So when we went looking to buy a house, I really didn't put layout space on our 'must have' list. I just set the bar at a decent work space and good storage for my collection, things which have been lacking in our apartment living especially since the kid was born. I wanted enough space to work on the stuff I run at the club. Well, as luck would have it we bought a place with a full basement, semi-finished, and about 700sq ft of potential layout space over the long term.
It's the first time as an adult I've had any real dedicated space at home for my hobby.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
It's two rooms which share a wall, about 30'x30' with some some cutouts. The larger space will remain mostly open for family use until the smaller space can't handle my ambitions any longer.
Belonging to a club with a very large layout, I don't plan on filling this space with track as fast as possible. But it's time to start planning for eventualities!
I'm thinking that my approach will be modular. My initial goals are something that will allow me to put together long trains for testing and evaluation before running them at the club. Also to test and record pulling power of locomotives, speed matching, etc.. (I'll probably soon get my own DCC system, which I've never had before even though I run DCC at the club.) So I'm thinking perhaps a return loop/staging module that can handle 14ft or longer trains, along with a simpler return loop for the far end of the layout, and initially a module to go in between that would put trains through a decent test of the ruling grades and curves at the club. Later I'd build more modules and gradually expand the layout to something that could really be operated on. I'd like to build at least some of the modules to Freemo-N standards so I could also sometimes hang out with those Silicon Valley Freemo N guys.
I do want to aim to model a prototype long term, although which is still TBD. Something California with mountains. It's tough to decide among the many great options, but there's plenty of time. I'll leave my thoughts on that to a later post. I've started some sketches for the first few modules (lol, we haven't even moved in yet!) which I'll share as soon as they're a little more brushed up.
PS: If you want to make fun of that workbench with the hooks on it, at least share any knowledge you have on what that was built for. It came with the house.
