2009 - Year of N Scale Layout Construction
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 5:45PM I’m back after a long work-related hiatus. I want to thank you all for continuing to visit the site throughout. Surprisingly, the number of hits actually went up while I was off dealing with other things! But I’ll take that as a positive and do my best to post more often going forward. I hope you all had a great break over the holidays with plenty of railroading mixed in.
RBL Milepost 0.0
As the title of this post suggests, it is time to convert all my planning and analysis into construction. Here is where I start from…
This is my garage. Impressive eh! Parking space for the usual family and household clutter. Not quite ready to house a precision N Scale railroad. But look closely, and you can see potential! The view above is where the railroad space will be located. All the stuff will either go, get stored more efficiently or move inside the RBL space.
The Future
And here is my objective…
This clip is a very rough walk-through of the layout 3D rendering. It gives a pretty good overview of the space and how the layout fits into it.
The plan always has something that is being tweaked. For example, there are some fascias that I have removed that don’t show in the clip and there is a lot of track in the lower level that will be concealed in the final layout. Nevertheless, it captures the general layout of things.
What have you learned so far Grasshopper?
Many, many , many layouts do not ever reach the potential that they start out with. It is really easy to take on too much work, expense, challenge, time commitment and as a consequence, end up disappointed. I have lived this misery along with many of you.
Building the RBL layout will be a big job. It is a great idea to walk before running. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, once the layout space is complete, I’ll start by building some FreemoN modules to dust off the cobwebs from my modeling skills.
I’d like to begin work on the RBL some time later this year. This pilot project will help shake out the space itself, lighting, flooring, acoustics, heat management etc.
In any case, the real imperative for right now is to get the space created.
The RBL Layout Space Construction Plan
The high level plan is as follows:
- Junk removal from garage. Where the hell does this stuff come from? I did this already!!!
- Garage storage solutions - racks etc to compensate for the smaller floor storage in the remaining garage, more efficient (vertical rather than horizontal) storage to keep the family and landlord (wife) happy
- Move Automatic sprinkler control
- Plumbing - Move a tap that would be in the layout space to the outside
- Electrical - Install extra power and lighting circuit/breakers, outlets along two existing walls, lights for garage
- Install wall-mounted garage door opener
- Build stud walls (FINALLY!)
The first six items will take 6-8 weeks. So the beginning of framing is late February at the earliest. Fingers crossed and numerous offerings to the relevant gods, I should be okay. I can’t get there soon enough!
Cheers,
Coxy
Reader Comments (1)
Hey Steve!
Great to hear something is moving, even if it is just junk in the garage :) Your 3D plan looks very ambitious. Do you have an image trackplan for those of us not having 3rd plan it software? I'd like to study your plan