening to get an idea of what will be needed...

It's been a long time since I posted to this thread, but it looks like we're beginning work on our large layout again

There are a few basic things that need to get done before we commit the space allotted to the large layout. The first is to move a built-in vac outlet from the short wall where the layout will reside. Electricity will also have to accompany the moved vac outlet. The second will be to do some other electrical wiring for a ceiling light that was not properly installed with a wall switch.

Another consideration for the larger layout is that we want the entire layout, from the base to removable Plexiglas top assembly to look like a piece of furniture. The Plexiglas will enclose the entire layout on all four sides and the top. We learned a lot about building this type of structure when we built the Sylvanian Village as seen in this recent thread . The Village was designed to be dismantled at some future date when we decide to move. At this point, we are considering building the base, the actual train layout and the Plexiglas enclosure structure to be separate from each other so the entire thing can eventually be moved in pieces.

Ballpark measurements of this layout:

Footprint: ~ 29.5" by 80"
Height of base: ~ 36"
Height of base plus Plexi top: ~ 66"


Questions:
1. Has anyone built anything remotely similar to what I'm describing?
2. Has anyone considered building anything like this? If so, did you actually built it and where are your photos? If so, but didn't build it, why not?

Comments are definitely welcome on this subject!



Chris will be taking a look at kitchen cabinets at the local hardware store this morning to see if we can use something that is already partially built. It will be too cold to do any woodworking in the garage until at least March, so I don't know what our timeline on this project will be. It would be great to begin work on the actual layout, which is mostly my department, before the base is built. Chris has this week off and we will be able to do design work and materials research for the project during this time.

I'm quite excited to be thinking in Z again If we jump back into Z with both feet, my Village stuff will be put on the back burner for a few months. We should know more about our plans for the future by the New Year.

Just a quick note and photo to let folks know we're slowly getting back at work on our European layout. Track layout design is going very well - for a beginner. Footprint is 77" by 25" give or take an inch. I'm using AnyRail to try different layouts. We have three steam trains that will go on three separate tracks.

Here's a photo of the track layout I had the most confidence in printing to see how my buildings would fit. I also have to take into account the buildings still unbuilt in their boxes. As you can see, I haven't quite got the right track plan....



Chris is looking at woodworking articles to see if he can find a design for the cabinet this layout will reside in. He's still in the very beginning stages of trying to figure out if such a cabinet is within his (potential!) skill level.

It looks like its going to be great plan, and I like multiple trains running at the same time.

It is looking good. My only suggestion is to add another track or two for train storage. This will give you more options to choose trains to operate plus create a visual interest of staged trains ready to operate on the layout. Also, you can run one train while changing out the other on the yard track.

Rob

This photo is also in my gallery.

Except for the castle on the left and the station in the middle, buildings have been placed randomly for the time being. I'll looking at ways to put a small station near the base of the castle for the Rheingold Express (green track), or I may hide part of the green track and make a hidden station....




There will be three passenger railways running on our layout:

- the Marklin 8133 Rheingold Express (green track)
- the Marklin 8870 Ochre King Ludwig II locomotive and tender (red track)
- the Marklin 8891 DR locomotive and tender ( purple track)

There will be three main locations on the layout:

- castle on mountain, heavily treed (left)
- farmland (middle foreground)
- town with lots of buildings (right)

Three things I need to learn more about:

- creating a waterfall and small river
- creating elevations, tunnels, bridges
- making town and country roads semi-prototypical for 1900 to 1940 Germany

I've got another commitment that needs my attention for the next several days. Depending on other factors, I may begin making the Kibri Z buildings that are still in their boxes next week. There is no hurry to get the ball rolling too quickly for this layout. The base needs to be made and it won't be warm enough in the garage for Chris to begin building it at least until the end of March.

For elevations, tunnels and water, take a look at Woodland Scenics stuff. The have a small book "SubTerrain Manual" which gives some good details on building up elevations and tunnels. I used their foam inclines 2% and 3% for elevating the track. For the rest of the foam I just saved up scraps from packing materials. I have been following the general ideas from the manual and it has made assembly fairly quick and easy so far. Next step is applying the plaster cloth so we will see how that goes.

Beverly:

Do you use Sketchup? If you use it (free program), you can download models from the 3D warehouse from Popular Woodworking. sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=popular+woodworking&styp=m . Not all the models in the search result are from them, but it might be a nice place to start.

Jeremy

Have to agree with Ztrack, adding some tracks/sidings/spurs for storage to add interest might be a good idea.

Beverly: I was talking about for finding a table/furniture design for putting your layout on. Otherwise, my post seems out of place.

I think the real furniture is going to be the layout. The detail in your PBL diorama was great. I think once the layout is complete you could probably set it on a pile of pallets with black skirting and have nothing to worry about;) .

Jeremy

Johan,

Thanks for the reminder. I have two Woodland Scenics books. I also have a list of links somewhere about doing water - which will be my greatest challenge. I'll have to practice away from the main layout a few times before I attempt it.

My main concerns about elevations are laying track on curved foam inclines, keeping the inclines lower than 4%, and landscaping around the inclined track - taking into consideration the shallow 25" depth of the layout. I also need to take it slow and think things through carefully

Rob and Michael,

I'll have to consider the use of extra track such as sidings and spurs. The only place it would make sense to me to have a spur would be to the factory. Can't see a use for a siding anywhere, though, nor do I think I have the space for one. It's already a pretty busy place, at least the way I have imagined it Also, we need to have simple control of the trains with no switches or anything like that. I'd like each train to operate with off and slow modes. "Keep it simple" is my motto for these types of things. While I greatly admire the skills and imagination that go into complex track plans, that's not where my interests and abilities lie. I'm more of a mountain sculptor, tree planter, and urban planner. Having trains going round and round is just the cherry on top. <---- OMG, I really said that

Jeremy,

Thanks for the link. I'll pass it along to Chris. He might already be hooked up with Popular Woodworking, but this might give him other places to explore.

I really, really want to have a nice base and enclosure for this layout. It's going to be in our dining room and might very well become the focal point of our main floor. The layouts I see taking shape on this board are fantastic. But really, guys, if women want trains to be part of their everyday living spaces, the bases have to look as beautiful as your trains! Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, here, though...



How about if we do an informal survey? Ask your significant others if they'd like your train hobbies more if there were cabinets under (and around) the trains instead of 2x4 legs and plywood backgrounds. This might be a dangerous question to ask, but also ask what you could do with your train hobbies that would make it more wife/girlfriend friendly. I'll be looking forward to your SO's responses



Oops! I've got to get back to shooting and editing another video for my Sylvanian client . Two more videos to create with this batch of products and I'll hopefully have time to do a bit of work on my Kibri kits.

The 2% grade from Woodland rises 1/2" over 2 feet while the 3% rises 3/4" and 4% rises 1". Using the Marklin pier set and 110 mm support sections yields about 3.6% grade. I was able to bend the Woodland Scenic sections easy to accommodate standard Marklin 8530 and 8520 curved track sections. For the tighter 8510 sections it is possible but you may break a joint or two. Here are some photos of one curve on my layout. Within the 180 degrees using the 2% grade I raised the elevation 3/4".

Mike

(message board novice, couldn't figure out how to place two images in same reply)

Mike,

Wow! Thank you for the great instructions and photos. I'll be able to use this information for sure From the photo, it looks like the thinner portion of the incline material is best used around the curve. Is this your opinion, too?

The inclines are equally flexible through the entire strip. The curve in the photo is actually designed to have a short straight section in the middle thus why it may look a little uneven toward the thicker portion.

Mike

Mike,

Are you using the Woodland Scenics adhesive or something else to stick the incline to the insulation board?

It would be great if you started a thread or gallery with your building process. Beginners like me would greatly benefit

For attaching the WS foam products, I've been using a low-temp hot glue ... I find that it helps to get things set in place quickly if I use dabs here and there first, check to confirm everything is where I really want it, and then follow-up with more glue to finish it off.