So I pitched an idea to the wife and she’s okay’d to let me keep the layout in the current room, along with making it a guest room.  The plan would be to place the guest bed on the West wall of the room (the wall with the doors), the layout would occupy only the East wall (the longest wall where most of the layout is now), and my computer desk would remain where it is on the South wall.

While the layout could be cut by nearly 75%, I feel it’s a much better alternative to building in the garage.  I would also be able to utilize the existing shelving benchwork  mounted to the wall, though I would extend it from 15″ to 24″.  The plywood tops could all be recycled as well.

I’ve been doodling on a simple, single level plan, though I have thought about keeping the double deck since I have already have the helix.  I’ll have to see what I can come up with though.

So what do I have?

• I’m located in Houston, TX. Our average high in the summer is 93° and our average low in the winter is 43° (source: MSN Weather).
• No A/C or Heat
• One Exterior Wall, Two Interior Walls (with insulation), One double garage door. Ceiling has no insulation in attic space above.
• Walls and ceiling are finished with drywall.

I then began thinking how I would tackle each of these three culprits.

Dust

The biggest source of dust in your garage is the concrete floor itself. Concrete is just naturally dusty. Everytime you walk on it, move stuff on it, etc.. you kick up dust. So to virtually eliminate that source of dust I plan to seal the floor with RustOleum’s Garage Floor Coating.

To deal with the 2nd source of dust and dirst, outside, I plan to add weather stripping to the garage door. This will include:

• A Garage Door Storm Shield Threshold
• Exterior vinyl weather stripping along the side and top of the garage door

A HEPA Air purifier near the layout is also recommended as just another way to keep the dust levels down.

Cold/Heat:

The garage has no connection to the Central A/C unit, nor does it have windows, so a window unit is out.  So the first thing I’ll do is install some insulating material on the garage door itself.

With winter approaching, I’ll be looking into some space heaters that could be used to bring the layout area to a comfortable temperature.  I came across these Edenpure ones that look interesting.  Carpeting would be placed in the main aisle as well to keep the feet comfy from the cold, hard floor.

To cool the garage in the summer, I have seen several varieties of portable A/C units that could be used.  I’m still researching this.

Another option I’ve seen discussed is to build a mini room in the garage itself. Basically some simple wall frames with insulation material. You can complete it with a roof and small a/c unit even to basically totally enclose the layout. This would be the optimal situation as you’ll be sealing the layout from any outside elements. I’d really have to see how much cost would be involved in such a task.  I was actually thinking of enclosing the layout somewhat using tall backdrops as the “walls” and then perhaps a removable tarp of some sort as the a “ceiling” that can enclose the layout top when it’s not in use.

There’s also been some reflection on the layout. During my time-off, I was also able to really think about the layout (mainly at work, heh). I thought about what my goals are for it, what issues it has, how many things were built so they “sorta worked”, and what things I would do differently. When I think to myself, “Was it that I really want to get out of my layout?”, I usually just want to railfan the layout; Someplace where I can go and just watch trains run. I’m never going to have op sessions with others, and I’m not really into switching (not yet at least) either. I think I really just want a (almost) “roundy-round” with a few industries for future operational switching. Something that I could turn on, and just let run if I wanted.

During all of this (and previously), the wife and I talked about the usage of the house and the space we have, as we’d like to have a 2nd baby and we only have 3 BR’s (1 being a guest room we’d like to keep). In short, instead of buying a house, utilizing the office/layout room as the guest bedroom would be the most cost effective measure for us.

So I’ve been pondering the idea of removing current layout and starting fresh with a new 16×7 layout in one half of the garage (picture a rectangle with a 28″ aisle down the middle).

While I know it’s certainly a *huge* change after spending nearly 2 years on the current layout, I feel like I could now build a layout more to how I really want. No crazy staging elevators, no cassettes, no helix, no double decks, etc… A more “traditional” kind of layout.

So needless to say, all work on the current layout is now on hold while this new layout is researched.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been plowing ahead with constructing staging, building the lift, installing the new cabinets, doing track work, wiring staging turnouts, installed tortoise and wiring, installed feeders, and put down scenery.  I’ve also been in this “I can’t stop thinking about the layout mode” where it seems like I’m brainstorming a hundred different ideas for a hundred parts of the layout all day, every day.

This evening I put down some scenery, followed by gluing down some cork roadbed, and sorta had this “what should I do next? how about this? how about that? or this.. or this…”.  It’s like I just couldn’t make a decision on what I wanted to do.

In other words, tonight I hit that burnout phase like a ton of bricks.  You may have had the same moment before where you have so many things on the to-do list but you almost just feel overwhelmed about it all.  So tonight, I’m taking a step back from the layout for a days to let the brain recover, let ideas simmer for awhile, and start afresh soon.

Since I’m planning on not doing anything layout related for the weekend at a minimum, I took a few minutes tonight to record a sorta flyover-ish video of the layout. Nothing exciting, but gives you a look at how things are going.

Hope you enjoy, and see ya soon.

The first turnout at each end of the yard will get it’s own output on a DS52, but the inner turnouts at each end of a individual yard track can be combined to a single output on a DS52 since both ends of the yard track could either be closed or thrown at the same time. So yay.

So here’s a recap of what’s been going on.  Might wanna get some popcorn, a box of peanut M&M’s, and a large soda.

Staging Level

The staging level is pretty much complete, though a little redesign of one end of the ladder is planned (you’ll see in a minute).  I need one additional turnout to complete the yard ladder ladder not getting a makeover.  Last night I finished putting the track feeders in place and got the level connected to the DCC bus. The reverse loop hardware, a PSRev PowerShield Intelligent Reverse I bought 4 years ago from Tony’s Trains and luckily still had, was installed as well for a reversing loop section.

At the moment the track is just sitting on the benchwork, not secured down.  I need to go back sand down a few spots to try and level them out a little more.  Once everything is nice and happy, I’ll just use dabs of hot glue to secure the track to keep it from sliding or anything. I don’t think I’ll need anything major here.

For the turnouts on the staging level, my plan was to use the existing open ports on my two DAC10 turnout controllers.  I have 11 turnouts on staging, and 11 free spaces.  Perfect.  But then I discovered the DAC10 doesn’t play very well with the two-wire motors like the Kato Unitrack motors.  You need to build some kind of controller card for each turnout to handle the three wire connection from the DAC10, to the 2 wire Kato connection.  I found a diagram on how to do it, but I’m not very savy on electronic diagrams. I would also need to re-wire the turnout wiring connections in the wire panel for a three wire connection as well.  Not impossible, just extra work.

So I thought I’d see what other alternatives are out there.  There’s three Digitrax products I could use; A DS64, a DS52, or a DS51K1.  All three products are made to run out of the box with Kato 2-Wire turnoutsDS1K1 is actually made specifically for Kato turnouts).

• I’ve been reading up on the Digitrax DS52 and it looks like it’s the best way to go.  Each DS52 has two outputs, but you can hook up to *4* Kato turnouts per output, so can double up some outputs to cut down on the number of decoders needed.  So if I redesigned the staging yard to be a typical double-ended yard (instead of the current design where it flip flops at the other end, no idea why I did that), I can connect the 2 turnouts on each end of a ladder track to a single output. I would only need 3 of these decoders for a cost of about $57 to control the entire staging level. Sweet.

I’d to sell off some these 4 Right Hand turnouts I will no longer need to cover the cost of purchasing 4 Left Hand ones. If you need some #6 RH Kato Unitrack  turnouts, or have some Left Hands you’d like to trade for Right Hands with the Kato connector cut off, lemme know!

Staging Elevator

The staging elevator is just about complete as well.  Everything is place except for the sidewalls to prevent stuff from falling off and hitting the floor.  I plan on using pieces of 2″x24″ styrene for the walls. I tested out .030″ thickness on a spare piece of wood, securing it with hot glue, and it worked out pretty darn well.  The hot glue held better than I thought.  So probably next week I’ll have that styrene on hand to complete the bridge.

I didn’t take many photos of the building process because a lot of it was sorta improvised on the spot.  Here’s a look at the bridge in place.

The elevator “lifts” move up/down on a telescoping heavy-duty drawer slide, and a cleat is used to hold the elevator in place at the lower deck.  I do plan on painting all of the wood probably the same color as the fascia.

The bridge has a guide screw on each end that plugs through a wood piece on the top of the lift.  A wing nut secures the bridge to the lift.

And power wire to the bridge.

I plan on removing this entire piece of facia and install on larger, taller piece that covers the whole end.  It’s act as the “end plate” of the layout.  A bridge will be installed right at the end of the layout on the otherside of the fascia, so a train will pass under the bridge, and then “off the layout”.

Scenery

In the middle of all the staging work, I’m still making a little progress on my groundwork.  I’m currently working on the cliff corner, covering up the tape and plaster cloth with mold-a-scene.  With the Staging level going on hold until I complete the bridge and turnouts, I’ll be able to focus a little more on the scenery.  I also added a motorized oil platform to the layout, got the other old crossing track embedded some scenery, and relocated the double target signal before the bridge (just after the road crossing) instead of after it as before.

In the refinery, I decided I didn’t need all the tracks and turnouts I had.  A simple double track unloading platform will work for any operations I want to do.  I don’t think I need to get fancy with multiple tracks all over the place that I’ll never ever use.  So up came two turnouts and two sections of track.  The two humpyard throws no longer in use will be removed, and the third one that remains in use might get replaced with a tortoise.  Still thinking about that one.

Upper Level

I’ve also been working on the upper level roadbed.  There’s a spot in the benchwork where two meeting pieces don’t line up.  When I first install this section I didn’t worry about it because I had no plan of putting track here, but since I am now I needed to fix it.  In came cork roadbed and a lot of sanding.  Now I’ve got a nice transition from one section to the other.

The mainline on the upper level will be put down on two layers of cork to give it a higher profile, while the siding will be on only one layer of cork.  Hope to get the roadbed and mayyyyybe some track installed through half the upper level in the next week or so.

The Room

Another side project I’ve been working on is tidying up the office/layout room.  Previously, I had several short bookcases under the layout with bins of stuff on them.  Kept stuff organized, but still looked like a chicken coupe to me.  I tried covering it with a tarp/sheet hanging under the layout, but that looked just as bad to me.  So last weekend I replace the bookshelves with cabinets with doors.  Now everything is tucked away behind doors, leaving a nice, clean appearance.

Before…………………………………………and After

And that’s all!

What’s left to do is attach some corner pieces where the track is overhanging the edge, wire wire up a bus under the layout and tie in the feeders and reverse loop circuit, install the new lift bridge, and get the loop area hidden behind a new fascia.

The loop area I’ll actually be able to use for the gravel industry. I can cover the exposed benchwork and make the lower deck expand over it (hiding the stage track underneath) and extend the spur line to it. I would then wrap a fascia board around it.

Still using the lift approach, I would build a new lift out of wood (on an aluminum brace due to the size), but add a curve to it at the end against the wall

This way a train could roll onto the lift from the layout, and beginning rolling through the curve, stopping before it gets to the end of course.

Then along the wall behind my monitors install a single track leading under the layout into a staging yard located under the under layout.

I would lower the lift to the staging level and the train would continue to move forward into a staging yard. I could then install a reverse loop a corner to turn a train around to head back to the layout.

This would allow trains to be turned around very easily.

Here’s a pretty ugly drawing I did while coming up with the plan.

When I changed over to concrete tie track, I decided to eliminate the crossover I had planned. So I thought I would try embedding some wood tie track into the terrain to look like some old abandon track.  I think it came out pretty good (see pic #3).  I’ll repeat it on the other side now.

And the beginnings of the staging level begin to appear.  Installing the wall mounts for a 12″ shelf.